INDIA: Summers of discontents

For the third consecutive summer, the simmering anger in Jammu & Kashmir has erupted in agitation. Protestors crippled Srinagar with mass demonstrations and stone-pelting, and created a sustained challenge to New Delhi and the state government. For a while it appeared that the very presence of the government had disappeared; the chief minister admitted his helplessness, saying the police needed to learn techniques of crowd control. After New Delhi passed on instructions on how to handle the situation, the resulting security-centric approach led to ever more killings of innocents and peaceful protestors – the reason why people were protesting in the first place. For the first time in 17 years, the government formally called the Indian Army out to help retrieve the situation on the streets of Srinagar.

At one level, the history of Kashmir is an extremely painful one, which has been narrated innumerable times. The events of the past exemplify the travails of a people who have never found freedom, peace and justice, and have often been trapped in games not of their making – a Hindu king, a largely Muslim population, war and disputed accession, Partition, a Line of Control, promises of autonomy and betrayal of those promises, wars, rigged elections, central rule, resistance, militancy, inter-community strife, crossborder militancy, encounters and disappearances, protests, splintered separatist groups, antagonist mainstream Kashmiri parties, warring intelligence agencies, the influence of China, Islamism and, at the end, almost 100,000 people dead in two decades.