Nothing should be more shocking for this country’s Home Minister than the indiscriminate killing on Monday night of at least 18 persons in two mercenary attacks on villages in the Kishtwar area of Doda district of Jammu and Kashmir. Mr L.K. Advani has been hypercritical of “the lenient attitude” to the security problem in the region for years. What sounded like a policy statement of the Union Government, he announced ex-cathedra in May that the Government would replace the ineffective “reactive” response to Pakistan’s terrorism with a “proactive” approach. He said he had brought together a think tank to end the agony of the people of the northern state who were losing their life and limb as a result of terrorism. (The average citizen of the state knows that the terrorist chooses his time and place purposefully under the guidance of the ISI and strikes to kill.) The think tank included all conceivable powerful persons except Mr Advani himself: the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, the Chief Minister, the Cabinet Secretary, the Chief of Army Staff and representatives of the intelligence agencies and the paramilitary forces. No one knows what deterrent thoughts have floated out of this strategic tank. But certain gloomy facts are clear: Monday’s massacre was the third one within the past five weeks. More than 25 persons were gunned down in Champnari on June 19. Four members of a family were shot dead at Machalla on July 25. There was sufficient reason to provide adequate security to the villagers of the area.

Does the Government remember that already 30 lakh Hindus have been forced to go into self-exile in the recent past? Does it realise that the latest targets have been men, women and children from the minority community in the state where a secular Chief Minister belonging to the majority community reigns and rules with the full blessings of a Union Home Minister for whom Hinduism is an article of faith and political conviction? Doda is a soft target. Look at the map of northern India and you will find its visual proximity to Jammu and the Himachal border glaringly clear. If the authorities are not able to protect Doda, they would allow free play to the proxy war wagers in the plains and the relatively peaceful hill state. Move your eyes from Himachal to Punjab, a territory ravaged by terrorism for more than a decade. And look at the implications. The latest outrage is what Mr Advani has called in a different context “a challenge as well as an opportunity”. Are we going to see this spectacle of planned ethnic cleansing in Jammu and Kashmir helplessly while ASEAN and SAARC discuss or evade the non-existent Kashmir question? Dr Farooq Abdullah tells Mr Advani: “We are no longer weak.... Tell Pakistan that while we want peaceful coexistence, it cannot be on your (Pakistan’s) terms.” Mr Advani talks of a “new will”. But violence is escalating with greater virulence in Kashmir’s plains. With the rise in the death-rate on the Indian side of the Line of Control, the scenario does not look like that of proxy war. Pakistan’s regular soldiers are facing regular soldiers of India in several sectors. Let us call a spade a spade and find a silencing answer to the belligerent communal problem highlighted by mercenaries in Doda and elsewhere. At the moment, we only see fitful evidence of India’s reactivity. It is Pakistan which is showing its decimating proactivity. Enough is enough.

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Courtesy: The Tribune: July 30, 1998