Writings on the Valley wall

Reading the writings on the wall in poll-bound Kashmir, we find change for the better, aspiration, a quiet celebration of peace, but don't confuse it for closure

WritingsOnTheWall is a metaphor that has emerged through about three decades of travel, mostly in poll-bound India. This instalment comes to you from the Kashmir Valley. It is also my first experience of watching an election in so sensitive, vital, and fascinating a region.

First, what is WritingsOnTheWall? It means literally looking at the walls to see what’s changing and what isn’t, what the people want and what they absolutely don’t.

The walls also tell us what the people are buying (branded underwear, Nitish’s Bihar, 2010), or if they are too broke to be buying anything at all (Lalu’s Bihar, 2005). That gives a quick peek into the state of an economy, and change, in this case, for the better.

In the Kashmir Valley, where two of the three constituencies (Srinagar and Baramulla) have already voted and Anantnag votes this Saturday, three things stand out. Or let’s say, three de-hyphenations stand out, although you can read only one of these straight off the walls. For the other two, you have to step inside them.

Here are the three de-hyphenations: First, the youth, who constitute a significant portion of Kashmiris, have de-hyphenated their minds, at least for now, from the politics of radicalism, separatism, anger and grievance. Don’t be deluded into believing that it is all over. It sits there and comes out when young people think they can trust you enough and talk. The priority for now is education, and competition.

Second, there is a new-complete de-hyphenation with Pakistan. It also comes from the simultaneous phenomenon of the catastrophic decline in Pakistani national power and the rise in India’s.

And the third, at the tactical and ground level, is the security agencies’ success in de-hyphenating weapons and the people. Everybody knows there are plenty of weapons in the Valley, and still many who are trained and motivated to use them. But that chord has been cut for now, or de-hyphenated.

You can safely say that in most parts of India, except probably some states in the north — especially Punjab, where immigration/visas/IELTS dominates — the walls are generally filled with hoardings and posters of competition academies.

I do not think, however, that they are as prominent anywhere as in the Kashmir Valley. Allen Career Institute, Chanakya IAS Academy, Elite IAS, Emerge Institute of Coaching, The Commercians, Vedantu, Nucleus Institute of Excellence — literally scores of brands fills the walls, trees, unipoles, just about any place you could hang or stick anything onto.

Everybody wants to crack UPSC, NEET, JEE, all the things young people across the country covet. So many of these hoardings have portraits of their successful students. This is the post-stone-throwing generation of Kashmiris. They are also the Valley’s new future.

I messaged my old friend and colleague Uday Shankar — yes, formerly of Star-Disney, now a formidable entrepreneur — to tell him I see so many hoardings of his new coaching academy venture, Allen, that perhaps the place should be renamed the Valley of Allen or Allenistan. He told me with pride how many young Kashmiris are cracking these exams to become doctors, engineers and so on. If you were one of those still nostalgic about the heyday of militancy and separatism, you might call it a great distraction.

Even if so, there couldn’t be a more virtuous distraction. If tens of thousands of boys — and girls — want to compete with the best and look for careers outside the Valley, it’s the kind of change not even a doubling of defence budgets, or laws three times tougher than UAPA could bring about.

The walls also give us the starkest evidence of what hasn’t changed, and the tensions that lie within. Walk along Gupkar Road, where the mightiest in Kashmir live. That’s why the alliance the key Valley parties once formed was called the Gupkar Alliance.

Each “home” is a fortress, with reinforced concrete walls going up to 18 feet and sometimes more. On top of it, you might find strengthened steel sheets, crowned with concertina fencing. This adds up to an obstacle so high even a great pole vaulter like Sergey  Bubka would fail to jump over it. This isn’t about to change anytime soon, as Farooq Abdullah schools me for almost two hours under a tree.

Things are better, he acknowledges, violence is not there. But that doesn’t mean young people aren’t angry. They see Delhi as “vindictive”. Too many are imprisoned, sent to jails in faraway states. My best effort at a translation and summary of this calm tutorial over a bowl of fresh, chopped strawberries would go: Peace is alright, but where is the peace dividend? Things are better, people are appreciating peace and illusions about Pakistan are over. But take nothing for granted.

A lot of what he talks about is history, the many twists and turns over the decades since he began his public life as a subaltern to his father. Approaching 87, he is, after all, the senior most, oldest (and yet among the most energetic and passionate) political figures in India. That passion speaks out when we return to Article 370. “They say that after abrogation, we Kashmiris have become Indians. Are you telling me we weren’t Indians before?”

Another Kashmiri political veteran who should be writing a sizzling memoir, though from an ideology you wouldn’t expect to find here, is Mohammed Yousuf Tarigami. He has kept the flag of the CPI(M) aloft in the state for many years, winning elections to the state Assembly often.

Spend an hour with him and he will tell you of the many attempts on his life, including one where nine people next to him were killed. And of one of his several incarcerations, where the jailer summoned him one day to say he was being given parole, though he hadn’t asked for it. The reason was that his wife had died delivering their first child. He married again, but later his father-in-law was killed as well. Never short of courage, the comrade, at 77, acknowledges the improvements, the respect for law being the most important. The government, however, needs to move on, he says. From the mode of “managing” to that of “engaging”.

You want to know what courage is? It has to be physical as well as moral and philosophical. He will call out the entire Left-liberal community that still blames then governor Jagmohan for triggering, even sponsoring, the plight and flight of the Kashmiri Pandits. “I have never said so, and never will. They were driven out by the militants,” he says, and reels off the names of prominent Pandits killed, the biggest massacres and atrocities.

Tarigami, too, lives in a fortress like the other key leaders.

(Part-2 of this WritingsOnTheWall will be published on Monday)

By special arrangement with ThePrint