Whenever any member of India’s first family visits Kashmir, it is a major exercise for the hosts. This time, however, it showed as the heavyweights in the ruling coalition bunked the assembly, currently in session, to be seen around Rahul Gandhi. But that was just part of the high profile visit which, this time, had all the big daddys of Indian business following Rahul to Kashmir University and later to Taj Vivanta.
What was intriguing was the veil of security that was so thick and long that Rahul remained insulated from the larger Kashmir that lives beyond the official Srinagar. Though nobody in Kashmir would ever think of Rahul Gandhi getting into houses of the SCs and STs in J&K to have quick BPL lunches and dinners but the system in place at Kashmir University was shocking. While Rahul and his business tycoons were supposed to have a close door session in the concrete convocation hall, the security grid had pitched tents in such a way that it was looking horribly ugly, just to ensure that Rahul does not have an eye contact with persons not selected , mandated or permitted by the state that controls Kashmir.
Nobody in the country is ignorant about the happenings in Kashmir, both present and not so distant past. It does not exclude Rahul Baba. For a person who is tipped to be the next person in the Congress’s driving seat, it is more important to be willing to engage the people, especially youth. Heavens would not fall if there would be a few “odd” questions beyond business, may be not on politics but on political economy, on corruption and on governance. Students could have asked him about a common man’s baggage triggered by inflation and fuel price hike, if not the white man’s baggage that has dogged this part of the subcontinent. University authorities, apparently on directions of the government, had created an exclusivist gathering comprising mainly of ‘neutral’ boys and girls and even faculty. It happens in no university in India.
There is no harm if Rahul and Omar, otherwise very good friends, will try to follow the foot-steps of their fathers and grandparents. It is their choice of how they will upgrade and refine the relationship in the backdrop of a gory history. Let them decide how their bonhomie will transform their partnership in power, both in Srinagar and Delhi. But these men cannot and should not create exclusive systems to surround them. Democracy is an all inclusive idea where every head counts.
