This week, J&K government took two baby steps in the direction of restoring a routine in Kashmir that existed prior to the agitation.
One was the partial revocation of ban on short messaging service. Another was permitting Hurriyat leader and cleric Mirwaiz Umar Farooq to resume the Friday prayers at Srinagar’s Jamia Masjid after keeping him away from the mosque for 15 consecutive weeks.
These obviously are welcome steps in a state that is passing through a state of emergency since June when brutal killings of civilians from Machil in Kupwara to Ghani Stadium in old city Srinagar triggered a massive unrest claiming more than 115 lives so far.
Over the past twenty years security and intelligence agencies in the state have been given a free hand in determining the quantum of accessibility to the various amenities meant for public. Communication has been the worst hit in these hegemonic manoeuvres that are now a well established part of security arsenal in valley. Mobile phone services started operating in J&K state much late compared to rest of India, the security establishment had serious reservations on its entry.
In its effort to ensure nothing happens anywhere, the state government overreacted. It took the security route to initiate an information blockade. It started with the ban on pre-paid mobile services last year and then the SMS. Gradually the ban was extended to the cable TV networks and finally to the newspapers at the peak of the crisis.
This was in addition to state’s actions on ground involving the commoners. The various so called security measures taken to curb the public unrest deeply hurt the collective psyche of Kashmiri society besides severely constraining certain domains of public life in valley. Confidence of the general populace in the institutions of governance had reached its nadir for the apathy these have shown towards the concerns of common man in the peak of 2010 crisis.
Now, the emergency-like situation created in the aftermath of June uprising has began to ease out, at least if one goes by the statements emanating from the corridors of power. The partial lifting of ban on SMS is a welcome step in the direction of restoring an atmosphere of trust.
Apart from looking inwards about how it bungled on pure policing issues and messed up things, the government would need to tackle the larger issues now. Hundreds of youth who are behind the bars must be set free. From civil liberty groups to interlocutors and politicians, almost everybody wants it done now. There is desperate need to permit the political activity of all the stakeholders.
