Yearning for Peace

The process of order making has divided humans on one pretext or the other. Modernity and post modernity eras have only experimented with it for legitimisation of domination. Advancement in science and technology have unleashed the new ways to control, punish, dominate, so severely and invisibly that people are willfully accepting the divisions and its rout. Race, region and religion are tailored in such a way that the huge profit making corporations use it in subtle way for domination and hegemony. We live in cursed geographies with vexatious histories.

Despite boom in informational technologies, the information transmitted is incomplete and coated with subjectivities on construed media discourses.  Middle East is on boil. October 7^th  is ensuing, when a year would go by to this unending conflict; the death toll of innocent people has risen to over fifty thousand with huge destruction and human sufferings. The worse has come with the weaponization of essential devices. The pager bombing has created a fresh panic in each one’s mind; how insecure we are everywhere? Ukraine has become a battlefield of graves and displacements.

The sudden upheaval in Bangladesh, instability in Pakistan and silent social fissures in our country in making and unmaking, do involve thinking. It is apparent. There might be conspiracy theories, but it holds no curiosity for masses. For, there are no ideals or referents but cults in making, who could hold the dignity and security of vulnerable people. The vitality of public institutions, technological capabilities and financial strength of a nation are the real factors that define peace and prosperity. The Arab Spring and subsequent developments in the world have taught lessons to the political elites.

Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act of October 2019 created a colossal break in the routine political and social discourse over the years in Kashmir. Since then, a lot of contemplation has occurred in the citizenry and the native leadership of Kashmir over the loss of years and ruin of social fabric.

The assertive state produced peace in the ‘dumb valley’ that forced the leadership and citizenry to rethink over the loss of lives, displacements, secretive affiliations and alienation and about the confinements and depression of youth. The wages for what, the new generation asks these questions? People had become clueless to understand the break in the routine. They felt betrayed by its ideal and referent that had engineered this upsurge. It has created a process of demystification of yesteryears. Engineer Rashid is the product of this contemplation.

Judging from his interactions and media interviews, he presents a significant and interesting sociological case study of making and unmaking of cults in politics. His transformation in his confinement at Tihar Jail that he perceives ‘a beautiful mini India’, perhaps has brought him to the present state of understanding. The time period since 2019 till date is an era of significance, where comparisons in individual sufferings, first time, is debated over publicly. Engineer Rashid has cleverly crafted it in his interviews and addresses.

The so called political elite club known as ‘Gupkar alliance’ of elite politicians, now parted in their coalition, stand derided in public scrutiny.   Engineer Rashid is more vociferous about his suffering, for being a non-elite, with rural background, he has created a distinct class of victimized leadership. His language is not sophisticated. It is natural, anger explicit against his former political companions, and non-aligning with any group. Without mincing words, he intends to tread the path of peace in’ bargain’.

His personal suffering, as he moderately and explicitly explains makes him one among those who languish in jails. His unpretentiousness in conduct and ire about written manifesto makes him to align with suffered masses. His geniality has made him person of crisis, a section of youth, which are affluent but deficient in status. They trust for his bargain for them.

In that sense, neither he is anti BJP nor pro BJP. He is now a rebel to his sufferings. NDA at the Centre on the other side perceives Gupkar alliance, as the bench of political individuals, future collaborators of the opposition alliance. It has a point to go  smiley  with the alternate possibilities.

There is no doubt that traditionally National Conference and Jamaat-e-Islami have cadres and structural base in the valley, where as BJP can claim to have it in Jammu region. The Congress, PDP and other parties are pieces in fragility. Jamat’s proximity with Engineer Rashid’s party is functional, for it realizes the possibility of relief to its desolation. A chunk of its youth either have perished or are in prisons. An outcome of its policies of nineties, its leadership earnestly have no answers to the suffered families, especially of rural regions.

Therefore, they seek inward politics a possibility, so that youth gets chance for their career building and the families find their dear ones back. It would be a departure from yesteryears, a manifested distance from Hurriyat. This is where Engineer Rashid and his allying contestants have a meeting point. It is  the real challenge to the established parties to frame the political discourse.  Kashmir politics has come to its full circle.

The present elections of  2024 are hugely participatory elections, after one witnessed in 1987. What then is the difference? The difference lies in the changed social and political contexts. In 1987, the inherent agenda of MUF was the cumulative expression of looking beyond boundaries. That time the rigging of the elections gave breather to the weak Centre for the governance. This time the fair elections would give public the respite for fresh bargain for peace and a chance to redeem their sufferings.

All the parties, this time look towards the inward politics for setting the agenda. It would be interesting whether a new cult politics of subaltern back ground is in offing or the old politics is recycled. The present dispensation has to its credit to churn the middle class with divided opinion on the contestants and their politics.

Prof. Ashok Kaul, retired Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Banaras Hindu University