Opinion: Kashmir CM Mehbooba Mufti looks helpless, she should resign

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti should contemplate resigning her job for one simple reason — she has stopped giving hope to the average Kashmiri.

The middle ground in her state has collapsed right under her feet.

Her ceasefire olive branch was rejected. She lacks political command of her state which is reflected in a series of events which have rocked JK since 2016. Today, she looks helpless.

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The brutal killing of Shujaat Bukhari shows that people who talk about peace and themiddle ground will not be tolerated. The terrorists will gun them down even in the heart of Srinagar.

The brutal abduction and killing of Army officers and soldiers also show that rural areas in South and Central Kashmir have become very soft towards terrorists, which is making it easy for them to track down the movement of men on leave.

Shujaat Bukhari’s killing is living testimony that Mehbooba has failed to protect the middle ground.

The violence itself is not new but its repetition in its current avatar is far more morbid. The people participating in this militancy have not been not indoctrinated in madrasas under theguidance of a maulvi from across the border. A majority of them are pass outs from English medium schools in the Valley. Their radicalisation took place in cyberspace.

A lack of hope married with Islamist imagery of martyrdom has propelled young students to become both underground and overground activists.

Mehbooba Mufti’s own home ground, South Kashmir, has become the epicentre of terrorism in J&K. Her political constituency has melted away and turned into a support base for militants operating from her "erstwhile" stronghold.

She has also not shown the courage to admit her alliance with the BJP was unacceptable to her support base.

The fact that she went in for the alliance instigated many in the valley.

It also sent out the signal that the BJP had come to power in the Valley via the back door. It was akin to National Conference and the Congress joining hands during Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure and then rigging the elections, which led to full-blown insurgency in the Valley.

The average Kashmiri is also offended by the caustic hyper-nationalistic media discourse in which he is asked to choose a side on a daily basis. The media fails to understand that that the average Kashmiri will take his own side and the more they push them to take theirs, the farther away they will push the average Kashmiri.

Despite knowing the harmful impact of the discourse, BJP has chosen not the address the concerns as it suits is hyper-nationalistic position in the hinterland.

For this reason, the BJP-supported government is aprisoner of its own politics. Even if it wants to be accommodative, it runs the risk of being seen as weak and similar to theprevious dispensation.

The politics of "national vs anti-national" has also met its political limit in Srinagar where the entire population is being painted as subversive.

The bottom line is that the BJP at the Centre needs to acknowledge that Kashmir has never been normal. It has only been managed by political dispensations.

Earlier, talks allowed normalcy to prevail but by systematically pushing out the "compromised" civil society, the BJP does not know whom to talk to today.

The irony is that there is no one left whom the BJP can talk to for the people do not wish to engage with the BJP. The problem also stemsfrom the alliance itself — it does not have the trust of the people.

The BJP also does not have the political elbow room needed to engage Pakistan whichwill ultimately have to be done.

All across the globe, the worst enemies have found amiddle ground to resolve their differences on but the BJP has failed miserably to do so because, again, it cannot run the risk of looking weak.

Whether it is stone pelting or the gunning down of innocent men, the middle ground in Kashmir has collapsed under the weight of the PDP-BJP alliance.

The current situation reminds me of Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

His critics called him soft on militants. He was not. He was politically ambitious.

He understood that there is no way but to connect with the people of JK irrespective of the fact whether the other side responded or not.

The chest-thumping supporters of Prime Minister Modi should understand this.

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZMCL)