J&K regime wrong to downplay IS flag-hoisting
Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah may have termed the episode of hoisting the Islamic State's flag by a bunch of people in Kashmir valley as an “act of some idiots”, but the incident cannot be downplayed in this cavalier fashion. Those who toasted the brutal terror outfit are not ‘idiots’ but a danger to peace and harmony and to India's sovereignty. Since they clearly share the mindset of the Islamic State, which has beheaded four people at last count and which is seeking to spread its tentacles in India through proxies, they cannot be dismissed as merely some misguided elements. If Mr Abdullah indeed believes that the incident was a “non-issue” over which the media has been “creating hype”, he is mistaken. The hoisting of the terror organisation's flag in the valley is not a minor law and order issue which can be resolved through arrests — and arrests alone. It is a sign of something more potent and dangerous, which is that there are elements in the State, even if small in number, that have been indoctrinated in the ways and means of the barbaric Islamic State. They have the potential to spread hatred and disharmony and violence amongst the uninitiated. The Chief Minister must remember that these early signs have to be met with decisiveness, else they can snowball into something catastrophic. We had seen in the mid-eighties how the separatists began first with so-called appeals to the Kashmiri Pandit community to quit the valley, then started to threaten them with dire consequences, and finally unleashed large-scale violence which led to thousands of members of the community to flee their homes and live as refugees in their own country. That situation has yet to be rectified. If only the political establishment of the State had read the early signals correctly, there would not have been the large-scale migration of Pandits from the valley, and there would not have been the consolidation of separatism in the State. leaders then, whether of the National Conference or the Jammu & Kashmir People's Democratic Party, took a soft line and allowed space to the separatists — and their handlers from across the borders — to flourish. We could well see a replay if the Jammu & Kashmir Government does not take a stern view of the hoisting of the Islamic State's flag. The difference will be that inaction will offer a foothold in the valley to an outfit which the world at large is battling against, and from which India faces imminent threat.
This is not the first time that such an incident has taken place in recent months. Earlier too, when a bunch of ‘idiots’ had done something similar, the State Government had been equally condescending, rounding up a few people and keeping them locked for a while. The Omar Abdullah regime simply refuses to acknowledge the larger design behind these acts. It's time such callousness comes to an end. Or, the country will pay a big price.