Separatists cannot dictate Kashmir agenda
While it is heartening to note that classical music maestro Zubin Mehta's Srinagar concert is still on track, despite opposition from Kashmiri separatists, the Governments in Jammu & Kashmir and at the Centre must continue to support the initiative. Since both regimes have a deplorable history of capitulating before anti-state elements, fears that the latter may have the last word in the run-up to the concert scheduled for September 7, are not without reason. Separatists and other anti-India voices cannot be allowed to hold the State hostage. For too long, they have basked in the illusion that they determine the Kashmir narrative. This is a good opportunity for the State to tell them in no uncertain terms that they cannot dictate terms.
There has been relative peace in Kashmir over the past couple of years, and a landmark event of this calibre could not have come at a better time. To be held in Srinagar's awe-inspiring Shalimar Bagh on the banks of the breath-taking Dal lake, this concert, aptly titled, Ehsaas-e-Kashmir, has been envisaged as a tribute to a region once described as ‘Heaven on Earth'. Mehta himself fell in love with the State back in the 70s and has since wished to perform here. Organised by the German Embassy, Ehsaas-e-Kashmir is expected to bring in several Western diplomats alongside Kashmir's top artists and performers. If successful, it will not only fulfil the maestro's dream but also go a long way in focussing international attention on the positives of Kashmir, long overshadowed by a bloody militant insurgency.
It is no wonder then that the separatists, desperate to keep their ‘Kashmir cause' alive, wish to scuttle the concert. Hardline Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani has argued that since Kashmir is “disputed territory”, an “international event” of this sort will “interfere with its status”. He has the support of Kashmir's Grand Mufti, while the supposedly moderate Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has expressed concern over the large amount of money being spent to host Mehta, the members of the Bavarian State Orchestra that he will be directing and other dignitaries. The separatists have, of course, received full-throated support from a handful of jholawallahs who claim Ehsaas-e-Kashmir legitimises “Indian occupation” of Kashmir. They have even gone so far as to compare the concert to the “horrific use” of art as propaganda material in Nazi Germany!
The absurd analogy has been deployed before. In September 2011, Kashmir's first literary festival, Harud, had to be aborted following threats from the same separatists on the similar charge that the festival was ‘propaganda material’ unleashed by the Indian state. But Harud has not been the only victim. During the 1983 ill-fated India-West Indies one-day international cricket match in Srinagar, the azadi brigade had dug up the pitch, jeered at Indian cricketers and waved Pakistani flags. Twenty-five years later, in May 2008, Hizb-ul Mujahideen had sought to derail a concert by popular Pakistani band, Junoon. Because the state did not succumb to the pressure of these anti-national elements, the Sufi peace concert was held in one of the world's most militarised zones. Authorities need to show a similar resolve this time around too.