Calculated madness - The Observer
Editorial
()
January 28, 1998
Title: Calculated madness
Author: Editorial
Publication: The Observer
Date: January 28, 1998
The burst of gunfire that drowned the Ramzan prayers on Sunday
night in Wandhama village on the outskirts of Srinagar has
mischief written across it. That it was calculated to wipe out
the last four families of Kashmiri Pandits comprising 23 people,
including 10 women and four children, is obvious enough. But
there is a hidden agenda, too. And that is to provoke a
retaliation in the Hindu dominated Jammu region of the state and
elsewhere in the country. And if that succeeds in setting off a
cycle of communal blood-letting, the authors of the Wandhama
massacre and their sponsors across the international border would
be pleased no end.
But it is not just a random act of provocation either. The timing
suggests that it is meant to vitiate the atmosphere of the
ensuing general elections in the country generally and Kashmir in
particular. All the more reason, therefore, for the state to
make amends by defeating such nefarious designs. The ease with
which the terrorists had perpetrated Sunday's outrage speaks of
gaping holes in the security arrangements. This is
incomprehensible since the Farooq Abdullah government is avowedly
keen on the rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits who fled the state
in droves in the wake of the terror directed against their
persons and property. In the backdrop of this policy, the
security of the few Pandit families which had chosen to face the
terrorists' ire out of compulsion or misplaced bravado should
have received the state government's special attention. To its
everlasting shame, it did not.
The consequence is going to be a setback to achieving normalcy in
Kashmir. No Kashmiri migrant family is likely to contemplate
returning to its ancestral hearth and home in a hurry after this
tragic massacre. And claims of normalcy will lack substance so
long as the migrants keep away. Even if mounting statistics of
terrorists nabbed or killed attest to the success of the state's
counter-insurgency operations.
