The mind of an insurgent

The JKLF stands for the total independence of the whole of Jammu and Kashmir and this includes PoK.... Kashmir is not a territorial dispute, it is not an issue of borders but the future of people, their aspirations. We are not animals.

Yaseen Malik, Times of India, June 16, 2000

IN the context of the current hot political exchanges on the issue of autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir, Aditya Sinha's Death of Dreams: A Terrorist's Tale arrives as a pertinent reminder that the longstanding fester of the Jammu and Kashmir problem can have no easy solution. The outward eruptions of this cankerous malaise keep changing complexion and it is for the astute to detect and record these mutations. Sinha chronicles a couple of such changes that took place in the 1990's: first, the growth and then, the subsequent puncturing of terrorism due to the "death of dreams".

Sinha's attempt to analyse the insurgency in the fractious northern State is one of the rare attempts in the English language to present the terrorist's point of view. Much in the tradition of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, in which a murderer's perspective has been presented with dispassionate authenticity, the author makes an unbiased entry into the mind of the insurgent. He mounts journalistic detail with a creative fabric that manages to hold its own for the reader's attention. He follows the political meanderings and faux pas of Sheikh Abdullah, who first taught the Kashmiris to dream and then went on to become the first instrument of setting these very dreams on fire. Supplying exact dates, he traces the history of militancy and the birth of a terrorist and precisely culls out the common thread in all terrorist activity by drawing parallels between the idea of Khalistan and a free Kashmir. In so doing, he is able to establish the growth of fundamentalism and communal hatred on the basis of religious differences in the once idyllic valley.

Sinha attempts a probe into the philosophy and psychology of terrorism by intelligently pitching it against the framework of Indo-Pak tensions, party differences and backroom politics. His painstaking footnotes are evidence of the immense research that he has put into establishing the genesis and the proliferation of militant groups which were, without exception, all at sea about their mission and ideology. His success lies in his ability to highlight latent tensions between pro-Pakistani and pro- independence groups by impartially weighing both critical and uncritical attitudes to Kashmir and the idea of Kashmiriyat.

Perceptively then, Sinha is able to zero in on the conclusion that the militancy was bound to fail because of a singular lack of direction and organisation. Sealing the case, he says:

Most of all, militants were indiscriminately recruited. Anybody who landed up, and looked strong and tall enough, became a militant. The MJF hierarchy did not know who was going across to Pakistan. It was an absolute mess.

Totally misdirected, he shrewdly points out, their purpose was defeated and ultimately lost in a process of splintering and "splitism" where settling personal differences became a lowly impetus. Thus, with no laudable focus, mere anarchy was let loose and increasing barbarism overtook the movement. This analysis allows the author to formulate and enunciate his attitude to the violence perpetrated by these terrorists when he refers to the abduction of two Swedish engineers as "the most infamous act of terrorism." In dealing with what he cannily identifies as "Partition's unfinished business," he seems to move to the succinct conclusion that "Kashmiri nationalism was clearly a mirage."

Obviously, these conclusions are partly due to the author's privilege of the knowledge of the outcome of these activities. This enables him with a calling attention omniscience that becomes the vehicle for the thesis of the book that terrorism cannot hold the key to the solution of the problem. Stylistically, he does this often by suspending the narrative to essay an analysis by anticipating events and developments with statements like "not knowing that theirs was destined to be one of the pivotal grouping in their insurgency".

But while this analysis becomes the prop for the drama of events, there are times when the author's "writerly" self intrudes in his misplaced desire to build up some kind of a literary ambience as in: "...when he went to Darra, Firdous found the arms bazaar to be pure Wild West." (my emphasis) Firdous, the militant protagonist, born and brought up in the womb of the Kashmir valley, is hardly likely to think of drawing a parallel between the arms bazaar at Darra and the "pure Wild West", though Sinha with his United States background certainly can. Similarly, the comment that "it was surreal", repeated many times over to cover various events and experiences including this arms bazaar, seems pretentious and forced.

At the end of what turns out to be quite an effortless read, Sinha winds up providing a fund of material for the historian, psychologist and the social and political scientist. But the signal achievement of the book is his sympathetic habitation of the militant's mind that goes a long way in providing an insight into the "other" perspective.

MEENAKSHI BHARAT

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