Tarushi Aswani 
Srinagar: On November 20, Union home minister Amit Shah claimed during a press conference that Jammu and Kashmir, among other areas, has witnessed a 70% decrease in violence over the past decade. He sought to attribute the decline in violence to government policies including the reading down of Article 370 and its seamless security measures with all the agencies purportedly working together since 2019.
However, on November 3, in the heart of J&K’s capital Srinagar, a woman was killed and 11 other civilians were injured after a grenade was lobbed at a bustling market near Lal Chowk. The city witnessed such an attack after three years. This took place a day after an encounter in the adjoining Khanyar locality.
On October 20, at least seven people were killed in a militant attack in Kashmir’s Ganderbal district near the strategic Z-Morh tunnel, one of the first such attacks on an major infrastructure project in J&K.
On September 19, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Srinagar, one of the focal points of his speech was to blame the Kashmiri Muslim political leaders for all the evils in the region. Barely four days before the visit, two separate encounters between militants and security forces broke out in Poonch and Kathua districts on September 15.
While Modi claimed that ‘terrorism was on its last leg’ in J&K, the reality on ground dwarfed his claims as the region is witnessing a resurgence of violence.
Unnatural nationalism
In the aftermath of the grenade attack in Srinagar, J&K’s Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha issued a stern warning – the culprits will have to pay a very heavy price. Inspector General (Kashmir Zone) V.K. Birdi, following the arrest of three suspected Lashkar-e-Taiba associates, said that the Srinagar attack was “done with the intent of disrupting normal life on the directions of their handlers in Pakistan”. The three LeT men arrested were all locals of Srinagar.
So far in 2024, more than 40 militancy related incidents have taken place in J&K. New militant groups are cropping up in the region. People’s Anti-Fascist Front, The Resistance Front and the Kashmir Tigers, who claimed responsibility for most of the recent deadly attacks in J&K emerged after the Modi dispensation took away J&K’s special status in 2019.
In Jammu, once a militancy-free region, armed forces are battling violence of such severity that Village Defence Guards (VDGs), comprising local armed volunteers, are being formed to guard human habitations. In early November, two civilians, also working as VDGs, were kidnapped and killed by suspected militants in Jammu’s Kishtwar district.
The spillover of militancy from Kashmir to Jammu holds important meaning for Sajad Lone, Handwara MLA and head of the Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Conference, which was a former ally of the saffron party.
Lone believes that after Article 370 was revoked and Kashmir was converted into a “garrisoned graveyard”, it has led to the alienation of people in J&K which has in turn led to a sense of resistance amid repressive laws.
“The law and order is in the hands of the BJP. Had there been such violence before, they would have gone to the rooftops and shouted that it is because of Article 370. But now that there is no 370, the state government is not in control and you (BJP) are in control of law and order, you better decide an answer for the people of India. Why is there so much of violence in a region whose so-called success story you’ve been selling?” Lone told The Wire.
Also read: In Fourth Militant Attack in a Week, Three Soldiers, Two Civilians Killed in Kashmir’s Gulmarg
Raison d’être
On October 20, at least seven people were killed by The Resistance Front militants in Kashmir’s Ganderbal. The attack happened days after J&K got its first elected government in more than 10 years. However, what is even more intriguing is that this attack unfolded near a strategic construction project, the Z-Morh tunnel, which is crucial for India’s efforts to secure and maintain all-weather connectivity to Ladakh, a region of high geopolitical significance, given its proximity to China.
This tunnel is a pivot for security forces’ rapid mobilisation and logistical support in a region where infrastructure challenges can significantly impair national security. For the Army, this 6.4-km tunnel is a strategic lifeline, enabling faster and more dependable movement of troops and supplies to Ladakh, where tensions with China remain a constant concern.
Lt General DS Hooda, the former chief of Jammu-based Northern Command, views these targets and new militant groups as a strategy to send a message to the Indian government. “Starting June this year, what we saw first in Jammu and then in Kashmir…it is not the local groups. This is because of the recent infiltrations that have happened, in both Jammu and Kashmir,” Hooda told The Wire.
The recent attacks, he says, do not point towards a rise but a change. “It would be correct to say that there is a change in pattern but not a rise in attacks,” he said.
Commenting on the recent grenade attack which shook Srinagar on November 3, Hooda observed that the attackers chose a vulnerable yet high-value target to “catch public attention”, to “show that militancy is alive” and to counter the government’s ‘normalcy’ narrative. “It is a battle of narratives as they say. Whichever narrative comes out stronger [wins],” Hooda told The Wire.
The Wire also asked Hooda about the sense of alienation and repression among Kashmiris after the reading down of Article 370. He responded that there was a need for greater outreach towards locals, not only in Kashmir, but in Jammu as well.
According to S.M. Sahai, a 1987-batch officer who was earlier in charge of intelligence in J&K, there is no “new wave” of militancy. He feels that some violent activities were bound to increase, particularly after elections. “Sometimes they get Islamic names to whip up radical elements, sometimes political names like TRF or PAFF to make it look political and not religious,” he said.
“Pakistan and its supported terror groups were never going to let go of their intentions in Kashmir. With security forces controlling the area, they are losing leverage in the overall geopolitical situation,” Sahai told The Wire. He also said that the huge turnout in the recent assembly elections would also have come as a disappointment for those invested in such activities.
Sahai claimed that the security forces had the situation in J&K under control. However, he added: “This time the terrorists who have come in are very well trained and are targeting the army mostly with the intent of creating a disproportionate psychological impact. It’s a matter of time before these groups are neutralised.”
Myopic Modi-fications
Amid a renewed sense of stress, anxiety and uncertainty of the danger that their own homeland might hold, Kashmiris are weary of the uneasy calm that winter winds bring with them. “We don’t know what to expect; we are just getting more used to self-censorship and being suspicious of every little change around us,” a local in Srinagar said,
For academic Dr Sheikh Showkat Hussain, the present phase of militancy in J&K is even murkier than its past. “Militancy or such movements thrive in a situation when there is a sense of depravity, sense of powerlessness in a segment of population, and the increasing militancy is an indicator of the same thing” Hussain said.
Hussain also remarked that tourism in the region was also being used to exaggerate the idea of normalcy, but was a false indicator of the same.
“Here, there is induced tourism – government employees get travel allowance once in five years. It was deliberately given to J&K to spike up the numbers of the tourists. But those were the tourists who were employees, not high investing tourists,” Hussain said.
Recently, the Union government extended the scheme, allowing central government employees to visit Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the northeast region on a two-year leave travel concession.
Such modifications in schemes and policies to peddle polarised narratives, Hussain feels, serve no purpose.
Hussain also said that there was a case of “upper ground militancy” in the form of political groups which supported it or justified it in the past.
“At least through them you could understand the nuances of militancy. But now that the whole upper part of it is banished, banned or put behind the bars, no one knows what is going on, and we can only sense the symbols or indications of it here and there. Explosions are taking place and people are getting targeted,” Hussain explained.