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Subcontinental Drift: The Final Straw
The slaughter of Sikhs takes Kashmir to the brink
By APARISIM GHOSH
March 23, 2000
Web posted at 2:30 p.m. Hong Kong time, 1:30 a.m. EST
I first heard the news from an anguished friend calling from Delhi: 36 unarmed Sikhs had been gunned down in cold blood by separatist guerrillas in Chati Singhpura, a previously placid village in the Kashmir Valley, 68 km from Srinagar. My friend, like many Indians, believes the attack was planned by Pakistan's intelligence services, which back the Kashmiri separatists. But this was not just another bloody episode in the always violent Valley. "This is another Jalianwala Bagh," he said. "You can stop writing about peace and mediation--now, war is inevitable."
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Subcontinental Drift: The Final Straw
The slaughter of Sikhs takes Kashmir to the brink
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History break: Jalianwala Bagh is a park in Amritsar where some 2,000 Indians--most of them Sikhs--were slaughtered by soldiers of the British colonial army on April 13, 1919. The massacre marked a turning point in India's struggle for self-rule: until then, many Indians might have been content with a high degree of autonomy under British rule; after Jalianwala, they would settle for nothing short of full independence.
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My Delhi friend believes Chati Singhpura is, similarly, a watershed in the Indo-Pakistani dispute over Kashmir, and that Indians (such as himself) who had clung to the hope of a peaceful resolution will now fall in line with those who have been demanding blood for blood, death for death. I fear he may be right. The tragedy would have brought Indian blood to boil in any circumstances, but its timing is especially explosive because of the residual jingoism from last summer's conflict in Kargil. The death of hundreds of Indian soldiers whipped up nationalistic sentiment like no other time since the Indo-Pakistani war in 1971. Indians, opinion polls showed at the time, were ripe and ready for another war. Those who died in Kargil were soldiers, and in the eyes of many Indians, their deaths were justified by victory: the recovery of lost territory brought the incident to a close, allowing it to pass into Indian history books (and into advertising campaigns for shoes and soda) as a glorious chapter. The massacre of innocents in Chati Singhpura, on the other hand, defies a closure in the conventional sense. It will likely turn into a festering sore on the Indian psyche, demanding the balm of Pakistani blood. It may not make war inevitable, but it will certainly make war a more palatable--even desirable--option to the average Indian. Watch very closely how New Delhi and Islamabad handle this supercharged atmosphere. It will take statemanship of superheroic proportions to pull the two South Asian rivals from the brink now. Sadly, statesmen are in short supply on the subcontinent.
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