Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah does have a point when he says that the shelling by Pakistan of civilian areas on the Indian side in the Arnia sector in R.S. Pura, some 45 km from Jammu, is a sign of Islamabad’s frustration. Five civilians have been killed and 34 others injured in the blatantly callous ceasefire violation, obviously intended to create panic among Indian citizens. The return fire by Indian forces has led to four fatalities on the Pakistan side, Islamabad has claimed. This claim is unverifiable, and there is a strong likelihood of it being false. If Pakistani troops began firing from inhabited areas on their side, Pakistani civilians may have suffered in the retaliatory fire, but it is unlikely Pakistani troops would have chosen populated pockets to fire from. In that event, the Pakistan government has simply cooked up its claim.
The point, however, is that continuing calculated aggression for a long period assumes a special character this time. Pakistan chose the eve of the Islamic festival of Id-ul-Zuha on Sunday night, overlooking the solemnity of the occasion, on which to launch its shelling, and kept up the attack for a full eight hours. It attacked across the international border and the Line of Control. There are implied suggestions in these actions that aggression is likely to be sustained. And this is where the story goes beyond the “frustration” that the J&K chief minister speaks of. The direction post-flood politics in Kashmir has taken for a variety of reasons appears tilted in favour of the separatist groups for now, and Islamabad could seek to take advantage of such a situation by pressing its case through orchestrated violence in the Kashmir Valley at present in the hope of seeking trouble escalate between the people and the Indian state.The Indian authorities need to be alive to such a danger. New Delhi’s reaction has been strong, with defence minister Arun Jaitley condemning the ceasefire violation.
Presumably, India reacted at the ministerial level as Pakistan targeted civilians to show its bellicose intentions. Home minister Rajnath Singh, however, appeared to take needless recourse to party politics when he said that the reality “had changed” in India, implying that the BJP government had come to power and that India would not fail to respond adequately to any Pakistani provocation. The fact is that India has always given back as good as it got, except when it did not open hostilities following the attack on Mumbai in 2008, which was then the sensible thing to do. All signs are that in Pakistan the military has gained leverage over the civilian government led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and the Kashmir equation will be kept hot.
