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Stories are concocted and spun around to justify violence perpetrated by different actors in Kashmir. The guilty have always been shielded, sometimes through brazen lies and sometimes through outright denial. When the allegations are levelled against the security forces, the state comes to their rescue with a standard catch-line that going against them will dampen their morale. Similarly, when the fingers are pointed at the militants, their mentors waste no time in articulating the tactic of looking the other way in the larger “interests of the movement”, and the killers take the task of silencing the new voices implicating them.
As both sides have opted to safeguard the morale of their cadres, they are undermining the morale of the Kashmiri people in the process. Irrespective of how one might articulate the consequences of such an attitude, one can confer without fear of contradiction that the public anger and outrage and hence continued political turmoil here, to a large extent, is also the fallout of the persistent and systematic violation of people’s rights and calibrated denial of the same.
As both sides have opted to safeguard the morale of their cadres, they are undermining the morale of the Kashmiri people in the process. Irrespective of how one might articulate the consequences of such an attitude, one can confer without fear of contradiction that the public anger and outrage and hence continued political turmoil here, to a large extent, is also the fallout of the persistent and systematic violation of people’s rights and calibrated denial of the same.
