Two men from a local Rashtriya Rifles unit barged into a house in a small neighbourhood of Gurjjars in Kunan village. They were in plainclothes and carried a grenade. The family alleged that the two had asked the male members to leave and then attempted to rape their daughter. The family raised an alarm and, within minutes, the entire village encircled the house. The angry villagers overpowered the two armymen and started thrashing them. Their faces were then blackened and they were taken in a procession to Bandipore market. This is one of the first incidents since militancy began in Kashmir in 1990 of common people taking the law into their own hands. Interestingly, the villagers didn’t even mask their faces.

A few miles away, an interesting incident was taking place around the same time in another village. The villagers were returning to their homes after burying a local boy who had joined the militants recently and was killed in an encounter with the army. A group of separatist leaders from the moderate Hurriyat faction had come to join the funeral ceremony. But as soon as they started addressing the villagers, there were angry shouts from the crowd. The Hurriyat leaders were told to stop “doing business on dead bodies”. The incident indicated that this village, known for its separatist leanings, had transcended another fear.

The two incidents have no apparent connection but they clearly suggest that the silent majority, driven by desperation, is beginning to assert itself. This may well signify a shift in the Valley, where the situation is once again getting fraught. The UPA government at the Centre has not done anything tangible to sustain the tempo of the few confidence-building measures on the ground, like the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus or direct talks with Kashmiri separatist groups. As for Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, he is clearly feeling the pressure of losing out to the hawks and has started drifting towards hardline posturing as well. Meanwhile, the Peoples Conference leader, Sajjad Lone, has exploded something of a political bombshell by talking about the “opt out option” — making the district a unit for the internal reorganisation of the state. This new formula has come as a direct response to the demand for a separate state of Jammu, raised by the Jammu Mukti Morcha, a group which has the overt and covert support of the BJP and Congress. Lone’s salvo is popular in the Valley and other Muslim-dominated regions of the state where people constantly complain of discrimination in development projects and in getting administrative jobs.

In fact, the Centre’s dialogue process with Srinagar does not include a single separatist leader. The only direct measure the Centre has taken to push its peace process forward was to hold a few working group meetings. Not only was the political representation in these meetings inadequate, the government is being extremely tardy in implementing its recommendations.

The Centre’s manner of handling this process has added to this new disenchantment. A few months ago, when the PDP had threatened to walk out of the ruling J&K coalition, demanding troop withdrawal from the state, the Centre intervened and framed a high-level committee led by Defence Minister A.K. Antony to investigate the feasibility of a troop cut on the ground. But before the committee started its work and arrived at a conclusion, the defence minister publicly ruled out even a modest cut in troops. The unexpected intervention of J&K Governor, Lt Gen (retd) S.K. Sinha in the debate, did not help. He termed the PDP’s demand as “obnoxious”.

From all indications it does seem that the period of relative tranquillity that saw Kashmir move towards peace may well be coming to an end. It is a fact that the infiltration levels have come down to an all-time low — seen as a fall-out of the Indo-Pak peace process. However, the sudden increase in activity across the LoC and a spurt of violence in the frontier district of Kupwara suggests the Pakistan establishment seems to have turned on the tap again. The security agencies say that more than 200 militants have already entered Kupwara district alone, even as a dozen infiltration bids were foiled along the LoC in the districts of Kupwara and Baramulla recently.

Kashmir has entered a critical phase and if immediate measures are not taken to push the Indo-Pak peace process forward, with visible outcomes on the ground, there is every likelihood that the earlier atmosphere of hope will be soon be overtaken by renewed bloodshed.