Celebration in Kashmiri following Pakistan's win

 Reports of celebration of Pakistan's victory over India in the recently concluded T20 game in Kashmir didn't surprise me at all. We all have been there, seen this before. This is neither new, nor unique. 

The Kashmiri valley was never with us. During the West Indies 1983-84 tour of India, an One Day International held in Srinagar prematurely scrapped due to the crowd violence. It didn't go unnoticed in the teenager in me to see the crowd cheering wildly for every wicket India lost and every boundary hit by the Windies. Bottom line - the spectators hated India to the core.

Fast forward by 5 years. Rubiyya Saeed, daughter of a Cabinet from Kashmir was kidnapped by terrorists. The Central non-Congress government then well supported by BJP acquiesced by releasing some hardcore militants in exchange for the release of a VIP's daughter. This decision had its long unforeseen consequences, emboldening the terrorists and reinforcing the perception of India being a weak state.

Soon Violence took over the Valley. REC (Now NIT) Srinagar was closed Sine die and all the students from Odisha studying there were transferred to NIT, Rourkela. It included some of my childhood friends. We welcomed them with open arms to REC, Rourkela. Those brilliant brains lost a valuable year due to our Centeral government's indecisiveness and vacillation.

Our new NIT Srinagar immigrants brought us exciting anecdotes from Srinagar. Most of us in our upper teens with adrenaline rushing through our body and fickle minds ruled more by emotions than logic were battered by the events surrounding them. 

The Valley's antipathy towards India and sympathy for Pakistan was appalling. The locals in Kashmir valley hardly considered themselves as part of India, clearly seeing those from the Mainland India as outsiders. The environment inside the Engineering College Campus perpetually resembled a room filled with flammable gas. All it needed was to light a match stick, in form of celebration of a section of students post India's win or defeat in a game of Cricket or Hockey .

They narrated many interesting and harrowing stories. One of them Ashutosh Mallick, was taunted frequently "SALIM MALIK TO MUSALMAN HAI, TU KAISE HINDU BAN GAYA, "Salim Malik is Muslim, how come you are Hindu", pointing to his last name and referring to Salim Malik, a Pakistani Cricketer.

The students from the Srinagar Valley were mostly Muslims, who kept to themselves and were completely segregated from their Hindu and Sikh counterparts from Mainland India. Except few perfunctory interactions of exchanging academic notes and greetings on Eid and Diwali, there were hardly any interactions. 

Pakistan was seen as the Promised Land, the land of freedom & opportunity. When Zia Ul Haq died that fateful day in August, 1988 the mostly Muslims Kashmiris felt bereaved while the rest from Mainland India rejoiced in silence.

Nothing reflected the mental partition and the hiatus based on faith than cricket. The rooms of the Kashmiri Muslims adorned the pictures of Imran, Akram, Miandad and Salim Malik. In their common room, during Indo-Pak cricket encounters they used to sit segregated, with Kashmir Muslims grouped together vociferously cheering for Pakistan. Only Indian players who ever got occasional cheer from the predominantly Muslim Kashmir students were Azharuddin and Arshad Ayub. No prize for guessing why.

Unfortunately for the students from the Mainland, those days India used to lose often to their traditional rivals. Their hapless supporters had to bear the brunt of taunts from the Pakistani supporters from Srinagar. It's no surprise for the politicians from the Valley to sympathize with Pakistan, for they have correctly assessed the pulse of the locals.

I am sure this will ring a bell to my friends who studied in that institute a quarter of century ago. Kashmir is still very much a volatile problem - a political issue of extremely complex dimension, which in Engineering parlance is not a fluid dynamics equation which can be solved in minutes or overnight. It needs a political solution and we have a long way to go. More victories of Pakistan over India will lead to more celebrations in the Kashmir Valley. Don't think much will change during our lifetime.