KASHMIR is a place where few things — from marriages to festivals to elections — happen in the open because they always attract violence and leave behind a few people dead. However, there was nothing covert about the first bus trips in almost 60 years between Muzaffarabad and Srinagar in divided Kashmir on Thursday. As the “peace buses” moved along the mountain roads, they seemed to reflect the brightening hopes for a final settlement in this long and at times, seemingly intractable confrontation between two leading regional powers.
The governments of both India and Pakistan deserve the warmest congratulations for their wisdom, statesmanship and perseverance in bringing about this hopefully pivotal moment in the future of Kashmir. Undoubtedly however, the biggest praise must go to the 49 passengers who defied the threats of terrorists to take the historic bus ride. The dangers that they faced were all too clear following the vicious attack on their hostel in Srinagar the previous day. Even during the trip itself a grenade was tossed at one of the buses, injuring four bystanders including a policeman.
Their considerable courage ought to be highly instructive for the politicians on both sides as well as for the terrorists who imagined that they could force the abandonment of the trip. Why should ordinary people, not obviously brave, not trained to face danger as part of their daily lives, take such very great risks? The answer is fundamental to the analysis of the tragedy that is Kashmir. They wished to be reunited with family and loved ones from whom they have been separated for so very long. The impulse that propelled them to hazard the dangers of their journey was the very human tie of kinship. All the blood, all the invective and all the propaganda that has flowed across the bitter divide for so long counted for nothing when it came to the courageous decision of these people to link hands again with their kinsmen and women. Once the political positions of Islamabad and New Delhi had changed to make the journey possible, these individuals were determined to seize the opportunity and seize they did.
Would it be too much to hope that the terrorists who sought to wreck the historic moment are now thinking again about their dedication to the destruction of this first real bud of lasting peace? What gives them the right to thwart the will of families and friends, so long forced apart, to be reunited? Thursday was the day when the bigots suffered their most telling defeat, because the victory on that day went not to any of the security forces but to the little people who unarmed, deeply afraid yet utterly determined, made their historic peace ride.
What these ordinary folk achieved was to demonstrate the peaceable longings of the great majority of Kashmiris. Their courage will have given a huge surge of hope to others. A community that has been cowed and disfigured by mindless violence has been shown how the insurgents in their midst can be defied and their threats treated with contempt. It has been a stunning victory for peace — and a more stunning one for hope.
