It has now been more than three weeks since the advent of the braid chopping in Kashmir. And as of now there is little indication that the phenomenon is going to die down. On the contrary, the number of incidents seem to be growing. More and more women across the Valley are reporting their hair being chopped off in circumstances that seem both mysterious and easy to understand. The victims have variously come up with explanations that point to ghostly visitations and sometimes a deliberate attack by a flesh and blood person. But such explanations have done little to lift the veil on the deepening mystery which travelled to Jammu and Kashmir from the Northern India where hundreds of the similar cases have remained unresolved.
But in the Valley, the phenomenon has run into the prevailing political turmoil. The Valley’s long troubled political context has lent new meanings to the phenomenon. People largely tend to see the development in terms of the state versus people. Unlike other parts of India, people in Kashmir are inclined to see the hand of the security agencies. Reinforcing this belief is that the alleged motives ascribed to the phenomenon seem credible under the circumstances. For example, people tend to believe the braid cutting attacks are an attempt by the government to shift the attention away from the militancy and its attendant discourse. There are other reasons too which are being bandied about, all of them assuming a degree of credence in the prevailing troubled situation.
It is here that the government has singularly failed to address the situation. It has so far given out conflicting signals by simultaneously announcing awards for the capture of the perpetrators, terming the incidents a deliberate attempt to trigger unrest and at the same sought to dismiss the phenomenon as a mass hysteria. This has deepened the mystery and in turn the suspicion of the people. What we need is for the government to explain the phenomenon to the people for what it is. If it is mass hysteria, people need to be convinced about it through a scientific explanation backed by the outcome of the investigation of the braid cutting incidents. And if there are real people or agencies behind the menace, they need to be identified and taken to task. Banning the internet and expecting the phenomenon to go away will achieve nothing. And even if it goes away the suspicion that the government was behind it will linger on and further deepen the distrust between the government and the people.
The government has a rare chance to work to restore some faith. And this it can do by helping people make sense of the bizarre state of affairs. And this can only happen when government backs its explanation of the braid cutting phenomenon by the credible facts and the understanding drawn from its investigators. And this is something that the government is not doing. The result is the ongoing chaos.
This article first appeared in the Kashmir Observer.