National

The case of the dead cow

KULGAM: Late Friday night, dozens of villagers marched through Daniyo Kandi Marg village, protesting against a murder that has sent waves of anger coursing through the communities who live perched along the southern rim of the Pir Panjal mountains.

Daniyo Kandi Marg has had plenty to protest ever since the jihad began in Jammu and Kashmir almost two decades ago. Local residents have had occasion to be outraged by everything from harassment and killing of people by combatants, to the deaths of jihadists from the village in fighting with Indian troops.

But this protest was different: it concerned the mysterious death of a cow.

It all began a fortnight ago, when Lagopora hamlet resident Farooq Ahmed Malik had a quarrel with neighbours over his rights of access to their pastures. While the dispute wore on, Mr. Malik decided to take his cow to graze around a mountain-top encampment of the Army’s 9 Rashtriya Rifles, which guards several key passes across the Pir Panjal range.

For a few days, all went well. But then, soldiers told Mr. Malik that the camp’s perimeter — fenced off with concertina wire, and protected by machine guns — wasn’t an appropriate place for grazing cows. Afraid that terrorists might strap explosives on to the cow’s belly and use it to blow apart a picket, the troops ordered Mr. Malik to make sure they didn’t see his cow again.

On Friday night, Mr. Malik’s cow didn’t come home. It was found dead that night, its backbone broken by a hundred-foot fall into a ditch that runs just beyond the Rashtriya Rifles camp’s concertina wire rolls. While it was possible the cow fell into the ditch while being shooed away from the fence, or it simply slipped off the edge of the mountain, many locals feared something worse: murder.

Agitated villagers immediately petitioned the authorities to demand that the full weight of the law be used to investigate the killing. Among other things, Daniyo Kandi Marg residents wanted forensic tests carried out to determine the exact cause of the death. It wasn’t until local administrators pointed out that the all-Hindu troops at the post were unlikely to kill a cow did local tempers cool down.

For all its apparent facetiousness, the strange case of the dead cow at Daniyo Kandi Marg illustrates several important points about the changing political climate in Jammu and Kashmir. Just a few years ago, a protest of this kind would have been inconceivable: human death was too routine a part of everyday life to permit of such concern for livestock.

As important, the fact that the villagers felt able to mobilise on a local issue, however trivial it might appear to outsiders, demonstrates that democracy in the State is acquiring muscle. Local residents felt able to articulate their problems without fear of annoying either the authorities or the jihadists; officials were compelled to deal with the issue through discussions, rather than by force.

Friday’s protests also illustrate the complex relationship between mountain communities in the Pir Panjal and troops posted in the mountains.

On the one hand, the Army’s endless need for porters and construction workers provides jobs to the locals and thus pumps the badly-needed money into the local economy. Soldiers also provide local communities rudimentary health and veterinary care, along with emergency bad-weather supplies.

But there are also tensions between soldiers and villagers. Terrorists on the Pir Panjal also rely on local residents for supplies and transport; few see fit to deny assistance to armed jihadists. Soldiers in some areas have sought to pressure communities to provide information by stopping them from using illegal weapons to hunt predators; others, by using beatings and coercion.

When Jammu and Kashmir elects its new Legislative Assembly in October, all these factors are likely to play some role in shaping both voter turnout and the verdict. Most political leaders believe the near-total destruction of Islamist terror groups on the Pir Panjal, and the growing assertiveness of local residents, will drive record voter turnout — a dramatic break with the past.

In 2002, less than a quarter of the Kulgam Assembly constituency’s 66,128 registered voters felt safe enough to vote.

On an average, just 919 voters showed up at each of the 72 polling stations. None of this was surprising, given the spate of assassinations and bombings directed by jihadists at the eventual winner, Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Mohammad Yusuf Tarigami.

Mr. Malik’s dead cow marks a personal tragedy.

It could, however, also be the harbinger of a better future.

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