Men of letters have outstanding world views, but sometimes their views on the situation in the Valley are coloured by lack of practical appreciation of the ground reality. This could certainly be said of Meghnad Desai, thinker and analyst of no mean proportion, who has argued in a newspaper column recently “Kashmir needs patience to get right. A harder military approach will be urged. That has been tried since 1989. Time has come to try something different”.

He is entirely right in the broad concept he has outlined. No strategy can be static and no proxy conflict of this kind can ever be defeated by military means. I disagree, however, that India’s approach to the proxy conflict has so far only been militaristic or through the security prism and not from the angle of winning the support of the people. A brief recap is appropriate.

1994 and 1996 were political high water marks with the Joint Resolution of Parliament and the first elections after 1989, respectively. 1997 was the humanitarian landmark with the adoption of Operation Sadbhavana and the Supreme Court’s issue of guidelines to the army on operations under AFSPA.

2002 saw the adoption of the healing touch policy of the late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in conjunction with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s philosophical and humanitarian approach. 26/11 saw the re-adoption of a hard line by Pakistan, leading to the paralysis in the streets till 2010. 2011-13 saw the conscious calibration of the balance of hard and soft power through the Hearts Doctrine which created hope and attempted restoration of dignity to the conflict stricken people, incidentally by the army itself; a situation not politically exploited.

There was nothing militaristic about 2014-16 either; it was a situation of political uncertainty. No doubt violence increased, but not so dangerously until July 8, 2016, when Burhan Wani was killed and the current impasse came to be.

The recent attack on the Amarnath Yatra after 15 years of peace may actually prove to be another landmark in the history of J&K since 1989, demanding a pragmatic look at balance of hard and soft power. Some observations about the attack and its aftermath are pertinent. First, it could have been much worse, only providence saved the day although loss of even a single yatri to violence is unacceptable.

Second, the response within Kashmir and the rest of India seems different to what might have been expected. They must have been a major disappointment for proxy war sponsors across the LoC, who wish to create mayhem within India’s tenuous social fabric. The Valley did not witness any support from the people for this heinous act despite the commonly professed notion of hatred towards Indians and other faiths.

Third, the aftermath was sensitively handled by chief minister Mehbooba Mufti with her timely visit to victims and the injured; her statements were soothing and appropriate. The PM also stepped in as also the home minister, but with nothing jingoistic. The political opposition made a conscious effort at consensus, up to a point.

Lastly and most interestingly, growing impatience in the rest of India with the turbulent situation in the Valley and the broad tendency to be accusatory against a community did not translate into anything as negative as could have been.

Meghnad Desai is both right and wrong. While much more needs to be done to get the people back to the track of belief in themselves and India, the military’s role cannot be diminished. Success of soft power initiatives ultimately lies in the ability of the military to stave off the physical threats. The last time India diluted military presence without overseeing genuine peace, that space was occupied by terror groups.

We cannot afford it this time, after having learnt our lesson for the umpteenth time. That is the lesson from, for example, the Northern Ireland conflict. The Good Friday agreement could only be enabled in 1997 because the British army continued to hold the periphery even as economics, high quality governance and talking with the people began in earnest. That is ultimately what brought about a significant victory for the people and for the government.