A war of words has broken out among politicians from the mainland over the Kashmir issue just in time for the Gujarat elections. Kashmir is no stranger to being used as a pawn in politics being played out elsewhere in the country. Unfortunately, Prime Minister Modi and former Union Minister P Chidambaram have chosen to cross swords just when a delicate exercise is under way in the Kashmir valley; the first time that the Modi government has decided to break from the relentless security-led approach. But the appointment of an interlocutor is only the beginning of an attempt to unlock the Kashmir tangle. Three years of trying to strong-arm the Kashmiris may have temporarily depleted the ranks of the militants and dulled the appetite of the average Valley-ite to take to the streets. But there are several stark reminders of how the step-up in Army operations or of its chief’s tough talk has not been able to persuade the average Kashmiri to repose its faith in the Indian political system. The polling percentage in the Srinagar Lok Sabha election was below double digits while the government has avoided holding elections to the parliamentary seat held by the Chief Minister herself for fear of a repeat embarrassment. Pushed in a corner by their unyielding stand, the separatists will be hard placed to enter into talks after having earlier rebuffed Indian civil society’s attempts to reach out to them.The political mood in Kashmir can change with one stray comment from a high-level functionary in Delhi. If at this make-or-break juncture, when the Centre’s designated interlocutor’s first task will be to whittle away resistance because of three years of hardened attitudes, the attempt to use Kashmir to influence state-level politics elsewhere, whether in Gujarat or Karnataka, smacks of short-sightedness. This is the time for the actual stakeholders, the Kashmiris, to have a voice and be heard. That the Abdullahs held a large public interaction for the first time in 15 years should be welcomed. The demagogue-politicians in the mainland, meanwhile, need to take a breather.