What’s Ailing Kashmir? Lalit K Kaul It is criminal parenthood. Yes, the last thirty years can be likened to a situation where a parent agrees to put his children on the chopping block in exchange for assured grand lifestyles. The local Kashmiri Muslim (couldn’t have been a Hindu) leadership (of two kinds: mainstream and separatists) in the valley bargained with the lives of gullible Kashmiris for their (mainstream) assured grip over the highest chair in the erstwhile state and the other kind (separatists) for assured incomes and protection from both sides of the divide. It has been an amazing transformation from being a fun loving Kashmiri to a thoroughly indoctrinated, like a well programmed robot, venom spewing inhuman and thoroughly communalized one. Indeed from being an individual who would run at the site of a CRPF cop (may be throw a few stones from a distance that would fall well short of target) to the one shouldering AK47 out to kill anybody (on orders), is a remarkabl...