Protesters perched on a truck head for Pampore on Saturday. (Reuters)

Pampore, Aug. 16: For the strife-ridden Valley, today’s was a mammoth and rousing show of force; for nonplussed New Delhi, it must have been a deeply unsettling one.

Tens of thousands of Kashmiris powered their way from all parts to this saffron-producing town 20 kilometres south of Srinagar this afternoon, crying “murder” by the security forces and crying freedom even louder. The day was spared any violence but it also rendered the separatists psychologically bolder. For the better part, the security forces were in conscious retreat; the green flags, and their belligerent bearers, had their way.

They had come to pay tributes to Hurriyat leader Sheikh Abdul Aziz who was shot dead leading an abortive attempt across the LoC near Uri last Monday and the best way, they resolved, was to intensify the burgeoning revolt for self-determination.

Next stop in this mounting struggle would be to internationalise the issue more than Pakistan has already tried to — a march on the UN Military Observer Group’s offices in uptown Srinagar on Monday. “Not a soul should stay home on Monday,” Hurriyat leader Moulvi Mirwaiz Farooq told the restive gathering, “We must take our message to the world. Stay calm and peaceful but stay united behind this struggle.”

Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who arrived late but confirmed that the two Hurriyats had lost little time in closing ranks to exploit the fervour, took the pitch of rhetoric higher, saying: “It is high time we Kashmiris are allowed to determine our destiny, self-determination is the only way. We have nothing against the people of India, but we are against the Indian state and leaders who have kept us crushed under their military might all these years. It is time for that to end.”

Geelani spoke from atop a vehicle marooned in the rally’s chaos at the Pampore Idgah; the makeshift podium had collapsed because too many had tried to climb it. Sensing the volatile mood of the crowd, Geelani too appealed against any resort to violence and assured that the “battle for legitimate rights of Kashmiris” will not be given up.

Applause isn’t the thing for this angry and hardening movement any more; it only signals approval with the “aazaadi!” cry. There was no shortage of that today in Pampore, indeed across the Valley. It is a call ringing louder and louder and has beaten the Amarnath row, the trigger of this trouble, well into irrelevance.

Speculation that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was about to unveil a fresh initiative to untangle the Amarnath knot was met with raffish disdain among the rallyists. “Can’t you see this is no longer about any of that? Can’t you see this movement has outstripped events and developed a momentum of its own? Even we are having problems keeping pace,” a Hurriyat leader shouted out in the clamour of “aazaadi!” slogans.

The two Hurriyats are meeting tomorrow to chart their future course of action amid signs that mass pressure is growing on them to announce another bid to cross the LoC. “This is no longer about Amarnath or selling our fruit,” said a protester from Sangrama in north Kashmir, “This is about breaching an artificial line that has divided Kashmiris for decades, this is about deciding our future ourselves.”

He had arrived at Pampore with dozens of others, unhindered. The administration, keen on preventing violence, had taken a conscious decision not to obstruct the rallyists or offer them any provocation. There were no barricades, no bandobust, the forces mostly stayed in barracks and looked on, even when the rallyists were screaming “Police, Army Go Back!” slogans in their faces.

But as one senior police officer said, the strategy to keep peace also meant that separatists had the free run of the Valley. The central avenues of Srinagar were streaked with convoys flying green flags and chanting secession. They were allowed that all the way to Pampore and back. “This has given them a new sense of victory which may become more difficult for us to contain,” the officer said, “Besides, and more importantly, it has eroded our authority in their eyes, the authority of the state itself. They are an emboldened lot, we are getting demoralised, we are in deployment with our hands tied.”

The silence, amid this rippling tumult, of the mainstream Valley parties like the National Conference and the PDP is perhaps an alarming indication that they have been upstaged from the Kashmiri centrestage by the fringe. “We were thinking in terms of elections, but this has blown in our faces like an explosion,” admitted a senior National Conference leader, “this could drag us to the days of 1989-90. The disturbing thing this time is that this is a totally spontaneous movement, back then, people were acting under the fear of the gun, there are no guns now.”

Struggling to keep a toehold in this sweep, PDP president Mehbooba Mufti has been forced to endorse the “Chalo Muzaffarabad!” line of the Hurriyat. But she may be fast getting outmanoeuvred by the contradictions in her own politics. As an ally of the UPA in New Delhi, she was compelled to attend the Independence Day celebrations in Srinagar yesterday, a fact that has earned her more adversaries in the Valley than she would like. “She has been exposed,” said a retired Kashmiri bureaucrat, “she is neither here nor there. She was party to the controversial decision on Amarnath, people can see through that. If she is still popular, why is she not able to lead the kind of rally that the Hurriyat did at Pampore, her own political base?”

Today’s rally was a shuddering sequel to yesterday’s Valley-wide “black day” protests which culminated in a frenzied throng posting a bouquet of green flags atop the clock town in Srinagar’s Lal Chowk. Their extended capture of Srinagar’s central avenues and square — the police were pushed into quiet retreat by the volatile crowd — reduced the official I-Day function at the Bakshi Stadium to a sanitised sideshow that mocked the mood of the Valley. There were no Tricolours flying here other than atop Raj Bhavan and the Bakshi Stadium; Srinagar was a sea of black, protesting India’s Independence Day, demanding its own.