Dividing the Kashmir blame pie

The political establishment’s expected denunciation of Powell’s suggestion came as no surprise. But the kneejerk reaction of the entire political establishment only served as a reminder of how thoughtless our handling of Kashmir has been.

Certainly, Powell has no locus standi to suggest that India invite external observers, not because Kashmir is a purely internal matter, but because America’s own support for authoritarian regimes makes this demand more than a little disingenuous.

But then the Indian political establishment, from the right to the left, has no moral authority on the matter either.

During the nineties did any of our political parties, including the left, make a serious attempt to ensure that elections in Kashmir were free and fair? We may not want foreign observers, but is our political establishment willing to take on the burden of proving credibly that polls will be free and fair?

Will the Congress, the party that created the mess in Kashmir in the first place, do this? Will the National Conference, the beneficiary of election irregularities? Will the Left parties, whose positions amount to little more than statist nationalism, do this?

It is critical that elections in Kashmir not only be, but also are seen to be free and fair. I suspect that this time around New Delhi does not have too much incentive to rig the election. In the final analysis the National Conference is dispensable. The credibility India will achieve if a free election takes place will be immense. Even the BJP’s own standing as a party that can govern will be somewhat redeemed if they can pull of this feat. The introduction of voting machines might help the enterprise.

The real challenge is involving as many groups as possible and ensuring a moderately decent turnout. A decent turnout will, whether we like it or not, be seen by the world as an index of the extent to which Kashmiri’s remain disenchanted.

The government might act in insidious ways only if it suspects that the turnout will be sufficiently low to cast doubt on the whole enterprise. I doubt anyone can be certain at this point about the turnout in the Valley.

But it would be prudent if this government risked a low turnout rather than provided the world with images of securitymen hustling voters to the polling booth, as has happened in past elections.

Foreign observers or not, the presence of large numbers of credible monitors has the potential for increasing the turnout.

Our political establishment ought not to let a tired and disingenuous denunciation of Powell come in the way of thinking about a mechanism that can enhance the credibility of the election.

The RSS demand for trifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir has the potential for becoming a thorny and violent issue. It will be complacent on our part to dismiss the ramifications of this demand lightly. Trifurcation under present circumstances, without a road map of an overall settlement of the issue that involves Pakistan as well, is likely to be an act of folly. It will probably lead to a vicious cycle of violence. Does anyone seriously believe that Muslims in a small state of Jammu, most likely run by the BJP whose organisation is under the grips of the RSS, will not be the target of discrimination and revenge? The history of violence in Jammu has given the RSS the perfect opening it needs.

The likely result of trifurcation is either more ethnic cleansing from each of the constituent units that will repeat in smaller ways the tragedy of the Kashmiri Pandits. There is good reason to think that trifurcation will unleash a process that is more akin to the circumstances that prevail in the North East, where each group will take revenge in its state for what’s supposedly happening to their brethren in the neighbouring state.

But the real significance of the RSS demand is this: it suggests that there is now something of a political movement in Jammu that has the potential for creating immense trouble for any newly elected government in Jammu and Kashmir that the RSS does not, in some measure, find acceptable.

The threat of a substantial trifurcation agitation in the state is not insubstantial. At its most benign it can be used a pressure tactic to get any state government to give more attention and resources to Jammu, but it is difficult to imagine that such an agitation can be prevented from taking a communal hue and exacerbating already existing tensions in the state.

The BJP might, for the time being want to keep a lid on such an agitation, but if the government at the Centre changes hands, all bets will be off. Even with the most optimistic scenario for peace, Kashmir will remain fragile enough for two more years for the risks of an, additional tension point to be taken lightly.

All parties should learn a lesson from the fact that the trifurcation demand now has the potential for emerging with great force. Most of our Kashmir strategy can be described as such: maintain status quo. But one of the great lessons of the last few years is that devils rush in where angels fear to tread.

While the non-BJP parties engage in their ritual denunciations, the BJP and the RSS have actively hijacked almost every issue in Indian politics. They are thinking strategically, they have a base, and are at least on the issues, keeping the Congress and the Left on the back foot.

The trifurcation demand is a proactive political maneuver that yet has the potential, for good or for ill, of changing the terms of debate in Kashmir. The RSS is complicating matters by signaling that it will be a proactive participant in any negotiations over the State. Indeed, the tragedy of Kashmir is that the RSS may be, besides Pakistan, the only interlocutor in the current negotiations whose identity and views are clearly known and freely expressed.

The writer is Professor of Philosophy and of Law and Governance at JNU, New Delhi