With peace and bonhomie so much in the sub-continental air I hesitate to inject a gloomy note but feel unable to write this piece without doing so. Unable because while watching the Pakistani Prime Minister’s interview to the BBC, last week, I noticed that he said categorically that Pakistan had never sponsored terrorism or terrorist groups. What was happening in Kashmir, he said, was an indigenous movement to which Pakistan had only lent ‘‘moral support’’. He made this extraordinary statement on the very day that his government ordered Azhar Masood to stay out of Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir. Masood, among those released in exchange for IC-814 passengers, is Pakistani, a famous terrorist and openly backs violent movements in Kashmir. If the Pakistani government wanted to stop him he would be in jail and not out and about fomenting more violence. It is also no secret that terrorist groups working in Kashmir have their head offices in Islamabad so when Zafarullah Khan Jamali says that Pakistan has never sponsored terrorism who does he think he is fooling?If the current bonhomie is not to be dissipated, if there is not to be yet another round of failed talks, leaders in Delhi and Islamabad must first promise to tell no more lies. If Pakistan’s interlocutors have to stop lying about the terrorist groups spawned by their government our lot has to stop pretending that the only problem in Kashmir is cross-border terrorism.It is not, and for those who think it is may I remind you what happened. The Kashmir problem as we know it today was created by Indira and Rajiv Gandhi in the following way. Furious that the Congress Party lost the 1983 Assembly elections in Kashmir she dismissed Farooq Abdullah’s government within a year of it being formed thereby reminding the Kashmiri people that they would never be allowed real democracy. Farooq was popular in those days and people were angry at his dismissal but there was no violence and Rajiv could have rectified the mistake Mummy made by allowing free and fair elections in 1986.Instead, on the advice of the cabal of Doon School geniuses that filled his court, he forced the National Conference into a humiliating alliance thereby rubbing salt in wounds that were still open. Farooq’s popularity disappeared overnight and Kashmir’s popular will came to be represented by a bunch of Islamic fundamentalists who contested the 1987 election as the Muslim United Front. Farooq does not accept that he rigged the election so let us just say that extra-electoral efforts were made to ensure that MUF candidates did not get elected. It was after this that hotheads among them crossed the Line of Control (LoC) seeking arms training. The Pakistani government, at this point, may have genuinely lent only ‘‘moral support’’ because it was clearly taken by surprise when Mufti Mohammed Sayeed’s daughter was kidnapped in December 1989 and the violence really began. Only after this did moral support take the form of kalashnikovs and training. And, though it’s true that if Pakistan withdrew support to the terrorists it would be easier to end their depredations it is equally true that the average Kashmiri remains disenchanted with India.So, on both sides of the LOC we need to begin by confronting the truth if a fresh beginning is to be made. Then, political leaders on both sides should take steps to ensure that bureaucrats and military men stay out of making policy. Otherwise we can be sure there will not be peace for another fifty years. In the case of Pakistan’s Generals it is easy to understand why they cannot possibly have a vested interest in peace — their business is war — but our bureaucracy is almost as obstructive and for reasons that are much harder to explain.It’s not that they do not have national interest at heart or that they are not patriots to the man, just that our Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) is manned by mandarins who genuinely believe they know best and that they know everything. They also believe that the only solution in Kashmir is to do nothing at all except get world opinion to condemn Pakistan as a terrorist state.On more than one occasion I have heard senior MEA officials tell me that, ‘‘In Kashmir we should do nothing. Why should we do anything?’’ This is almost certainly what they tell every new minister that comes along and as they are supposed to be India’s best and brightest it is usually easy for them to intimidate politicians into toeing their line. Foreign policy, especially when Kashmir is involved, is complicated anyway so most MEA ministers allow the mandarins to make decisions that should only be made by politicians. The end result is that we remain embedded in a rut with no hope of forward movement.This situation has gone on so long now that on both sides of the border, among ordinary people, there is a kind of hopeless acceptance that peace will never come and that we will simply have to learn to live with perpetual hostilities. It is this that gets reflected in the belligerent statements we hear from fundamentalists on both sides. If we are ever going to move towards real peace the initiative for change will have to come from political leaders who are willing to change and willing to acknowledge past mistakes instead of lying about them.Write to tavleensingh@expressindia.com
