The answers lie within

The NDA government has led itself into believing that in the context of the ‘global war on terrorism’, the US-led ‘internatio...

The NDA government has led itself into believing that in the context of the ‘global war on terrorism’, the US-led ‘international community’ will lean on Pakistan to end its sponsoring of terrorism in J&K — but only if we are seen to be friends of the West. The West is, of course, delighted to welcome us into their camp, but not at the expense of their strategic interests in Pakistan. And so long as Pakistan remains an even better friend of the West, and an even more important strategic partner, the most that India can realistically hope for is US restraint on Pakistan. Even that restraint comes at a price: restraint on India and growing international involvement in J&K. Such international involvement is to be welcomed if it is likely to secure for us what we cannot secure for ourselves. But others will secure for us what we cannot only if their objectives in J&K are the same as ours or, at a minimum, compatible with ours.

For such equivalence or compatibility, the West would have to accept the Indian view that J&K is an integral part of India; that there is in fact no dispute over Kashmir; that the only outstanding issue is the vacation of a third of the state illegitimately captured by Pakistan by force of arms. That, the West is unwilling to do. Indeed, President Clinton abused our hospitality to tell us in the Central Hall of Parliament — no less — that Kashmir is a ‘disputed area’, one among many others he cited. The ‘international community’ agrees with him. Hence the specific mention of Kashmir in the UN Security Council resolution of June 1998 condemning Pokharan-II and Chagai, the first such reference in a Security Council resolution since 1965. To expect the international community to be any more even-handed in 2002 than it was in the 17 years from 1948 to 1965, when J&K was a perennial on the UN agenda, would be to dangerously mislead ourselves. The West holds no answers for us. The answers lie within.

Fortunately, the West has no objection to our sorting out J&K on our own and between ourselves — if we can. Which is why they have gone along with both the Shimla Agreement of 1972 — which explicitly brought our differences with Pakistan over J&K out of the international and into the bilateral domain — as well as the Beg-Parthasarathy accord of 1975 which resolved for the remainder of Sheikh Abdullah’s life the domestic dimensions of the J&K issue. I was posted in Pakistan through much of this period and it was fascinating to discover how the domestic settlement in J&K stymied Pakistan on both the bilateral and international fronts. Even as the domestic settlement in Punjab has stymied the Pakistanis since the mid-’90s. The answers lie within.

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Tragically, there has been only failure across the entire spectrum of J&K’s domestic dimensions in the five years of the Farooq government in the state and the four years of the Vajpayee government at the Centre. The internal security situation has worsened to the point where families in an army cantonment can be attacked with impunity. Contrast this with the way terrorism in Punjab was determinedly pushed back over the ’80s to the sliver of territory running along the international boundary with Pakistan, and then ended altogether by the early ’90s. Even in Kashmir, internal security was strengthened to the point where elections could have been called as early as 1995 to position an elected state government to negotiate autonomy with the sky as the limit. Farooq Abdullah reneged on that 1995 commitment, but his five years since 1997 have seen only a worsening of the internal security situation and no progress towards the resolution of any of the constitutional issues he wished to sort out. Indeed, how can the National Conference expect an answer to the alleged ‘misuse’ of Article 370 from a prime minister whose party is committed to the dismantling of Article 370?

There has been only failure across the spectrum of J&K’s domestic dimensions in the five years of the Farooq government and four years of the Vajpayee government

As for the dissident elements, the opening to the Hurriyat and the Hizb have led nowhere notwithstanding Prime Minister Vajpayee’s incomprehensible offer to put aside the Constitution to discuss with them anything within the bounds of common humanity — ‘‘insaniyat ke dayere mein’’. Bad poetry does not make for good governance. And within the state, nothing has been done to bring back to Kashmir the Pandits and the other refugees who have fled the Valley. Worse still, Ayodhya and Gujarat have weakened those in J&K who prefer secular India to communal Pakistan. The longed-for reassertion of Kashmiriyat as the basis of the Kashmiri identity covering all the regions of the state has not occurred. Instead, disruptionist forces have been stoked who would dismantle Kashmiriyat by disintegrating the different regions of the state on the basis of religion and language.

On the economic front, the people of J&K are the first to assert that nothing has improved, nothing has changed. While development lags, corruption soars. Venality and economic oppression might have been reduced (or, at least, distributed more evenly!) if Farooq Abdullah had kept to his commitment of holding panchayat elections soon after being elected to the state government. Alas, he dragged his feet for years, announcing local bodies elections only to get them postponed and finally held them in his last year of office but in so blatantly unfair a manner as to leach the elected authority of legitimacy in the eyes of those who they have been elected to serve.

Unless and until we tackle the domestic dimensions of J&K, we cannot position ourselves to tackle the external dimensions. If without resolving the domestic dimensions, we hand over the external dimensions of J&K to the West to resolve, we are in danger of losing both J&K and our hard-won freedom.