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Defining
the Kashmir issue
Dasu
Krishnamoorty
The
gains that followed the electoral coup in Kashmir have received
further succour from Deputy Prime Minister L.K.Advani’s fresh
initiative for a dialogue, not just between Delhi and Srinagar but
with all sides interested in peace in the valley and its speedy
development. The talks will be with all elected representatives and others
to resolve the crisis. Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed lost no
time in positively responding to Advani’s invitation. This is
evidence of a hitherto unknown pragmatism that the new coalition has
brought to the resolution of what is loosely known as the Kashmir
problem, a result certainly of the People’s democratic Party’s
alliance with the age-old Congress Party. Despite the demands of the
gallery, Sonia Gandhi too has striven to purge her party’s ranks
of populist rhetoric and response.
However,
it is not easy to first mobilize all sides to the dispute for
parleys and second to accomplish an agreement. The first obstacle in
the process is the absence of a definition of what constitutes the
Kashmir problem. The second is the identification of legitimate
participants in the dialogue. The immediate candidates are the
federal government in Delhi and the coalition in Srinagar. But who
constitute the ‘others’?
According to Advani, they do not include Pakistan’s proxies or
those who reflected its voice. This rider eliminates a large section
of the political spectrum in the valley and, according to media
speculation, the separatist umbrella outfit the Hurriyat Conference
also. Naturally, the Hurriyat insists that the talks should be held
with it as the representative of ‘a sentiment existing in the
State.’ This makes for comical reading, as comical as its former
chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq’s statement that the present
government had been elected only for governance and that it had no
mandate for taking any decision on the future of the State.
Mirwaiz
also wants that there should first be an India-Pakistan dialogue to
facilitate which the Hurriyat is ready to suspend its plans to go to
Pakistan. This is an attitude that hardly helps the present efforts
to depoliticize the process to restore normalcy in the valley.
Advani is set against any dialogue with Pakistan and thinks that the
Hurriyat plans to go to Pakistan do not make any sense. “We will
not talk to Pakistan till they dismantle their terrorist
infrastructure and stop cross-border terrorism.”
According to him, the epicenter of terrorism has now shifted
from Afghanistan to Pakistan and the real issue is terrorism and not
Jammu and Kashmir. The dialogue, at this rate, is bound to run into
rough weather, considering the divergence of opinion on what is the
real issue.
The
dialogue itself is without an agenda, except a vague reference to
finding a political solution to the Kashmir problem.
This is a problem that eludes clear definition. What is it
about? Terrorism? Border Security? Development? What agenda is
acceptable to whom will pose problems. The Hurriyat has boycotted
the elections and amusingly dismisses the credentials of an elected
government to speak on behalf
of the people of Kashmir. Even while asking the Kashmiri pandits to
return to the valley, it does not refer to the need to invite the
pandits for talks. Without the participation of the pandits it is
difficult to accord any representative status to the dialogue
set-up. The Hurriyat shuns the participation of the coalition and
Delhi does not favour the inclusion of the Hurriyat among the
invitees.
But
the greatest hurdle to the proposed dialogue is the demand of some
sections to involve Pakistan in the talks. It is time the media
understand that the relevance of Pakistan to any dialogue, as and
when it takes place, arises for negative reasons only: funding and
engineering cross-border terrorism and the Line of Control issue.
Pakistan or any of its proxies have no place in a dialogue that
concerns matters purely internal to Jammu and Kashmir. The dialogue
that Advani has offered and appropriately welcomed by Mufti Mohammed
Sayeed should be about developing Kashmir’s economy, about
autonomy to each of the three regions, about restoring peace, about
political reconciliation and consensus. It is not the business of
any political party in Kashmir to pontificate on what should be
Indo-Pak relations.
Bilateral
relations are a totally different issue, distinct from Center-State
relations. There is a deliberate attempt to blur the line between
the Kashmir problem and Indo-Pak discord. There is some logic in the
Hurriyat inviting itself to the dialogue offered by Advani but
little in its insistence on Indo-Pak parleys on Kashmir on the
ground that there is tension in South Asia around the Kashmir issue.
The Hurriyat cannot be a party to the Delhi-Srinagar talks unless it
gives up the untenable demand for talks with Pakistan. By such
shortsightedness, it is only confirming the fear that it is a proxy
for Pakistan. Whether it is wise for Delhi to take a hard stand on
re-opening the door for negotiations with Pakistan is another matter
that should concern Delhi and Islamabad. It is a foreign policy
matter in which the Hurriyat or any other party in Kashmir has no
locus standi.
Other
parties in the valley also responded to the dialogue idea in various
ways. The Hizb-ul-Mujahideen declared that it will continue its
attacks with full force in Kashmir and will continue jihad. Hizb
also demands that India should start talks with the “real
representatives” of Kashmir for any peace effort to succeed. But
the National Conference, symbol of dynastic rule, sees in the
dialogue plan an attempt to change J&K’s Muslim majority
character. There cannot be a clearer evidence of religious angle to
the Kashmir problem than this stance of the National Conference.
Separatist leader Shabir Shah wants the Hurriyat to represent the
unified voice of the Kashmiri aspirations by reconstituting itself
as the Jammu and Kashmir Hurriyat Conference. These cosmetic changes
do not change the real agenda of the Hurriyat.
In any
Indo-Pak discourse the Kashmir angle is limited by the effects of
Pak-sponsored terrorism that is at once a border issue as well as
one concerning internal security. This is where the international
community has failed to stand by India and gone back on its
commitment to get Pakistan end cross-border terrorism and dismantle
terrorist training camps. The number of foreign militants sneaking
into India has increased. They now constitute three-fourths of the
number of militants. Delhi
is ready to re-open talks if Pakistan shows some gesture to
appreciate Delhi’s decision to withdraw troops from the border. On
the other hand, the Jamali government in Pakistan has declared that
there would not be any change in its Kashmir policy because it was a
state and not government policy.
The choice
for both Delhi and Srinagar is between precisely defining the
Kashmir problem and then proceed to negotiate it or come to an
agreement on the agenda that should inform the dialogue. If both are
convinced that throwing the dialogue open to anyone who desires to
participate in it, that scenario can be tested as a prelude to
political reconciliation. It must be made clear that the talks are
about peace and development and therefore have no room for demands
for secession, autonomy or independence and that they are between
the federal government in India and political outfits in Jammu and
Kashmir for the economic and political rehabilitation of the State.
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