Two years after Atal Behari Vajpayee first put the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service on the negotiating table, the decision announced by the foreign ministers of Pakistan and India in Islamabad, to start the service by April 7, has come almost as an anticlimax. By the time the Indian and Pakistani Foreign Offices had got past each others' reservations on the issue, most of the euphoria that it had generated in Kashmir, and to a lesser extent in India and Pakistan, had evaporated.
Nor has it met with universal approval. The bjp has criticised the government for accepting Pakistan's condition that passports would not be used by the Kashmiris wishing to cross the Line of Control. At the other end of the political spectrum, former Hurriyat chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani has remained true to form and advised Kashmiris not to celebrate till 'Kashmir is resolved in its right historical perspective'.
But one has only to witness the strength of the reaction in Kashmir—the bursting of firecrackers by some, and the painful refusal to let themselves harbour hope by others—to realise that this is easily the most important single step towards peace that India and Pakistan have taken in the past 50 years.
At first sight, there is little to account for the joy in Srinagar. The bus service will not make any difference to Kashmir's economy, for it is intended to carry only passengers, and not goods. Even if that was to commence at a later date, the vast bulk of Kashmiri imports and exports would still flow to and from India.
Nor will its humanitarian impact be as great as some newspaper reports have led one to believe. This is because at the Uri gorge, in contrast to elsewhere in Jammu and Kashmir, the LoC falls almost exactly on one of the many ethnic fault lines of the old princely state. The people of the Valley have a different racial origin, speak a different language and have a different music, literature, poetry and cuisine from those of the Jhelum Valley in Pakistani Kashmir. Thus, except around the LoC itself, there are relatively few divided families in this region.
The importance of the bus service lies in what it symbolises. Kashmiris see this as the first step towards undoing the damage Kashmir suffered from Partition. The war, and the ceasefire that followed, truncated the state and took away the freedom Kashmiris had enjoyed to travel to, trade with, and live in any part of the subcontinent. The unresolved status of the dispute, Pakistan's incessant attempt to use religion to sow disaffection in the Kashmir Valley, its repeated attempts to seize the Valley through military action, and India's response to these efforts, all led to the denial of democracy by both governments to the people of both parts of Kashmir.
In sum, while Independence brought freedom to the rest of India, it brought a new form of paternalism, masquerading as democracy and nominal independence to the two parts of Kashmir. While Independence empowered the people of India and Pakistan, it disempowered the people of Kashmir. In J&K, this did not matter at first because Independence ended the rule of the maharaja and ushered in the rule of the vastly popular National Conference under Sheikh Abdullah. But over the years, Kashmiris received periodic reminders of their disempowerment through the imprisonment of Sheikh Abdullah, the rigging of elections, and the toppling of elected governments. The last of these, when Farooq Abdullah's government was toppled in 1984 after being elected in one of the few completely free elections that Kashmiris witnessed, sowed the seeds of insurgency that broke out five years later.
The long, nightmarish descent into violence that followed, and Pakistan's refusal to let insurgency die a natural death finally brought home to the Kashmiris the full extent of their disempowerment. As a result, for more than a decade, the leaders of the insurgency have been saying that Kashmir will never know true freedom and peace, not to mention development and prosperity, till Pakistan and India stop fighting over it. To them, the decision of the two governments to restart the bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad is the first tangible proof that they are actively seeking a peaceful settlement.
But the bus service signifies much more than that. It opens the door for Kashmiris from both sides of the LoC to meet each other and discuss their common concerns. Chief among these is their future relationship with each other and with Pakistan and India. In sum, after half a century, the resumption of the bus service bids fair to become their portal to empowerment.
Empowerment does not mean independence. While independence for a unified Kashmir is still the nominal goal of the JKLF, nationalists on both sides of the LoC understand that they cannot expect either Pakistan or India to accept a solution that harms their vital interests. But this still leaves open a wide range of possibilities. Empowerment means that Kashmiris will get an opportunity to contribute to finding the final solution in light of their own interests and aspirations. Their involvement in the dialogue, in whatever manner it takes place, will actually make it easier for India and Pakistan to find common ground. For, concessions that either government finds difficult to make to the other may become more palatable if they are seen as being made to the Kashmiris.