The Clue To The Kashmir Jigsaw

The government has three options. The first is to continue to do nothing. The second, to relax its hard line on cross-border terrorism and talk to Gen Pervez Musharraf. The third is to initiate the promised but long-delayed talks with the leaders of the Hurriyat Conference.

Some believe that ‘doing nothing' is the course to follow. This ‘strategy' worked with the Kashmiri militants in the early '90s—the JKLF, the Al-Jehad, the Hizbullah and a score of other tanzeems. One by one, in 1994, they gave up the gun and turned to peaceful agitation to achieve their ends. Today only, the Hizbul Mujahideen is left, and it is deeply divided. A little more pressure, this argument runs, and the Hizbul too will crack.

They could not be more wrong. Relying solely on military might is the most dangerous of all the options the government faces. The events of 1994 cannot be repeated because the armed struggle in Kashmir is no longer being waged by the Kashmiris. The bulk of the guerrillas are Pakistanis, Afghans and Arabs, imbued with Islamic zealotry and well paid for their forays into Kashmir. There are an estimated 3,00,000 jehadis in Pakistan to draw upon, of whom between 80,000 and 1,00,000 have fought with the Taliban. The so-called military solution is therefore open-ended. It has no conclusion because control of the jehadis, however imperfect, vests in Pakistan. So until Pakistan is prepared to discuss a solution for Kashmir that India can live with, the war will continue.

This takes us to the second option—talking to Pakistan. Musharraf has been urging India to resume the dialogue ever since he took over. But even the most cursory appraisal shows that talks on Kashmir (as opposed to nuclear restraint and other issues) are not likely to go anywhere.

First, even if the Vajpayee government was prepared to talk without a prior halt in cross-border terrorism, it would still need tangible proof that Pakistan was capable of stopping it if the two sides began to make tangible progress towards a resolution of the dispute. But Musharraf has often said that he is incapable of stopping individual Pakistanis and others from taking up a jehad in Kashmir. What's more important, Pakistan has given absolutely no signal, either in public or private, that it is prepared to talk about the future of Kashmir within the framework of the Simla agreement. What is worse, in a bid to increase pressure on India, it is on the verge of allowing the guerrilla war in Kashmir to escalate to another infinitely more dangerous level. In an interview given to The Friday Times, Lahore, the chairman of the Muzaffarabad-based United Jehad Council, Mufti Jamil-ur-Rehman, claimed that the jehadis would soon be using surface-to-air missiles (he probably meant Stingers) against Indian aircraft in Kashmir. Stingers have not yet appeared, and it is possible that, faced with the likely consequences, Pakistan may have second thoughts. But what remains clear is that Islamabad's determination to get Kashmir out of Indian hands and into its own has not changed one jot. Until it does, talking to Pakistan will be a waste of time.

This leaves only the third option—talking to the Kashmiri militants. Given that Musharraf has neither the intention nor the capacity to soften his country's stand on Kashmir, what is exceedingly difficult to understand is why New Delhi has not taken advantage of the Kashmiri's acute disappointment at the breakdown of the peace talks with the Hizbul to start a dialogue with the Hurriyat. This was, after all, the main reason why it released the Hurriyat leaders from Jodhpur jail last May. Vajpayee's declaration in Parliament on August 7, that he was even prepared to explore solutions outside the Constitution in his talks with the Hizbul, cleared the last hurdle to such talks. Why then is New Delhi doing nothing?

The answer lies in Delhi's inability to decide whether it should treat the Hurriyat or the National Conference (NC) as the true representatives of Kashmiriyat. The dilemma is real; for not only will the supporters of the NC see talks with the Hurriyat as a betrayal but if these do not yield a solution that the Indian people can accept, New Delhi will have burnt its bridges for nothing. So far, New Delhi has been unable to nerve itself to take the risk. That is why it frittered away the golden opportunity provided by two years of peace after the 1996 state elections. It must not dither over this decision any longer.

There are very good reasons why, notwithstanding the presence in it of two avowed supporters of merger with Pakistan, the Hurriyat needs to be accepted as the true representatives of Kashmiriyat. These go all the way back to the imprisonment of Sheikh Abdullah in 1953. The decision of the NC to continue in office after that singularly foolish mistake tarnished its credentials as the representative of Kashmiriyat. The succession of rigged elections that followed compounded the damage. As a result, almost every nationalist belonging to succeeding generations of the Kashmiri muslim intelligentsia chose to go into opposition. Among these early pioneers were Maqbool Butt, Fazlul Haq Qureshi, Hashim Qureshi, Azam Inquilabi, Amanullah Khan and Sheikh Abdul Aziz (the leader of Al-Jehad recently released from jail). Had Kashmir not remained a permanent war zone between Pakistan and India, these budding politicians would in time have been absorbed into one or the other democratic opposition parties. But the disputed status of Kashmir and Pakistan's constant harping on the theme of Muslim brotherhood, made Delhi sign a Faustian pact with the by-then corrupt NC: New Delhi would look the other way while it rigged elections and used strong-arm tactics to stay in power. In return, it would keep Kashmir firmly in line. The fact that the challengers for the mantle of Kashmiriyat had romanticised Pakistan, and shouted pro-Pakistan slogans in he streets, made the task of spooking New Delhi all the easier.

The return of Sheikh Abdullah in 1975 restored the NC's legitimacy in the eyes of the Kashmiri people but by then the party had become old and creaky. The last thing its leaders wanted was to be ousted from their positions of influence and power by a new generation of Kashmiri nationalists. We will never know whether the Sheikh would have been able to attract this new generation into the NC, because he never made the attempt. Be that as it may, the Kashmiri nationalists remained alienated.

In the late '70s and early '80s, another generation of young Kashmiri nationalists took to the streets. This included Yaseen Malik, Javed Mir, Hamid Sheikh and Ashfaq Majid Wani, the future leaders of the JKLF.They too voiced Islamic and pro-Pakistan slogans and met the same fate at the hands of the NC as their elders had a decade earlier. This time New Delhi did not only look the other way but committed the second most serious mistake of its five-decade relationship with Kashmir. Following the murder of diplomat Ravindra Mhatre by some JKLF hotheads in England, in an act of pure revenge it hanged Maqbool Butt in 1984. By then Sheikh Abdullah was dead and the NC had no one who could rescue it from its guilt by association. The field was thus open for the emergence of new champions of Kashmiriyat.

Ironically, it was Rajiv Gandhi who gave India its last chance to reabsorb the forces of Kashmiriyat into the democratic polity in Kashmir. He did this by forcing the NC into a shotgun marriage with the Congress in 1987. This cleared the way for the formation of the Muslim United Front (MUF). Many have estimated that had the Abdullah government not gerrymandered the results, the MUF would have won at least 20 seats in the Valley. Had this happened, it would not have unseated the NC. But it would have paved the way for the emergence of another democratic party that could embody Kashmiri aspirations to political and cultural autonomy. But the NC probably did gerrymander the election results and then beat up the student leaders who had acted as election agents for the MUF. The tragedy that followed is still unfolding.
If New Delhi talks to the Hurriyat now, it will only be rejoining the threads that were sundered in 1987 when the MUF was cheated of not victory but the mere right to exist. This is the ‘guarantee' of autonomy that a large majority of the Kashmiris seek—a tacit admission that what New Delhi did and tolerated ever since 1953 was morally wrong. Promising them free and fair elections in the future is not a substitute for redressing the sins of the past.

The time is ripe for doing this, for many other reasons. The Kashmiri nationalists' romance with Pakistan is decisively over. Their leaders have been there and have learned the hard way that Pakistan is as hungry to acquire Kashmir as India is reluctant to part with it. They have experienced at first hand that country's drift into an Islamic fundamentalism that is Kashmiri Islam and therefore Kashmiriyat's mortal enemy. They are as eager to move into the future as Pakistan is unwilling to shed the past. Nothing demonstrates this more decisively than the fact that while the madrasas of the Jamaat-e-Islami in Kashmir have adopted the NCERT curriculum, a majority of the madrasas in Pakistan teach little else but the Quran and jehad.

In July and August, the prospect of peace and negotiations with Delhi brought all generations of Kashmiri nationalists together in an unprecedented burst of optimism and hope. The Hizbul, who were pariahs till then—feared, even admired by some, but not liked—were suddenly embraced. It was this drawing together that so greatly alarmed Pakistan. The government will undoubtedly run several risks in opening talks with the Hurriyat. The most important of these is that it will leave the safe confines of the familiar—the policy of fighting the jehadis and trying to clear the way for free and fair elections—for an open, uncharted sea in which the Hurriyat will to a large extent set the agenda. But it needs to weigh this risk against the possibility that the Hurriyat could serve as a bridge to Pakistan and enable the many Pakistanis who understand the need to compromise on Kashmir in order to find a solution from which all parties will benefit.This is a risk that India must take before Pakistan drifts much further down the road to Talibanisation and anarchy.