Yearning For Peace

In these columns last week I had described why Pakistan, after having at least gone along with if not actually encouraged the Hizbul Mujahideen’s bid to initiate a dialogue on Kashmir in which it would be indirectly involved, developed cold feet in as few as six days and forced Salahuddin to pull out altogether in as few as 15. The answer is that in opting for a peace process in which the lead would be taken by Kashmiris, it was entering negotiations over which it had at best limited control and whose end it could not foresee or determine. This was bound to make decision-makers in Islamabad nervous. When they realised that the powerful longing for peace that the ceasefire had released among the Kashmiris would pressurise Hurriyat and the Hizbul to settle on terms that New Delhi could accept, it decided to demand a higher degree of control by being part of them. When New Delhi did not agree, it forced Salahuddin to pull out.

Such nervousness and false starts are a common feature of negotiations on territorial and sovereignty issues. The statements that emanated from Delhi during this period also reflected the dawning realisation of the difficulties that lay ahead. Till Atal Behari Vajpayee’s statement in Parliament on August 7, there was considerable ambiguity in its stand too. But the key ingredient in the failure of the first peace effort was the pressure that the leaders of both the Hurriyat and the Hizbul Mujahideen in Kashmir came under from ordinary Kashmiris. Like the Kashmiris’ hostile reaction to its infiltrators in 1965, this was something Pakistan had not anticipated.

From where does this profound longing for peace spring? One obvious source is the Kashmiris’ desperation to end the disruption of their lives caused by 11 long years of insurgency. But another less obvious source is an equally strong desire not to jeopardise their future. This desire is binding them ever more closely, albeit insensibly, to India. Ironically, this is partly a byproduct of the militancy itself.

Till the end of the eighties Kashmiris were extremely reluctant to venture into the plains of India. They sold their wares to Indian tourists and to buyers who came to Kashmir from India to buy their products. Inevitably, these middlemen kept a large share of the profits. After the outbreak of violence in 1990, both tourists and traders stopped coming to the Valley. After a couple of lean years, Kashmiri manufacturers were forced to send members of their families down to India to become traders themselves. Kashmiri shops and restaurants mushroomed all over and the shopkeepers prospered - they were not only able to cut out the middleman, but also cashed in on the surge of middle-class prosperity that the 1991 economic reforms unleashed.

The result has been increasing incomes in the Valley. The most obvious sign is the construction boom. Indeed, in proportionate terms there may be more new construction in Srinagar than in Delhi.

The militancy also led to the prolonged closure of Kashmir University and the medical and engineering colleges in the Valley. This forced Kashmiri students to seek admission in universities outside Kashmir. Today they have shed whatever inhibitions they once had about studying in the rest of India. A conservative estimate places the number now studying in Indian universities between 70 and a hundred thousand. These developments have breached the psychological wall that divided Kashmir from the rest of India. A large number of Kashmiris are living, studying and prospering in India. Over the years, therefore, more and more Kashmiris have lost their fear of the strange plainsmen.

Even as Kashmir’s future is converging with India’s, it is drawing further and further away from that of Pakistan. To one who has visited Pakistan recently, the contrast between Srinagar and Lahore, or Islamabad, is glaring. In the latter, shops signboards are mostly in Urdu; in Srinagar they are mostly in English. Urdu is the language of public discourse in Pakistan; in Kashmir, as in the rest of India, it is increasingly English. The Jamaat-e-Islami madrassas in Pakistan shun modern education; in Kashmir the Jamaat’s madrassas follow the ncert curriculum. Internet cafes have sprouted in the heart of Srinagar’s conservative old city. Software training schools are multiplying in spite of militancy. In short, Kashmir’s Muslims are not rejecting westernisation, as all but the elite are tacitly doing in Pakistan. On the contrary, there is an increasing awareness that with the prolonging of violence, the Valley is missing, perhaps has already missed, the opportunity of becoming an IT paradise in southern Asia.

THESE twin developments - the erosion of psychological barriers and the Kashmiris’ increasing preoccupation with the future - have led to a social marginalisation of insurgency. Most of the educated and highly-motivated Kashmiri militants of the early nineties have given up violence. An increasing proportion of those who remain are poor, ill-educated or uneducated and unemployed mercenaries, who are in the militancy because it gives them a steady income and a status in the community.

Kashmiris are acutely aware of this change. That is one reason why one and all, ranging from former militants to retired civil servants, expressed the fear that if New Delhi were to split the Kashmiri Hizbul from those in Pakistan it would not mean the end but the perpetuation of violence, because the rank-and-file of the former would simply go over to the Lashkar or other jehadi groups.

Kashmiris thus yearn for peace not simply because they are fed up with violence but because they want to take control once again of their future. This control is not only political but economic. It is the latter that is drawing them closer to an accommodation with India.