If Abdul Ghani Lone’s account of the plan is to be believed, it was to have started with a ceremonial meeting with Prime Minister Vajpayee, followed by a visit to Pakistan where the Hurriyat was to have urged both the United Jehad Council and the government to call off the jehad in order to give peace a chance. The plan foundered when the Hurriyat’s executive committee chairman, Abdul Ghani Bhat, nominated hardline pro-Pakistan member of the committee, Ali Shah Geelani, to the delegation that was to visit Pakistan. The home ministry balked at letting Geelani go to Pakistan because he had openly welcomed the jehadis and described the Kashmir problem as a religious and not a political one. This had the effect of turning Geelani, who had till then been a discredited and marginalised politician, into a local hero, and putting Lone and others who had welcomed the ceasefire and seemed "acceptable" to New Delhi, on the defensive.
Over the following months, as the home ministry remained obdurate, Geelani’s stature rose while that of Lone and the ‘moderates’ declined. This forced them to harden their stand towards Delhi just to retain their credibility in Kashmir. The end product was their flat refusal to enter into a dialogue that New Delhi finally offered them with K.C. Pant.
For somewhat different reasons, not allowing the Hurriyat to meet Musharraf when he comes to Delhi will compound the mistake made last January. The Hurriyat’s refusal to meet Pant has forced Delhi to look for others in the separatist camp whom it can engage in a dialogue over the future of Kashmir. With great courage, and at considerable risk to his life, Shabir Shah has entered that dialogue. To do so he has sought, systematically, to consult people from all parts of j&k and from all walks of life. There is considerable evidence that Shah’s cautious but constructive approach has met with general approval. The Hurriyat, by contrast, is facing marginalisation as more and more Kashmiris are asking why it couldn’t have done what Shah did: ask for clarifications about Delhi’s intentions without making any preconditions. If New Delhi denies its members permission to meet Musharraf as a group, it will almost certainly succeed in lionising the Hurriyat in exactly the same way as it managed to lionise Geelani. Unfortunately, it will do so by forcing the umbrella organisation into an even closer identification with Pakistan. This will further erode the position of the pro-Kashmiriyat elements within it.
Allowing a Hurriyat delegation to meet Musharraf could also have the opposite effect. Kashmiris will wonder why the Hurriyat’s executive committee is desperate to meet Musharraf but determined not to talk to Pant, when it’s India that’s ruling Kashmir and there are (according to Hurriyat) 7,00,000 Indian troops oppressing Kashmiris and violating their human rights. If the Hurriyat’s executive committee does meet Musharraf, what will it say to him and, more important, what will its members tell the media they said to him? Will they adopt the Geelani line, and thank Musharraf for allowing jehadis to operate from Pakistani soil? Or will they adopt the Bhat line and join Musharraf in demanding a two-way plebiscite in Kashmir with no ‘third option’? Either of these stances will remind Kashmiris of something many would like to forget, that the members of the Hurriyat’s executive committee have no will of their own and that several of them are Pakistan’s pawns.
The truth is that if the Hurriyat does meet Musharraf, it will have no option but to make demands the Pakistani chief executive will find as unpalatable as his Indian counterpart does. Among these will be the curbing of jehadis in order to facilitate yet another, this time genuine, ceasefire, and quite possibly the vacation of Azad Kashmir. Anything less than that will complete the marginalisation of the Hurriyat that has already begun.
Allowing the Hurriyat to meet Musharraf may be the only way of freeing the logjam in Kashmir that has bedevilled India-Pakistan relations for the last decade. For the Hurriyat will be followed by Shah, and very possibly other Kashmir nationalist leaders. Musharraf will have to choose between giving all of them a patient hearing, and meeting only those whom he wants to hear. If he does the former, he will have to come to terms with the fact that most Kashmiris do not wish to become part of Pakistan. Should he do the latter, whomsoever he meets will come under suspicion in Kashmir of having sold out to Pakistan.
This isn’t wishful thinking. Kashmir has a distinct culture and identity, and no one who’s visited it during these troubled times has been allowed to forget it. Most Kashmiris greeted Shaikh Abdul Aziz’s extravagant demonstrations of his joy at being in Pakistan, and his assertion that Kashmir belonged naturally to Pakistan, with indifference. Many were also dismayed by a report in a Kashmiri newspaper that Dr Hamida Naeem, a professor at the Kashmir university and wife of the National Front leader Naeem Khan, had said during a lecture in Lahore that Kashmir be a part of Pakistan. Nor does the idea of resolving the Indo-Pak dispute through a two-way plebiscite sit well with them. 2001 is not, after all, 1947.
