A Matter Of Morals

Ever since the uprising in Kashmir began, India has been accused relentlessly of violating the human rights of the Kashmiris. The charges have often been exaggerated, but seldom totally unfounded. It is only when one compares the behaviour of the Indian government and the security forces with that of other forces caught in similar situations that a different picture begins to emerge. One occasion that has underlined the difference forcefully is the civil war that has broken out in Palestine.

The trouble began when Gen Ariel Sharon, a particularly hawkish former chief of the Israeli armed forces who is currently the head of the right wing Likud party in Israel and leader of the opposition, decided to force his way into the compound of Haram el Sharif, better known as the Dome of the Rock, in Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock is the secondmost holy place for Muslims after the Q'aaba in Mecca. Its location in Jerusalem is the principal reason why the Palestinians are not willing to give undisputed possession of Jerusalem to Israel, and therefore the main reason why the peace talks so painstakingly brokered by President Clinton at Camp David two months ago broke down. Sharon's ostensible reason for forcing his way into the compound was to assert the right of all Israelis to visit the Dome of the Rock, which the Jews call the Temple Mount. But it is a fairly safe bet that Sharon's real agenda was very different. Fearing, or perhaps hearing, that the moderate Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, might weaken and accept a compromise over Jerusalem, Sharon decided to derail the possibility by provoking a confrontation with the Palestinians. He also could not have been insensible to the political mileage he would get for his party by inflaming Jewish religious chauvinism, and the embarrassment he would cause to Barak who would have to choose between making a martyr of him or risking a Palestinian backlash.

His calculations were no different from those of the bjp when it insisted on leading a padayatra from Jammu to Srinagar to unfurl the national flag on January 26, 1992. It is at this point that the two scenarios begin to diverge. Prime Minister Narasimha Rao decided to block the padayatra, but faced the problem of doing so without turning the bjp into martyrs in the cause of Indian nationalism. He did this by partly dissuading, partly coercing the bjp into abandoning the march and agreeing to go to Srinagar by air instead. As a result, instead of thousands of politically committed cadres streaming across the Banihal pass in a civilian invasion of the Valley, made under the protection of thousands of troops, in the end around 50 extremely apprehensive bjp leaders and cadres arrived by Indian Airlines in Srinagar airport, were ferried to the parade ground for the flag hoisting ceremony under heavy guard, and quickly bundled back to the airport again. It was not even clear who were the masters and who the prisoners.

In Jerusalem last week, Barak faced the same dilemma as Rao but, in a situation a 100 times more explosive than Kashmir, decided not only to let Sharon force his way into the compound but gave a heavy contingent of Israeli soldiers to escort him. In so doing he made the Israeli government and State a party to Sharon's provocation.

What followed was tragic but predictable. For Palestinian Muslim youth Sharon's visit was truly haram, a sin against God, a deliberate insult to their religion and a brutal reminder of their political and military impotence.They reacted by stoning Jewish worshippers at the Wailing Wall and Israeli soldiers at the checkposts into Israel.

Worse soon followed. Israeli soldiers claim they first fired some rubber bullets but switched to live ammunition, when they were shot at by snipers. But the Israeli claim is suspect because the Palestinian snipers did not manage to kill a single Israeli soldier. The first Israeli policeman was killed only on the fourth day of rioting. This suggests that on the first days Palestinians were not using rifles. As each death brought more Palestinians out on the streets, the Israeli government began to use helicopter gunships, tanks, anti-tank rockets and grenades to quell the violence. In six days they killed 60 Palestinians. The contrast with Kashmir could not be more striking, for in 11 years of insurgency and proxy war, the Indian security forces have never once used helicopter gunships, or brought out tanks against the civilian population. They have, to my knowledge, also never used grenades in areas where there is a civilian population, and have used rockets only to demolish brick buildings in which militants have been holed up, after clearing out the civilians in the area.

This is not to deny that Indian security forces, and the Kashmir police in particular, have committed excesses. In dealing with Kashmiri civilians, Indian troops have been hostile, high-handed, even insulting. Rogue elements in the Kashmir police have gone much further. But despite limitless provocation, there is an extremely important line that they have not crossed in Kashmir. This is the line between combatants and civilians. The Indian security forces have preferred to put the lives of their soldiers at risk rather than use weapons of indiscriminate slaughter like grenades, rockets, helicopter gunships and tanks. The importance of this restraint can't be overestimated. For the use of these weapons is a tacit admission that the user considers every one out there to be an enemy. It also obliterates the distinction between a police and a military function and between an army trying to restore order in its own country and an army of occupation. That is the lakshmanrekha the Israelis have crossed once again, and one India's never crossed. It is what gives India the moral right to try and persuade the Kashmiris to stay voluntarily within the Indian Union.