Rules Of Misengagement

Few events have reflected as poorly upon the way Indian democracy works than the short-sighted and unseemly wrangle that has erupted between deputy prime minister L.K. Advani and leader of the Opposition Sonia Gandhi over the release of militants by the Congress-PDP government in Kashmir. Since he initiated it, Advani must bear the lion's share of the blame. The fracas began when he criticised the Mufti Sayeed government for having released Kashmiri militants without first consulting the central government. In a subsequent statement, he claimed that he had even proposed the establishment of a screening committee to determine which militants should be released but that the j&k government had ignored his suggestion. Both remarks were uncalled for.

To begin with, there has been no sudden uncontrolled release of Kashmiri militants. In all, the new government has set only six free so far. Second, they have not been simply set at large but paroled, and that too for only a month. Third, the most prominent of these, Yasin Malik, a member of the Hurriyat's executive council, is typical in that he was a purely political prisoner who'd been in and out of jail many times. As for the advisability of letting 'dreaded militants' out on parole, it might have temporarily escaped Advani's memory that 36,000 Kashmiri militants, most of whom had actually wielded arms against the Indian state, are out on parole today. In the absence of a general amnesty as in Nagaland and Mizoram, for the past six years they have been subjected to extortion by the Special Operations Group and economic exclusion by the National Conference government. Despite that, only a handful have gone back to full-blown militancy.

At present, there are only around 1,000 prisoners left in custody. People not familiar with Kashmir cannot be blamed if they believe that these must be the hardest of hardcore militants. They would be wrong. At most, 300-400 would fall into that category and it is no one's intention to release them. As for the rest, they too have been in put in prison for mainly political offences.

The Mufti government insists it consulted the intelligence agencies before releasing political prisoners but Advani has stated categorically that this is not true. Advani does not make such statements lightly and so should be believed. But isn't there ample room here for misunderstanding, not to mention misinformation, either of the Mufti or of Advani? The plain truth is that the Centre has for a year if not longer been toying with the possibility of releasing most of those still held in jail. Lists of those who could and could not be released already exist. In fact, this was one of the cards the Centre had been keeping up its sleeve had the Hurriyat agreed to a dialogue, either in 2000 or last year when New Delhi appointed K.C. Pant to be its negotiator on Kashmir. Thus, for Advani to say he had not been consulted may be technically correct. But it is a shade disingenuous.

Why is the Centre playing these games? The answer is obvious: the elections in Gujarat. The BJP organisation had begun to attack the Mufti government even before the first 'militant' was released. The focus of attack then was not what the Congress-PDP had done but what it had promised, in its Common Minimum Programme, to do. And the burden of Venkaiah Naidu and Arun Jaitley's song was that the PDP were a bunch of separatists in nationalist clothing and that, by associating itself with them, the Congress had exposed its greed for power and disregard for the national interest.

Initially, Advani had held himself aloof from the attack. He could not have been unaware that from the moment PM Atal Behari Vajpayee promised a free and fair election, the Centre had committed itself to a course of weaning Kashmiris away from militancy by restoring the due processes of law and democracy to the state.He was also better placed than anyone else to know of the surprise and relief that washed over the Kashmir Valley when the voters found that they really were voting freely and had the power to unseat New Delhi's 'favourite' government. Indeed, only a month ago Advani claimed full credit for the blow that the free and fair elections had struck against militancy in Kashmir. He too was therefore in a better position than anyone else to appreciate that all the Mufti was doing was carry further the logic that had propelled New Delhi into restoring democracy in the state in the teeth of Pakistan-inspired violence and coercion.

But as D-day has drawn closer in Gujarat and nerves become stretched, Advani has been unable to keep himself from getting embroiled in the BJP state unit's political battles. Unfortunately, he seems not to realise—or worse, not to care—that in his keenness to have the BJP win in Gujarat, he is seriously endangering two years of carefully constructed central government policy in Kashmir.

Fortunately, the Mufti is showing a level of statesmanship few in New Delhi thought he was capable of. He has quietly put several of his political normalisation measures on the back burner till after the Gujarat polls and withdrawn himself from the tussle between the Congress and the BJP by declaring that his government has 'a complete understanding' with the Centre on policies towards Kashmir. What he must now ensure, and what Advani would be wise to let him do once the elections are over, is to make sure the 'healing touch' programme does not run out of steam because of the extreme caution of the police and security forces.

That is what Pakistan and the Hurriyat leaders are desperately hoping will happen. That, in fact, was the purpose behind the concerted fidayeen attacks in Jammu on two army convoys and two temples in a single week. What Kashmir needs is for the government to keep up the momentum of normalisation. Anyone who impedes this will, knowing or unknowingly, be playing Pakistan's game.