Kashmir: A Northern Ireland type solution

Kashmir: A Northern Ireland type solution by Subhash Chopra (written in 2010) The stone pelters and ‘Azadi’ chanters of the Vale of Kashmir are in the news (summer 2010) for all the inspired reasons, thanks to the personalities and powers behind them. The tragic maelstrom into which the impressionable youth of Srinagar and adjoining areas on the Indian side of the Line of Control have been drawn has already taken a toll of over 50 lives since early June this year(2010). And every fatal casualty is turned into mourners procession accompanied by yet more fiery speeches in the name of God, religion, ‘Azadi’ or ‘freedom’ by the likes of Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the leader of the hardline Islamist faction of the separatist Hurriyat conglomeration which has always shied away from fighting elections. The pictures are dramatic and the television and print media of India is in the forefront for portraying the patently anti-Indian activity, giving a lie to the human rights pundits across the LoC and sympathisers abroad a barrage of anti-Indian allegations accusing India of perpetuating state terror, curfewed nights, mass murders and worse. Very few bother about revealing the easily visible factors behind the pictures. The stone pelters are portrayed as peaceful marchers, forgetting the brutal reality that stones too can maim and kill. The stone throwers don’t just stop there, they burn buses and police posts and whatever comes their way. Yet they must be met with the greatest care. However provocative and misguided, they are our brothers and sisters, and sons and daughters. Dialogue which seems to be failing should not be abandoned. Protesters should be cooled with huge showers of water cannon in the valley which has plenty of water, followed by tear gas rather than bullets. And bullets, if at all needed, should be of the rubber bullet type. Police and other security personnel should be rigorously trained to hit below the knee to disable them, avoiding fatal injury. Live bullets should be the very last resort, only against klashnikov militants and grenade throwers. For in the ultimate analysis every person’s death diminishes all of us. Tragically media quite often becomes part of the propaganda in the name of press freedom. Instead of balancing the story, the pictures are laced with incendiary commentaries and broadcast as the full story which at best is only half the story. The other half of the story, voiced by the anti-Azadi and anti-Jihadi population of Kashmir is quietly given the go-by. The anti-‘Azadi’ voices come from large parts of Kashmir, especially from the Hindu-majority Jammu and Buddhist majority Leh region of Ladakh and the Shia-Muslim majority of Kargil region of Ladakh. And within the paradise valley too there are muffled voices muzzled by foreign funded and gun-toting Islamist militants. And what does this vu vu zela of ‘Azadi’ mean? There is no single meaning or interpretation offered even by its proponents. The literal translation of Azadi may mean freedom but in the Kashmir context it means different things to different people. For Hurriyat’s Geelani faction it certainly means a hardline, Sunni Islamist Kashmir as part of Pakistan. For a much greater number of Kashmiri Muslims ( 43 per cent according to a recent poll) , Azadi has come to mean an independent Kashmir, independent both of India and Pakistan. The poll conducted on both sides of Kashmir by British think tank Chatham House found that only two percent of the Muslim majority state of Jammu and Kashmir on the Indian side would like to join Pakistan. In other words 98 per cent of the people of the state are against joining Pakistan. Even in the Pakistani-controlled Azad Kashmir region only 50 per cent voted in favour of Pakistan. It is reasonable to infer that in a more free climate, considerably less than 50 per cent would plump for Pakistan. Given the history of Pakistan’s performance as a state very few would cast their lot with it. The demand for Azadi or independence is not universal in the whole of Kashmir. Nor is it a practical proposition in view of the long history of the issue and the religious and political ramifications both in India and Pakistan. India cannot agree to a second partition of the country on the disastrous religious grounds. Nor can Pakistan let Kashmir go out of its “strategic depth”, to use an alternative word for control. Yet the people of Kashmir, all sections including the quarter million Pandits ethnically cleansed out of the valley by the Islamists and the Sikhs who are currently being threatened to quit the valley– not just the ‘Azadi’ chanters, must be part of any settlement. The elected representatives of the two sides of Kashmir could join the negotiations between India and Pakistan, making it a four-way search for a settlement. The ground reality in Kashmir is that there are not just two voices in Kashmir – one pro-Pakistani and jihadi, the other pro-India. There are many voices that make up Kashmiryat – a historically secular culture which itself is part of the sub-continent’s composite culture – that is being sought to be extinguished by religious militants. Given the diversity of participants and regional interests, no solution can be acceptable to all or any single group, just as the 1947 partition of India was not wholly acceptable to any side. It was unacceptable to Congress-led India to whom division was anathema; it was unacceptable to Muslim League led by Mr Jinnah to whom a country without corridor linking eastern and western parts meant a moth-eaten Pakistan; and it was unacceptable to Britain which wanted to leave a united country and united army. Yet all three sides had to swallow the bitter pill and reach a compromise for a divided India falling massively short of an ideal solution. Similarly for Kashmir all interested parties will have to be satisfied with some compromise. The search for a compromise solution has been attempted, with political leaders looking amenable to some formula. Back in 1980s, Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto had established a kind of rapport which held promise for the future. In fact many years after Mr Gandhi’s assassination and during Ms Bhutto’s exile, she told a media gathering in New Delhi that the India-Pakistan entente could be achieved while the Kashmir issue could be left for future resolution. The same kind of solution was voiced by her husband Asif Ali Zardari soon after taking over as President of Pakistan, but had to retract under pressure from the country’s Army. Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and former Indian Prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had also established a very promising rapport which was disrupted by the Kargil (Kashmir) war between the two countries. Fortunately the dialogue was resumed during the rule of General Musharraf despite his Kargil role. Gen Musharraf’s dealings with Vajpayee’s successor Prime minister Manmohan Singh signalled even greater promise of a compromise solution on Kashmir when Pakistan’s political developments overtook, resulting in his loss of power and office. According to Pakistan’s then foreign Minister, a Kashmir deal between India and Pakistan was only ‘a signature away.’ Whatever the strength of that optimistic assessment, Gen Musharraf’s ‘out of box’ search for solution had raised the hopes for a sort of compromise envisaging retention of line of control and de facto sovereign control across that line by each side but making borders irrelevant. The 1947-49 United Nations resolutions , he accepted, had become outdated, implying an end to the idea of a plebiscite for Kashmir joining either India or Pakistan. Gradual co-operation, consultation and eventual demilitarisation by the two sides of Kashmir was to be explored and trade and free movement of people allowed to flourish. A kind of Northern Ireland solution looked feasible on the horizon, though nobody used that terminology. The encouraging feature of this history of the Kashmir issue is that all major political power centres in Pakistan, including Pakistan Peoples Party, Muslim League (Nawaz Sharif) and even the military in Musharraf days have at one time or other moved toward a compromise solution on Kashmir. There is still hope for such a way out of the imbroglio, only if ‘Azadi’ and ‘human rights’ promoters and instigators behind the misguided stone pelters can be held back. ................................................................................................