BY KEDAR NATH PANDEY
VERY few Muslim Kashmiri boys are willing to come out of Kashmir in search of jobs. Without making the story too long and loaded with the Rajatarangini, sufism and so on, all Kashmiris believe in something called Kashmiriyat. But no matter how hard they try, they can’t define it.

But this undefinable thing, many of them believe (some strongly and some weakly) makes them sufficiently different to claim that they are not Indians.
When you go to Kashmir, some even ask you if you have come from India.
During my three years stay in Srinagar I often used to ask–both Hindus and Muslims–if Hindu Kashmiriyat and Muslim Kashmiriyat were the same. Asked singly, they said no; asked jointly they said yes.
Also, many Kashmiri Hindus from the Valley used to look down on the rest of us. There is absolutely no historical reason for this but they just felt superior. Maybe they still do. Jawaharlal Nehru’s Kashmiri provenance and Indira Gandhi’s preference for Kashmiri Pandit political advisors strengthened this sense of superiority.
Separatism in Kahmir
Until the early 1990s not many Muslims were separatists. That element gained strength only because Pakistan got active in the Valley after it had failed in Punjab in the 1980s. The ISI always needs something to do against India.
There are, I think, two types of separatists–weak and strong. The weak separatist wants more “autonomy” and the strong one wants “azaadi”. The latter are in a minority but make up for it by making a lot of noise, aided by Pakistan. The former are confused because, as we shall see, they can’t define autonomy.
The departures from the past as well as the spontaneity of the popular uprising call for a fresh framework to understand the happenings in Kashmir. And one framework that could help is Amartya Sen’s idea of development as freedom or, as the Kashmiris may well put it, development as azaadi.
At the heart of Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach is the focus not just on the means of development, such as economic investments, but on the ends of the exercise.
The concern is whether the process of development has increased the capabilities of persons, and hence their freedom to realise what they want to do or be. This approach takes development beyond the realm of growth and even inequality into areas such as life expectancy, political freedom, gender issues and more.
When seen through this capabilities lens, the events in Kashmir look a lot less unpredictable. While the state does fall below the national average in several economic parameters, such as per capita income, it does far better than states such as Bihar. And, as is evident from data presented to the State Assembly in 2007, in one critical statistic it does much better than the national average: The percentage of population below the poverty line in Kashmir is far below the figure for the nation as a whole.
What this limited development has done, though, is to make Kashmiris much more sensitive to the constraints on their capabilities in other areas.
The political freedom of the ordinary Kashmiri has been curbed, on the one side by an Indian state committed to ensuring peace on the streets and, on the other, by the persistence of terrorism over the last two decades. And the atmosphere of terror makes the usual method of calculating life expectancy quite redundant.
The average age at which people die is not of much relevance when a mother is terrorised into believing that her son can be killed each time he steps out of the home. Whatever progress is made on the gender front is then translated into the capability of the mother to join her sons protesting on the streets.
In this milieu, several of the responses of governments in Delhi, even when they are well-intentioned, have been out of sync with the capabilities of the Kashmiri people.
There is often talk of increasing employment in Kashmir, presumably through state initiatives. But this need not be the main concern of the protestors. Since the mid-1980s, there has been a desire in several parts of the country for individual entrepreneurs to grow into global giants. And the Kashmiris may well believe, rightly or wrongly, that the Indian state is coming in the way.
Over the years, disconnect between official policy and the capabilities in Kashmir has, predictably, been more evident in the political sphere.
The large turnouts in elections are typically seen as an overwhelming endorsement of the Indian state. But this presence in the voting booths could just as easily be a case of Kashmiris demonstrating their capability to reject terrorism. When seen in terms of an expression of political freedom, the high turnouts in elections and the widespread demonstrations for azaadi could be perfectly consistent.
Relationship with Pakistan
The changing capabilities of the Kashmiri people also affect their relationship with Pakistan. There may have been a time, soon after 1947, when the Kashmiris viewed their choice as between going with India and joining Pakistan. But, as the capabilities of the Kashmiri people have grown, so has their self-confidence.
There is now a vast amount of evidence that the predominant demand in the Valley is for the third alternative of freedom, whatever that may be taken to mean. This makes the idea that India and Pakistan can settle the Kashmir dispute among themselves quite unrealistic.
Indeed, the protests demanding azaadi could easily spread across the border into Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir. If that happens on any significant scale, the Indian and Pakistani governments may even find themselves on the same side.
The only way out then would be to identify an idea of azaadi that is acceptable to the Kashmiris as well as to India and Pakistan. As long as this is seen in terms of complete sovereignty over territory for any of the three parties, a solution would be impossible. It is difficult to see either India or Pakistan giving up territory.
But if we recognise that freedom is more than control over territory, then a solution is at least a little less difficult.
The mood in Kashmir could still change if there is more concrete evidence of Indian policy being consistent with the aspirations that have grown from the capabilities of the people of the state; evidence of Indian policy actually helping them realise what they want to do or be. –INAV