BY PRAFUL BIDWAI
WELCOME as it was, the Kashmir visit of the all-party, 39-leader delegation wasn’t expected to accomplish much beyond acquainting Indian political leaders with the ground situation. Its handicap was that the delegation didn’t reach, and couldn’t convey, a broad political consensus on Kashmir.
The team was led by Home Minister, Mr P Chidambaram, responsible for the Centre’s Kashmir strategy since June. This strategy has caused enormous human suffering through repeated curfews and led to more than 100 civilian deaths. Many Kashmiris probably see Mr Chidambaram as the fox sent to guard the chicken-coop.
The delegation failed to enlist Hurriyat leaders’ help to normalise the situation. Hardline separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani curtly refused help. And Hurriyat moderates said the visit "represents only an effort at short-term crisis management", not an effort to find a solution in keeping with Kashmiri aspirations.
The delegation didn’t give Kashmiris the sense that the Indian political class is sensitive towards their political disenfranchisement. The Centre’s offer of a dialogue convinces nobody in the Valley, given past experience.
Such offers can even be counter-productive, given the ascendancy of a new-generation leadership which is giving a Islamist hue to Kashmiri identity. This ascendancy has many reasons.
New Delhi for years rigged elections and imposed its puppets on Kashmir. When the azaadi movement started in 1989, the Centre deployed 4 lakh troops against a population of 60 lakhs. This weakened Kashmir’s political forces, especially the once-formidable National Conference, and created space for militancy and the Hurriyat Conference.
The Centre missed the opportunity offered by the 60 per cent turnout in the largely free-and-fair 2008 Assembly elections. The Hurriyat got split and marginalised. The new protest movement–largely non-violent and independent of Pakistan–has arisen within this vacuum. Its appeal derives from the Centre’s repression of peaceful protest, which provokes yet more protest.
The protesters deliberately provoke the paramilitary and police, which use lethal means of crowd control, killing innocent non-combatants. This strengthens the protesters’ determination to fight the Indian state.
Chief Minister, Mr Omar Abdullah recently tried to pacify public anger by proposing to dilute the draconian, unjust Armed Forces Special Powers Act which grants immunity to any officer who fires upon a person suspected of the intention to commit an illegal act.
Yet, the post-June 11 deaths were mostly caused by the police and paramilitary, not the Army. Many observers believe Mr Abdullah made the AFSPA proposal to divert attention from his government’s dismal performance and his failure to apologise to the victims’ families for police-paramilitary excesses.
The Centre was considering Mr Abdullah’s removal, but is unlikely to sack him after Congress general secretary, Mr Rahul Gandhi backed him.
AFSPA and the Army
Meanwhile, the Army and Air Force chiefs have spoken out of turn on the AFSPA. General V K Singh said that "all those who ask for AFSPA’s dilution probably do so for narrow political gains". Air Chief Marshal PV Naik said that "a soldier involved in performing his duty deserves all the legal protection that he can get".
These are intensely political remarks pertaining to policy, a no-go area in a democracy for Services personnel, whose job is to implement the policies the civilian leadership makes.
This valuable convention has recently been eroded. Services officials have remarked on the possible deployment of troops and helicopters in anti-Maoist operations.
In 2006, Army chief General J J Singh did his best to torpedo an agreement on Siachen in which India and Pakistan have sacrificed hundreds of soldiers to frostbite in a meaningless contest over "prestige".
These are dangerous portents. In fact, there’s a strong case for withdrawing not just the AFSPA, but the Army from Kashmir’s civilian areas altogether. It shouldn’t have been deployed there in the first place.
Azaadi, Not Insurgency
The Kashmiris’ protest against government callousness, corruption and unemployment, and their identity-related demand for azaadi should be treated, as in other states, as legitimate and an indication of the need to improve governance–not as an insurgency fuelled by diabolical designs.
A precondition for a Kashmir solution lies in the Army’s withdrawal, leaving civic unrest to be handled by the civilian police. The forces’ bunkers must go if civilians are to feel they live in a half-way free society where they aren’t suspect by virtue of being Kashmiris.
Unless the Indian state stops treating the Kashmiris as suspects, insurgents and actual or potential criminals, and creates goodwill and confidence, it won’t find a political solution to the Kashmir issue. People from both sides of the border crave one.
Many recent opinion polls say that an overwhelming majority of Kashmiris want a political solution with autonomy and "soft borders". Only 2 per cent of people in Indian J&K want to join Pakistan. In six districts, nobody supports this view.
Knowledgeable, mature, political assessments confirm this. Most Kashmiris don’t want a plebiscite on J&K. But they certainly don’t want the status quo either.
What the Kashmiris are fighting is what they (or at least, many) see as the Valley’s occupation by the Indian state’s coercive apparatus and oppressive conditions of daily life in which they are compelled to carry identity cards (or a curfew pass) to be able to move about in their own homeland. What the stone-pelters demand is respect for the special identity of J&K.
The meaning of azaadi varies from person to person, ranging from freedom from oppression, sense of dignity, autonomy within the Indian Union, an identity separate from both India and Pakistan, to self-determination, and sovereign independence.
The challenge for the Indian state is how to launch a sincere, result-oriented dialogue for a moderate and pluralist definition of azaadi, compatible with a "soft borders" solution negotiated with Pakistan, in which the entire former state of J&K gets local self-rule and exceptional autonomy, which is guaranteed by India and Pakistan.
That challenge cannot be met by using the armed might of the Indian state to suppress the Kashmiri aspiration for a change in the status quo.
