KC, KP and Kupwara lad
Men, Matters, Memories

By M.L. Kotru

This is the story of the many faces of the Valley. And I will for the moment concentrate on just three. First KC Pant, New Delhi’s interlocutor on Kashmir. His four-day visit to the State coincided with my 12-day visit to the Valley. Second, the youngman from Kupwara, who had passed his TDC exam, was working in Srinagar anddreaded visiting his village, for fear that he might be picked up by the militants, because of his youth, and asked to join their ranks or, alternatively, be picked up by the security forces who post-cease-fire, now routinely stop vehicles for random checks. Third, of a Kashmiri Pandit employee of the State Government who out of bravado chose not to migrate, later sent his family out of the Valley, and is currently sheltered by a Muslim trader, but whose transfer to Jammu or to Delhi the local authorities will not even consider - and, mind you, his job is as low as you can get in Government service.

The Pant visit, in the event, turned out to be a case of he came, he saw (from the picturesque Nehru guest house astride the Chashmahi range) and he left without conquering. And I wouldn’t blame Pant if he returned to Delhi empty-handed. Blame, if he must, it’s the timing of his visit. If there be any truth to the local newspaper comment "India (Pant) meets Indians" let it be. The Hurriyat has only proved that it cannot be anything but its master’s voice. The command to it obviously was to stay put for now and insist on a meeting, in the first instance, with Pervez Musharraf when he comes visiting next month. After all that’s what the Hurriyat had been insisting upon before Vajpayee chose to invite Musharraf. And that’s why you find the Hurriyat saying, after Pant’s Srinagar visit, that it will try to meet Musharraf in Delhi and who knows, may be, Vajpayee after that. "Temporary" marginalisation is too small a price to pay, when it comes to proving a point.

Now of the teenager I mentioned earlier. I got talking to him at his workplace, his first job. Too poor to pursue his studies further he had taken up a job in Srinagar, away from his village in Kupwara. He was leaving the next day for his village to handover some money to his family and keen to get back to work before someone else took up his job. He was so keen to go and yet too scared at the thought of it. A four-hour bus journey would now take him around six hours. The security forces, he said, had, after the withdrawal of the cease-fire, resumed searching buses at many points along the route. And given his youth and the Rs 3,000 on him, he feared that he might be seen as a militant. More worrying was the fact that, once home, he might be picked up by the militants as a potential mujahid. The poor lad had other dreams. Like what does it take to be a journalist or how much would it cost him if he continued to pursue further education to become a teacher, if not a journalist. The latter obviously because he had met several journalists in the city where he works.

The Kashmiri Pandit Government employee, seeking a transfer out of the Valley, says he had stayed back alongwith other members of his family when most other Hindus migrated in 1990-91. He stayed in his downtown ancestral home but soon found that he must send his family out. Ever since then he has been gripped by a sense of fear and loneliness. But then he came across this good samaritan, a Muslim businessman, in a safer upmarket area of the town who has offered him shelter for the past three years, free of cost. But he must each day commute to his work place some seven miles away and face the risk of being "terminated" if he absents himself even when the rest of the city stays workless, say, because of a hartal call given by the Hurriyat. His numerous representations to the State Government have gone unheeded. Even the most senior of bureaucrats in the State wanted to know why exactly should this man feel insecure when he himself feels so safe in his well-guarded lakeside villa, commuting from there to the Secretariat with armed escort present all along the route.

The Valley continues to baffle me each time I visit it. The 12 days I was there now, except for one day when the Hurriyat gave its customary hartal call, I found the streets bustling with people. I even espied a few tourists from the plains walking up and down the Boulevard in Srinagar. Anantnag seemed teeming with people engaged in their daily chores. Pahalgam on the weekend was crowded by visitors from the capital Srinagar and Anantnag. Yes, shopkeepers at the once popular tourist resort continue to complain about absence of tourists but yet somehow seem to be building up their stocks in preparation for the several thousand yatris who will be camping there on their way to the Amarnath cave for a month beginning early next month. The yearning for peace is almost palpable. They have had enough of the terrorists and the security forces - in equal measure, they say almost unanimously.

KC Pant met whoever wished to see him; secessionists refused to meet him, the sole exception being the newly-turned secessionist and former Chief Minister, Ghulam Mohammad Shah. Shabir Shah, the other separatist leader made it known before receiving Pant at his house, that his would only be an informal meeting. Not in a representative character. He would be receiving a guest who came calling: That was being courteous, said Shabir Shah. For the rest Pant’s first visit to the Valley in his capacity as the designated interlocutor was an ill-timed one. It came soon after New Delhi had extended its invitation to the Pakistani military leader, Gen Musharraf. The 23-party conglomerate, Hurriyat Conference, chose to ignore the visit. Which was very predictable considering its hawkish role and annointed by Pakistan as it is as the "sole" voice of all Kashmiris.

Echoing the secessionist sentiment a local paper summed up Pant’s stay in Srinagar rather pithily: "India talks to Indians". The summation may seem uncharitable but it was very near the truth. For, in the Valley the overwhelming majority of those whom Pant met represented the broadest possible pro-India sentiment. There were others, though, like the trade organisations, the hoteliers, the boatwallahs and other tourism related outfits whose concerns were very different from those engaged in the politics of secession.

Pant for the most part did look more like the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission than anything else during his stay in Srinagar. There was emphasis on development, economic growth, promotion of tourism, planting new varieties of trees and inevitably on unleashing an IT revolution. When someone from the National Conference mentioned the autonomy resolution passed by the State legislature, Pant spoke of devolution of power. He saw Kashmir as a bridge that could provide stability in the region.

Sounds like a bunch of cliches but then there was little else he could do in a situation where the people of Leh wanted to be separated from the rest of the State and granted the status of a union territory, where Kashmiri Pandit migrants wanted a secure homeland to be carved out for them within the Valley and where the secessionists were unwilling to talk. The Hurriyat may in the process have ill-served its cause. For they could have used the Pant visit to elaborate on their basic concerns including why it wants to be treated as the only voice of Kashmiris, or, for that matter, why it wants to be treated as a party to any determination arrived at between New Delhi and Islamabad. Maybe the Hurriyat continues to be unsure about its own position - it is no secret that not all the components of the conglomerate are agreed on what exactly they want.

Uncertain uncertainties galore!......
Yours Randomly

Dr. R. L. Bhat

Ever since Sartre's No Exist came out the world had been grappling with the perception that uncertainty was certain. That was modernism peeping out through the fraying seams of progressivism. That euphemism of communism had posited that all certainties of the pre-Marxian world were uncertain. From the shape of earth to the parental role in development everything came to be unhinged. It was a strange mix of science, quasi-science and non-science that inundated the social, political even personal fields. Then Modernism split wide the covers of progressivism, but it had only a brief day. Post-modernism soon took it over. The present day thought says emphatically that every uncertainty is uncertain. And that is said to be a mantra of hope. By a strange crossing out the two uncertainties are translated into a positivism where everything appears possible. Thus an Israel- Palestine accord is on cards even as every passing minute on the ground negates this fond promise. And, Musharraf is to come to solve the Indo-Pak tangle! Ho! Ho!!

Thinking how the arty-farty movement gets into the political calculations? Because all politics, how so lowly, has to be founded upon an ideological anchor, how so uncertain. Inevitably it is the prevailing ideology that actually drives the politics. The colonial world created Israel. The progressive movement enmeshed it with the Egyptian - Syrian blockade. Modernism brought it to Camp David accord of Begin and Sadat. Post-modernism - remember uncertain uncertainties -- situated a tentative Palestine upon a doubtful Israel. In its looming uncertainty it believes that peace has to dawn, that Palestine would listen and Israel understand and centuries of mistrust would just vanish leaving nothing but hope. A fat hope, did you say? Well that is what the muddled thought of our day that understands everything, appreciates everything (and knows nothing?) fondly, fatly believes.

Back home, the creation of Kashmir-dispute was the last - cry of colonial hold getting the better of a democratic sense. It was sustained through a surging communist view that every discontent is a right. Modernism that saw the Berlin wall fall filled it with jehadis on the same pretext, turning the facts of history, law and geography fluid. Raging uncertainties of post-modernism belive that India is right, Musharraf is right, Kashmir is right, even Lahore, Simla ad the Un resolutions, all are right. And that Musharraf is the right man to resolve this tangle. But that definitely is not the only 'solution' that has been let loose. Ever heard of a hair-brained scheme called Indo-Pak Federation? That was another post-modernism bumbling around. Then, there are parleys at all levels imaginable, plopping all sorts of people on to stage, seminars, exchanges. That is called Intellectual initiative.... immaterials squeaking, out ineffectives? .... but then that is what you get when the actuals are so hopelessly popped out.

So the latest hope of the hoplessness is a heedless Musharraf making headway on Kashmir. The man who refused to look at Vajpayee on his Lahore bus is to take that vehicle forward to a shanti-varta! It is not the irony of the situation but the sheer impossibility of the situation that is striking. But does it strike anyone? No way. Hope is again getting pregnant like the irrepressible cat. Of course, nine of the ten feline tummy - bulgings are false, but how many would acknowledge that? It is the air of the age swaying the people away from the realities into imaginary binges of futility. Because everthing is uncertain, uncertainties too are uncertain and there can be no certainty about anything. Neat, nay? Here anything is possible, irrespective of the reality, irrespective of the experience, irrespective of the logic and reason. And, one can be a warmonger and a dove of peace at the same time.

But so uncertain are the uncertainties of the time that convictions are simply passing out. Had they been around the sides that are coming to negotiating table would have made suiting preparations. That would have called for building trust and amicability, a dilution of stands or, at the very least, keeping mum. But here the cart is already before the horse; the talks are to build confidence! With the concessions that nobody can give? For, no dialogue among the mistrustful would lead to easy concessions. Can any of the parties here retreat one single inch in principle? Especially when they have built new buttresses into the old obduracies? Here is the Pak High Commissioner going back to the (age-old?) obsession of a referendum, followed by Jaswant Singh stating that Kashmir is an integral-part of India.

India and Pakistan cannot negotiate to build trust; they must build trust to negotiate. They must prepare their people to the realities of the situation, not lead them to new obstinacies. They cannot negotiate on the strength of the idiosyncrasies of their people but must root them out to build an atmosphere for talks. Any talking, before that is done is bound to be a futile exercise. The talking to, that Musharraf did the other day at the Ulema met, could be a step had it not been woefully inadequate, if not actually misdirected. He, for example, told the gathering that they are giving Pakistan a bad name by their loud reiteration of the jihad. That is fact, but the greater fact is that the mistrust and antagonism between the two nations stems from the jehadi theory. As long as Pakistan retains the mantle of a crusader for Islam the jehadi exertions remain logical. And, the mistrust of the neighbours and the nations of the world would increase. Keeping this truth wrapped, as Musharraf wants the mullahs to do, as Pakistan succeeded in doing for the last half a century, is to build distrust not confidence. And mind, this is just one instance. But then this is the post - modernist age, nay? Here the greatest impossibility is uncertain. And a possibility by implications, while the certainties of history go discredited. So, the pundits say that peace may yet follow, even from distrust, suspicion and a virtual warmongering. Yes, the hopefuls of this age are incorrigible. They live on fat hope of uncertainty!