Confusion in Delhi over Kashmir

Men, Matters & Memories

By M L Kotru

Will someone please, in the name of all the Gods, tell me if there is a voice emanating from Jammu and Kashmir that represents Indian aspirations in the on-going Indo-Pakistan parleys over the future of the State. We have Manmohan Singh,the Indian Prime Minister tell us one thing, his Security Adviser telling us another and the Defence Minister who is now the Foreign Minister giving us a different take. That is only to be expected from New Delhi which has consistently refused to tell us anything, apart from mouthing platitudinous homilies which leave you no wiser than you initially were.

A direct consequence of the confusion in Delhi is the marginalisation of all the mainstream political parties in the State which have in the past been steadfast in their loyalty to the Union forced now to talk in terms that only add to the confusion. The National Conference which is the oldest of the political parties in the State and its leaders are expressing doubts over New Delhi's sincerity.

And to go by their version, the party leaders have a point which makes good sense. When its Government was in power, the State Legislature passed a unanimous resolution or was it by an overwhelming majority. I am not sure ? reiterating the party's demand for autonomy within the Indian Union, as Dr Farooq Abdullah, the NC patron and the party chief Omar Abdullah maintain the Government in Delhi did very little except promising discussions or setting up a committee to consider the resolution passed by the Assembly. The party leadership has now gone back to urge a return to the pre-1953 era when the Government led by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah (before he was toppled and arrested in August 1953) did enjoy far more autonomy vis-a-vis New Delhi. Sheikh Abdullah's was, if one may recall, the decisive voice in the State's accession to the Indian Union at a time when the late Maharaja Hari Singh was at best dithering. The rest is history.

Between then and now a number of Indian constitutional provisions have been extended to the State, a few of these in the best interests of the State. A succession of Governments, that followed the dismissed Sheikh's, went along with a New Delhi even as one or two of these had raised the question of internal autonomy. Things had nearly come to a head during the long negotiations between G Parthasarthy, one of Indira Gandhi's most trusted colleagues, and Mirza Mohammad Afzal Beg, speaking up for Sheikh Abdullah and his party.

The Indira-Sheikh accord which was born out of the Parthasarthy- Beg encounters and which brought the Sher-e-Kashmir back to power had also noted the Kashmiri leadership's reservations in certain key areas and which they had decided to address later in a less turbulent atmosphere. The Sheikh died, the on-again off -again Indo-Pak dialogues meandered along, with even Rajiv Gandhi giving it a try during his talks with the then Pakistan Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto.

The Indo-Pak dialogue gathered pace, most surprisingly, when the Indian Government formed by the National Democratic Alliance was headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party's Atal Bihari Vajpayee. And with the emergence of a new military dispensation in Pakistan, under Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the dialogue for once looked like having gathered momentum. But even at that stage, one regrets to note, the mainstream, pro-India parties, were kept at a distance although it could be said that Omar Abdullah was a junior Minister in the Vajpayee Government. Militancy resulting in the migration from the Valley of some 3.5 lakh Kashmiri Pandits and the wanton killings of civilians during the past 15 years in the crossfire between the Pakistan-sponsored militants and the Indian Security Forces, is part of the State's recent grim history. And it was indeed the scale of militancy which gave birth to the valley-centric politics of Kashmir. Pro-militant, pro-Pakistan bodies pronounced their arrival on the scene smultaneously and they have stayed around ever since though without having much political clout.

Coupled with Pakistan's not-so-covert support to the terrorists was its open wooing of the pro-Pakistan separatists like the Hurriyat: Musharraf ensured that even New Delhi accepted their presence, insisting that the Hurriyat was the ‘‘sole representative’’ of Kashmiri Muslims. Over the past five years his persistence appears to have paid.

The mainstream parties feel hard pressed even when they have won in some of the ‘‘cleanest’’ elections to the Assembly in the State. In desperation people like Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, an old-time Congress man and a Minister in Rajiv's and VP Singh's Governments, sought to create a political space of their own, distinct from that of the Hurriyat, yet covering some Hurriyat ground. He formed his People's Democratic Party, letting his daughter, Mehbooba steer its course in the murky valley waters. Mehbooba identified herself with anyone who claimed to have suffered at the hands of the Security Forces, visiting distant villages where any action taken by the Security Forces had allegedly or in reality caused death of innocent people.

The idea clearly was to occupy the space which Hurriyat and its ilk had made its own.

Not to be denied its share, Omar Abdullah and his National Conference also started to espouse the cause of ‘‘suffering’’ Kashmiris. What seemed to have forced both Mufti and the Abdullahs to effectively assert their political clout was the Centre's failure to take the mainstream parties in various regions of the State into confidence about, for instance, the kind of ‘‘out - of -box’’ solution Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had in mind whenever the Indo-Pak dialogues took place.

Musharraf on the other hand was handing out solutions on a daily basis and in public too. The track-two dialogues, sponsored for the most part, only made the mainstream parties feel further excluded. Hence the need for them to publicly air their reservations about New Delhi's attitude. By enforcing its agreement with Mufti Sayeed to share the six-year term of Chief Minister with it, the Congress left the PDP a bit bewildered although the party has to this day not openly questioned the Congress Party's insistence on installing Ghulam Nabi Azad as Chief Minister.

The upshot is that the Mufti has moved away a lot from his original position. He still talks of the State's union with India but has since publicly announced his support to the idea of self-ruling regions of the State, each with a sub-legislature of its own, it own civil and police services, appointment of an elected Governor of the federation of the self-ruling regions- a kind of a federation or ‘‘united states of Jammu and Kashmir’’. He advocates a similar scenario for Pak-controlled Kashmir which would have fraternal relations with the self-ruling Kashmiri regions. New Delhi would have no role in the appointment or dismissal of a Governor or of the Government. Of course, his federation of Kashmir would remain a part of India. How exactly, remains to be explained.

The Mufti's grand design probably approximates to Musharraf's self-ruled regions of the State. The Mufti wants to steal the thunder for his political survival, if nothing else, and needs to be different, even marginally. The National Conference which had so far confined itself to implementation of autonomy will perforce have to up the political ante and of it doing just that there are indications aplenty.

All this may well have been avoided if Manmohan Singh had been more forthright in his dealings with the mainstream political parties in the State, the BJP, Panthers, the Kashmiri Pandits and others included. Manmohan Singh may be a well-meaning man but does he have the vision even at this late stage to carry the mainstream parties with him? His approach to-date does not look very inspiring. Has he developed a national consensus on his out-of-the-box solution ?