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The renewed attention on Kashmir is a reminder of how India continues to define its international image in terms of an issue it has chronically mismanaged. With the mysterious rise of the Hurriyat as a supposedly representative force, its leaders are set to tour Pakistan on a visit sponsored by New Delhi and Islamabad on US advice.
For more than a half-century, Kashmir has posed the single biggest challenge to India’s security. Far from blocking or containing that challenge, New Delhi has been damaging its interests through its own ineptness. India’s distinguishing trait is that it does not learn from mistakes. Rather it lives up to George Santayana’s saying that, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’.
Now, unmindful of even the recent past, India has embarked on a new experiment in Kashmir without undertaking any study or examining the consequences of another failure. What has repeatedly brought India to grief in the past is again on display” personality-driven policy, pockmarked with individual idiosyncrasies, but bereft of any institutional planning or thought.
The latest stage show is more than a new play: It signals a fundamental shift in India’s Kashmir posture. It lends support to the Pakistani contentions India has publicly disavowed: That Kashmir is the core problem; that its resolution holds the key to subcontinental peace; and that a potential settlement demands a third-party role. India has now started acquiescing in Pakistan’s central tenets on Kashmir, with Prime Minister Vajpayee’s description of the ‘problem’ increasingly mirroring the language of Islamabad and Washington.
Without any discussion in Parliament or outside, the principles that have guided India’s Kashmir policy since the 1972 Simla Agreement are being jettisoned on the plea that New Delhi will not ‘traverse solely on the beaten track of the past’. Such is the country’s preoccupation with petty issues and the Government’s deftness in camouflaging its moves that the ongoing process of policy reversal has escaped national scrutiny. Consider the following:
* Intermingling the Kashmir issue with India-Pakistan relations: It has been widely recognised from the Nehru days that the Kashmir issue is the consequence, not the cause, of Indo-Pak problems and that the rivalry between the two will survive any Kashmir solution, if one could be found magically. Also, it has been the policy of successive Indian governments that J&K is an integral part of India and that there can be no negotiations on its future. Vajpayee, however, has publicly accepted Washington’s and Islamabad’s view that the J&K ‘problem’ is at the heart of Indo-Pak tensions.
Further, by blessing the Hurriyat’s Pak visit, he has conceded that Islamabad has a role to play in India’s J&K. Today, the line between India’s J&K issue and Indo-Pak relations has got completely blurred. Vajpayee’s Musings from a Kerala retreat repeatedly mix the J&K issue with Indo-Pak ties. India has gone from resistance to J&K’s inclusion in Foreign Secretary-level talks during I.K. Gujral’s term in office, to Vajpayee’s sudden readiness to ‘recommence talks with Pakistan at any level’ so as to find a ‘lasting solution’ to the ‘problem’.
* Giving outside powers a role to play on Kashmir: A key tenet of Indian policy since 1972 has been that there is no role for any outside power on J&K. This principle was upheld by every PM from Indira Gandhi to Gujral. But now it is being abandoned. The United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are being discreetly allowed a role on J&K. That the United States has been quietly playing a pivotal backstage role has been apparent from the Lahore process and Kargil war. But now it has taken to scripting parallel Indo-Pak moves. Desperate to secure a foreign-policy legacy during his final days in office, Bill Clinton continues to meddle in Kashmir, underlined by his special December 20 statement.
The incoming Bush team comprises hardnosed hawks who will fully exploit the leeway and leverage New Delhi conceded to the caretaker Clinton administration on J&K. It is extraordinary that India should allow Saudi Arabia, a State closely tied to Pakistan and the Taliban, to host a meeting of Kashmiri militants. It is even more odd that New Delhi should facilitate the travel of such militants to a country that has been exporting an extremist brand of Wahabi Islam and bankrolling fundamentalist activities in India and Nepal.
* Allowing Pakistan to define the Kashmir issue and dictate the agenda: Vajpayee has acquiesced in Pakistan’s definition of the Kashmir ‘problem’. The problem is not the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) or Islamabad’s annexation of PoK’s northern areas but India’s J&K. The 20 per cent of the original J&K state occupied by China is also not an issue, with Vajpayee’s statement from Kerala portraying Kashmir as a bone of contention just between India and Pakistan. The entire focus is on the Kashmir Valley, just 9 per cent of the original state.
Moreover, Pakistan has dictated to India who it should talk to in J&K (the Hurriyat). It has also imposed its demand for a three-way dialogue in the form of Pak-Hurriyat and India-Hurriyat talks, to be followed by direct Indo-Pak discussions that Vajpayee is all set to allow.
* Communalising the Kashmir issue: The pluralistic J&K state symbolises India’s unity in diversity. If the Valley were to get self-rule, it would trigger the unravelling of India. Having conceded what the ‘problem’ is, Vajpayee has also concluded from the ethnically cleansed Valley that it is an ‘Islamic problem’ to be tackled by Islamic means. He first declared a ‘Ramzan’ cease-fire and then agreed to a role for two Islamic States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Reinforcing the international portrayal of Kashmir as a flash-point. Vajpayee has done more than any recent PM to strengthen India’s pairing with Pakistan and increase J&K’s international salience. Although India’s interests demand that it free itself from the subcontinental straitjacket, Vajpayee’s string of botched initiatives since Lahore have only tied it stronger to that framework.
* Letting the ground situation become more adverse to India’s interests: No peace initiative can succeed in the face of qualitatively escalating terrorism. When Vajpayee took office, the J&K situation had been improving for the first time in several years, with a majority of extremists either killed or jailed. The situation has progressively deteriorated under him, however, with the terrorists for the first time taking the battle to the lion’s lair, confronting the Indian Army in its own camps.
Instead of devising a strategy to counter terrorism’s metamorphosis from a hit-and-run campaign to direct assaults on security camps, New Delhi has tried to pull wool over the citizens eyes. The weather-induced decline in cross-border shootings and infiltration” common at this time of the year” has been passed off as a cease-fire product. The daring Red Fort raid struck at the heart of the Indian State. The Red Fort symbolises Indian authority as India has been ruled since the 17th century by those who occupy it. Today, the Indian State has sunk so low that, far from contemplating any reprisal against Lashkar-e-Tayyeba for owning up to the raid, it permitted an hour-long telephonic conversation between the terrorist group’s chief and the Hurriyat’s Ali Shah Geelani. No Prime Minister after Nehru has made a bigger mess of Kashmir policy than Vajpayee. Despite Lahore, Kargil, the secret Hurriyat talks that prompted Farooq Abdullah to play the autonomy card, and the bungled cease-fire with the Hizbul, Vajpayee is willing to put the nation through bigger risks. When the price of elusive peace becomes heavy, with one initiative after another foundering, it is time to take a break and reflect on one’s actions. Vajpayee needs to think over why his pursuit of peace has engendered more bloodshed. In allowing outside advice to influence him, he should remember that India is still paying for Nehru taking Lord Mountbatten’s counsel on Kashmir.
Vajpayee knows he is on his last
legs, physically and politically. With his burning desire to win a Nobel
Peace Prize on Kashmir in the twilight of his career, he could end up as
another Mikhail Gorbachev, sowing the seeds of his country’s disintegration.
His presence in Jakarta should serve as a reminder that unless he stops
jettisoning the nation’s bipartisan J&K policy, he could set in motion
the ‘Indonesianisation’ of India, with Kashmir serving as the East Timore-style
trigger.
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