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Aakar Patel, in an otherwise cogent ‘2 reasons the summit could fail’ (Mid Day, July 16), draws one debatable conclusion: that had India gone along with Pakistan and recognised Kashmir as the main issue between India and Pakistan the consequences for India would have been minimal.
Pakistan’s constant insistence upon Kashmir as a “disputed territory”, “dispute” or “core issue” is, in its view, logically determined. Once India recognises Kashmir as the core issue, it would open to question the validity of the instrument of Accession the Maharaja of Kashmir signed under the Independence of India Act, 1947. It was on this document’s authority that Kashmir became a constituent state of India, before the enactment of the Constitution. Once the Instrument comes into dispute, Pakistan would want the Hurriyat - as its “sole representative of the Kashmiris” - to move in as the third party and formulate what should be Kashmir’s new legal status.
At the same time, as demonstrated recently, Pakistan’s reluctance to undertake any bilateral obligations to curb terrorism in Kashmir is not without tactical logic. The threat of continued violence could always be used to push India at every stage in any future negotiations. Remember, India invited Pakistan after giving up the condition that Pakistan first stop promoting “cross-border” terrorism. Pakistan continued regardless and was invited to Agra anyway. Even at Agra, Pakistani-sponsored terrorism remained one of the major hurdles that negotiators failed to surmount. “Cross-border” terrorism remains, in future negotiations, Pakistan’s biggest bargaining chip - a chip it had originally saved to trade off with a demand for Indian troop reduction in Kashmir. But Pakistan read Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s invitation as a tired acquiescence in the face of terror, and concluded the jehadis had given it an enduring bargaining clout that could not be signed away only with the mention of the K-word by India.
There is another important reason why Pakistan wants to push the “core issue” agenda. Kashmir, in Pakistan, is regarded as forming a part of its “core” existence as a Muslim state, as distinct from a “Hindu” India; a part of the unfinished agenda of Partition. Notice how General Pervez Musharraf harked at Jinnah’s words, and by inference the Partition, at President K R Narayanan’s dinner. The general pressed on and sought to push in the words “settlement of the Jammu and Kashmir issue according to the wishes of the people of the state” - mark also the change from its earlier demand for a plebiscite - in the aborted Agra declaration. Since Muslims, in particular Sunni Muslims, form the majority of the population of the state as a whole, the “wishes of the people” line-of-negotiations would help Pakistan achieve the Chenab formulation that is currently gaining ground there. This envisages the amalgamation of territories north of the Chenab with Pakistan - a solution which finds support with the Jamaat leadership in Kashmir. This formulation is designed solely on the basis of a religious division of Kashmir. So when Musharraf asks India to accept Kashmir as a “core issue” he is really telling Indians that the basis of any resolution of the Kashmir problem can only be a division along religious lines, just as the Radcliff Line was during Partition.
Our very distinguished panel of editors, who otherwise take great pride in their secular credentials and would never ever break bread with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, sat through the general’s breakfast meet, overwhelmed and overawed, immobilised by Musharrafs “Kashmir is the only CBM” lecture. The irony of the situation may perhaps have dawned upon them much later - an absolute dictator of a theocratic and fundamentalist state lecturing them on the “indigenous” struggle of the Kashmiris!
Recollect what Musharraf told the Pakistani clerics recently: don’t make tall claims of flying the Pakistani flag upon the ramparts of the Red Fort; more important - and this went unreported in the Indian media - is to keep your views locked up in your head and speak out only when you are in a position of strength. This is indeed why Musharraf, at this stage of what are going to be long-drawn negotiations, spoke of his “only Kashmir” agenda. The general knew, all along, that he could count on the support of at least a section of the influential Indian media. When asked recently by an Indian journalist what had, in his opinion, made the Indians invite him, Musharraf suggested that the pressure from the Indian media may have played a significant role. Musharrafs team had read the Indian media well and used it to marked effect in Agra.
Pakistan and, for some uncertain
reasons, a section of the Indian media, have tried to paint some select
Cabinet ministers as “hawks” in the Indian establishment, who allegedly
were responsible for the failure at Agra. Divide and rule is a policy option
that has left a strong legacy in the subcontinent. If Pakistan and our
media, succeed in bringing about divisions within the Cabinet it would
make the next round less disappointing to them. In not attacking Vajpayee,
Pakistan has indicated that they need to have him in the centre-focus to
take the negotiations forward. The build-up of Vajpayee in the Pakistan
media, the insistence on a one-to-one meeting between the two heads of
government (the gentle PM is seen by Pakistan as the chink in the Indian
armour), and the clean chit to Vajpayee in the post-summit “blame-game”
are essentially parts of the well-thought manoeuvring that will hold Pakistan
in good stead when the two leaders meet again in a few months.
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