Author: G. Parthasarathy
Publication: The Hindu Business Line
Date: September 1, 2008
URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2008/09/01/stories/2008090150320900.htm
For the past four years separatist outfits
and leaders in the Kashmir Valley have been pampered in the mistaken belief
that they can be made to see reason by magnanimous gestures. The country is
today paying the price for such misguided beliefs.
In June this year, I spent a week visiting
"Paradise on Earth," the Valley of Kashmir with my wife and grandchildren.
We were enthralled by the serenity of Srinagar, the Shankaracharya Temple,
the exhilaration of climbing to 13,000 feet on a the highest ropeway in the
world in Gulmarg and the joys of a boat ride on the Dal Lake, as traders did
brisk business with thousands of tourists from all across India, selling carpets,
shawls and handicrafts.
Barely a month later, when I was in Srinagar
to participate in a Seminar on restoring peace, the situation had changed
radically. There was palpable tension in the air.
Strident propaganda by the separatist Hurriyat
Conference, claiming that allotment of a mere 40 hectares of land to the Amarnath
Shrine was aimed at changing the religious composition of Kashmir, produced
a backlash in the Jammu Region, after the Government yielded to separatist
demands in unseemly hurry, by revoking the earlier order allotting the land
to the Shrine Board.
It would be superficial to attribute recent
developments that led to a virtual abdication of authority in a sensitive
border State by the Manmohan Singh Government, to the land controversy alone.
For too long has there been a not unjustified sense of grievance in the Jammu
region, transcending communal considerations, because of the perception that
the Valley-dominated politics of the State had led to economic and political
discrimination against non-Kashmiris, of all religious denominations.
Aazadi and Kashmiriyat
Those seeking ultimate accession to Pakistan, or aazadi in the Kashmir Valley
have, therefore, often espoused division of the State on communal lines. It
is no secret that both the former Governor, Lt Gen Sinha, and the former Chief
Minister, Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad, himself hailing from the Jammu Region, believed
in recasting the politics of the State to end Kashmiri Valley domination.
There is mistaken a belief in our "intellectual
classes" that there is some mystical strength and resilience in the values
of "Kashmiriyat" which are said to transcend communal considerations
and make the ordinary Kashmiri tolerant and secular.
Those holding this belief ignore the fact
that very few in the Valley feel a sense of guilt over the disgraceful manner
in which Kashmiri Pandits have been forced out of their homes. Moreover, even
as the recent crisis was escalating, the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen warned the Kashmiri
Pandits of physical violence, should they seek to return to their homes, with
no condemnation of the threat from those claiming to embrace "Kashmiriyat".
The reality is that since the 1980s, the Jamat-e-Islami
has been making steady inroads into the intellectual and sectarian discourse
in the Kashmir Valley. The uprising in 1989 was largely a manifestation of
public anger at the seriously rigged elections that brought the Congress/National
Conference Government to power in 1987.
The abject surrender of the V.P. Singh Government
to terrorist demands during the Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping transformed what
could have been contained as local grievances, into a full-fledged insurrection,
which Pakistan took full advantage of.
Force with diplomacy
It is to the credit of former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and his successors
that the situation in Jammu and Kashmir was dealt with effectively, by a judicious
mixture of force, using state power, political accommodation, including resumption
of political activities and elections, and imaginative diplomacy that brought
the focus sharply on Pakistan's sponsorship of terrorism.
The most important turning point for India
was the elections of 2002, which received international acclaim and led to
the formation of the Congress-PDP Government in J&K. It is to the credit
of this Government that the period 2002-2008 witnessed sustained economic
growth and development.
But New Delhi erroneously believed that merely
setting up "Task Forces" to address a range of issues, including
the vexed question of autonomy, when there was no consensus within J&K
itself on what autonomy should entail, would be an effective antidote to separatist
demands.
This approach gave the separatists backed
by Pakistan an issue to latch on to, even though it should have been obvious
that any formula for autonomy which New Delhi offered would be rejected by
the separatists, who would keep demanding more, at Pakistan's behest. Instead
of denigrating and demoralising our security forces, as our Prime Minister
did, by his warning of "zero tolerance for human rights violations";
New Delhi will now have to adopt a policy of "zero tolerance for separatism"
in J&K. After initial dithering by the Home Minister, the writ of the
state has been re-established, with a well executed clampdown on the separatist
leadership, which followed a visit to the State by National Security Adviser,
Mr M. K. Narayanan, and his realistic assessment that the separatist leadership
was not amenable to reason.
Stop the pampering
It is now imperative to move separatist leaders to locations outside J&K
and initiate proceedings for sedition against them. Second, a clear message
has to be sent that while it will tolerate no challenge to its writ, New Delhi
would be willing to work with Pakistan, in its search for a J&K solution
wherein, as the Prime Minister has said, "borders cannot be redrawn".
India should state that it is prepared to
grant the same measure of autonomy, as Pakistan would accord across the LOC
to POK and to Gilgit and Baltistan.
The European Parliament in Brussels noted
in a recent Resolution that the "world's largest secular democracy"
India has devolved democratic structures at all levels, while Pakistan still
lacks implementation of democracy in Pakistan Occupied Democracy.
The European Parliament observed that both
Gilgit and Baltistan enjoy no form of democratic representation whatsoever.
Rather than constantly holding out promises of autonomy, the time has come
for New Delhi to tell all those who demand "aazadi" in Jammu and
Kashmir and their many apologists in the Capital, that they should first go
to their mentors in Rawalpindi and ask them to move in tandem with India on
the question of autonomy for the whole of the State of Jammu and Kashmir,
which acceded to India in 1947.
Moreover, the policy of pampering the Kashmir
Valley with constant "economic packages" and assistance, far above
what other States receive, should be reviewed and discarded. Per capita central
assistance to Jammu and Kashmir is the highest received by any State in the
country, and several times what people in States ranging from Tamil Nadu in
the South to Uttar Pradesh in the North receive.
For the past four years Dr Manmohan Singh's
Government has pampered separatist outfits and leaders in the Valley in the
mistaken belief that they can be made to see reason by sweet words and magnanimous
gestures. The country is today paying the price for such misguided beliefs.
One hopes New Delhi now realises that soft
words are no substitute for an iron fist, in dealing with separatism. The
Russian President, Mr Vladimir Putin, crushed separatism in Chechnya, not
by plaintive appeals for understanding to Chechen separatists and militants,
but by firm, decisive action. President Abraham Lincoln acted no differently
in safeguarding the unity and territorial integrity of the US, even not hesitating
to have the separatist stronghold of Atlanta reduced to ashes, as his forces
ended separatist challenges.
(The author is a former High Commissioner
to Pakistan. Feedback to blfeedback@thehindu.co.in)
