People's Democracy

Harkishan Singh Surjeet

ONCE again the government of India (GoI) has extended the unilateral ceasefire in Jammu & Kashmir that was announced for a month in the last week of November 2000, on the eve of Idul-Fitr, and was again extended by a month in December. By this move the GoI has sought to again convince the world community about the sincerity of its intentions regarding re-establishment of peace in the state. The move has been hailed by the peace-loving people of the world and by virtually all shades of opinion at home. Our party, the CPI(M), also welcomed the move in unambiguous terms.

But the questions that we raised earlier (People’s Democracy, December 24, 2000 and January 7, 2001) still remain. As we said, a ceasefire cannot be an end in itself; the GoI has to spell out the perspective in which it wants to solve the Kashmir tangle. The GoI is of course trying to involve the All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC), an umbrella organisation of the militants, in bilateral talks, and for that purpose an APHC delegation has even been allowed to go to Pakistan so that they could hold talks with the Pakistan-based militant groups and elicit their opinion about future negotiations with the GoI. But here too, certain leaders of the government have not been able to shed their myopic vision. Two of the seven delegation members, selected by the APHC to go to Pakistan, have been denied passports even though they are in regular communication with the Pak-based outfits. While the GoI is not able to prevent that communication, by denying passports to these APHC leaders it is only giving the unfortunate impression that it is creating hurdles in the way of the delegation’s trip to Pakistan. This was avoidable and should have been avoided.

There is yet another weighty question to be addressed. The GoI is not yet prepared to hold talks with the regime in Pakistan. Its plea is that the Pakistan government is supporting the Kashmir militants with arms, training and money, which amounts to exporting terrorism into India, and that there is no use of talking to the government of Pakistan unless it stops this export of terrorism.

This is, however, not the correct way of thinking. There is no denying the fact that the government of Pakistan is training and arming the militants and sending them into the state so as to destabilise the situation there. Pakistan has its own motivation in doing so. It wants to achieve the state’s merger in Pakistan through a proxy war, with the help of militants, something which it has failed to achieve through open wars. Moreover, the military regime of Pakistan has been trying to justify its interference in the internal affairs of India, in violation of the canons of international law, by dubbing this militancy as a jehad (holy war) which they say it is Pakistan’s "duty" to support. This is a lame-duck argument that cannot deceive the international public opinion, nor can it erase the fact of Pakistan’s interference into our internal affairs.

All this is certainly true. But the question is: Is it really advisable for the government of India to avoid holding negotiations with the regime in Pakistan, and more so when General Parvez Musharraf has himself been taking the diplomatic offensive that he is ready to hold unconditional talks with India? The fact is that, as Pakistan is the power that pulls the strings from behind the curtain, all possible efforts should be made to persuade it, and also bring pressure on it, to stop terrorist depredations in the state.

Moreover, as we said earlier, militant groups and APHC leaders are advancing only two types of solutions to the Kashmir tangle. While one section is talking of an "independent Kashmir," another section including the Hizbul-Mujahideen controlled by the Jamaat-e-Islami J&K, the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Harkatul-Ansar, etc, are striving for the state’s merger with Pakistan in the name of religion. None of the APHC constituents is talking in terms of solving the tangle within the framework of Indian unity. This involves a catch as, needless to say, none of the solutions proposed is in India’s interest. However, in the GoI’s proposed bilateral talks with the APHC, if some of the APHC constituents are going to advocate one of these solutions on Pakistan’s behalf, then why the GoI should not talk directly to Pakistan? After all, negotiations do not mean that the GoI will have to neglect the nation’s interests and agree to whatever the other side demands. But the very fact of negotiations taking place between the two governments can go a long way in building confidence between the two countries and their peoples and thereby easing the tension in the subcontinent, to the mutual benefit of both the countries and the whole region.

A direct talk with Pakistan will also be in the spirit of the Shimla agreement of 1972 that stipulated that India and Pakistan would sort out all their differences bilaterally, without inviting any third party’s intervention. It was this accord that effectively nullified the UN resolution of 1948. The same principle of the Shimla accord was reiterated in the Lahore declaration issued by Atal Behari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif.

At the same time, the BJP-led NDA government has not so far given any indication that it is going to take such steps in the state as would redress the grievances of the state’s people and overcome their sense of alienation so as to win them over. It is the same people who had rejected the religion-based two-nation theory, fought the Pak-backed raiders in 1947 and made heavy sacrifices in order to uphold their decision to link their fate with a secular India, while also foiling the Maharaja’s game to carve out an independent Kashmir as his personal fiefdom. (This game of the Maharaja was part of the conspiracy hatched by Lord Mountbatten and aided by Praja Parishad, the name with which the RSS worked in the state.) After the state’s accession to India, the Indian Union and its Constituent Assembly, which was then in the thick of its work, recognised the J&K people’s aspirations by incorporating article 370 into the Indian constitution. By this measure the Constituent Assembly assured the J&K people that their culture, aspirations and identity would be fully protected. But over the decades since then, the state has lost much of the autonomy that it was given through the said article. It will not be wrong to say that what today remains of article 370 is only a pale shadow of what it was in 1950.

Many a time since then, despite all the over-centralisation drive of the regimes at New Delhi, the people of J&K have time and again demonstrated that they want to remain part of India. They had high hopes when the Indira-Sheikh accord was signed in 1976 and again when P V Narasimha Rao assured them that the state would be restored its autonomy whose limit would be the sky. After the UF government came to power at Delhi, the people of J&K welcomed its announcements and more than half of the state’s electorate exercised their franchise in 1997 --- then a big thing in view of the militants’ call for boycott of elections and the accompanying threat.

This means that not everything has been lost. The situation can still be retrieved provided the GoI takes positive steps to remove the people’s apprehensions and ameliorate their lot. The state must be restored its autonomy as far as possible, and there must be further devolution of that autonomy to the three regions of the state, so that the people are able to decide their fate on their own.

At the same time, developmental steps must be initiated on priority basis so as to rush to the people the relief which they badly need. As we know, the state’s economy has indescribably suffered during the last one decade of militancy. Tourism, the mainstay of the state’s economy, has come to a standstill. Whatever little the state had by way of industry is lying in a shambles. A large number of schools, colleges, health centres, bridges and culverts, roads and other facilities have been destroyed. Unemployment, which was already very high in the state, has further accentuated, providing to the militant groups their cannon-fodders. This state of affairs needs to be immediately corrected.

At the same time, the government of India has to take the political parties into confidence. This is an area where the GoI has so far singularly failed. One is unable to understand why it is so afraid of contacting other political parties, though this will help in charting out a positive course of action and in mobilising public opinion in favour of a democratic solution of the Kashmir tangle.

The government has also to take proper note of the imperialist intentions regarding the state of Jammu & Kashmir, and steer clear of them. It has also to tell the people, the parliament and political parties about what negotiations it has been holding, with whom, and with what perspective in view.

These steps are the most pressing imperatives of today in view of the fact that, in the last analysis, it is the people who will ensure a lasting peace in the state, foil the imperialist game in the state and the whole region, and thus protect the nation’s unity and integrity.