The Kashmir Tragedy- Its Pros and Cons

 (Dr R K Dhar is Editor, "Shehjar," News Quarterly of Kashmiri Sabha, Ludhiana)

The partition of India created more problems than it solved. Faced with intransigent attitude of Muslim League under Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the Congress led by Jawahar lal Nehru, under the tutelage of Mahatma Gandhi, took recourse to a measure that not only ripped the body of Mother India but also created many festering wounds of discord between the two dominion It was sheer political naivete on the part of Congress leaders to presume that partition would save India from the horrors of a civil war between its two major communities, the Hindus and the Muslims. What followed not only proved them utterly wrong, it also mortgaged India's future to the consequences of their follies. Even after having fought three wars with Pakistan, India continues to be beset with the menace of an unfriendly and hostile neighbour at its western frontier, an unsympathetic and ungrateful neighbour on the eastern border and a sizeable Muslim population whose loyalties to the nation are called into question whenever the Islamic state on the western border assumes threatening postures as the self-appointed Khalifa of Islam.

Inept Handling

Already, the demographic composition of Kashmir has been its bane. With its Muslim majority and contiguity to Pakistan, Pakistan has times without number tried to undo what the Instrument of Accession, signed by the late Maharaja Hari Singh and endorsed by the Assembly of Jammu & Kashmir had achieved. Knowing fully well that it cannot fight a legal battle over the issue, it has tried to resort to other strategies, overt operations like wars initially, and covert operations like operation topac now. To these it has added the weight of political chicanery at the UN and the OIC. While India has successfully fended off all external onslaughts in the past, it finds itself at the receiving end currently in coming to grips with the political repercussions of internal disaffection and discord that has successfully fomented in various parts of the country, especially Kashmir, because of its own inept handling of Kashmir affairs.

Economic Appeasement

The errors of omission and commission are political as well as economic in character. By not abrogating article 370, the political leadership of India continued to give the Kashmiris the feeling that they were a separate nation where no Act passed by the Indian Parliament can have sway until approved by the state assembly. Even such a powerful media as the Radio continues to this date, to be designated as Radio Kashmir, Srinagar/Jammu. Also, even though during the tribal raid of 1947, the Kashniri Muslims under the leadership of Sheikh Mohd. Abdullah clearly enunciated the direction to which their feelings tilted, the Govt. of India instead of capitalising on that resorted to a policy of. economic appeasement. To have applied such a policy to a state where the stock of national integration was high was nothing short of political folly. What happened as a consequence was that the funds pumped into the state found their way into the personal coffers of the local leadership whose story of rags to riches is scarcely concealed. The average man in the countryside continued to remain neglected, educationally and financially. Consequently, he fell head over heels into the euphoria of a Pan-Islamism which the political leadership of the valley also held up to him from time to time whenever it had to get its pound of flesh from the Centre. This alienated the people of the Valley from the national mainstream. And the wily strategist that Gen. Zia- ul-Haque was, he foresaw the downslide and tailored his covert operations, labelled Operation Topac, to these ground realities.

No Soft Options

he matters in Kashmir have now reached such a head that no soft options promise hope. Those who talk of negotiating peace with the militants are only savouring a pipe-dream. The say of the militants is so overbearing that none in the valley can dare talk peace with the Central Government. Besides, the involvement of Muslim mercenaries from as far as Sudan, thanks to the disinformation campaign launched by Pakistan, has further confounded the problem. It appears that there is no other option open now except that of the gun. But the gun alone cannot yield much gain. It must be supported and reinforced by a resilient intelligence network. The concerted efforts of the two can work wonders as has been borne out by the Punjab experiment. Infiltration into militant ranks can be an important strategy in this policy. But as the roots of militancy in Kashmir go deep across the borders, it is utterly necessary that militant camps in Pakistan be smashed, overtly or covertly, as counter-insurgency buffs might think it suitable, bearing in mind any international diplomatic inconvenience. This would not only dampen the morale of militant ranks in the Valley but also send jitters down the spines of their mentors.

Media Campaigns

As the war against militancy might be a protracted one, the Govt. of India shall have to, as it is already doing mildly on the Urdu Service of AIR, counter disinformation campaigns unleashed by Pakistani media and politicians, to whip up communal passions within India and to garner support in the West for its pretentious concern for human rights of the minorities in India. From the battles of words waged between the two states so far, one can't help feeling that in all these verbal skirmishes it is India and not Pakistan that has always been put on the mat. Pakistan acts, India reacts, whereas the story should have been otherwise. Even with two recent successes at the UN in preventing Pakistan from tabling the Kashmir issue, one does not feel that the pattern of events has changed in any way. It is, therefore, high time for India to act and Pakistan to react.

Safeguarding Secularism

To this end, India must launch a major information offensive. It must educate world opinion, in particular that of the Organisation of Islamic Countries, about the colossal consequences of secession of Kashmir from India and how it would shatter the already weakened fabric of secularism in the country and how that in turn would snatch the umbrella of protection from the largest minority community in India Muslims in India far outnumber those in Pakistan. Wouldn't secession of Kashmir be an acceptance of the two-nation theory, propounded by Jinnah but repudiated by the then Indian leadership. It would send a wrong message that no sooner would the Muslims in any part of the country attain majority, with the help of lax family planning controls or illegal immigration from Bangladesh and even Pakistan, they would seek secession from the country which nourished them as a mother? Wouldn't that lead to a communal holocaust, as Dr. Zakir Hussain in one of his letters to the UN had also feared? And would the dimensions of such a catastrophe be less devastating than that of a nuclear war, fears of which Pakistan has been trying to whip up for its own partisan ends? To whose advantage would that be? To that of the Indian Muslims, whose champion Pakistan pretends to be, or to that of Pakistan's political compulsions? Pakistani strategists can't be so obtuse as not to foresee it, given the greenness of the memory of the Partition holocaust. If they still persist with it diabolically, the game is clear: it cares two hoots for Muslims or Islam compared to its political advantages. Exposing this hypocrisy of Pakistan to the world community and the Organisation of Islamic Countries would yield rich dividends. Pakistan's bluff would be called and it would not dare rake up such a distracting controversy ever again. It might also learn to live in peace with its neighbours for its own good.

In such a politically congenial climate, it would be easier to snuff out the cigarette butts of militancy in the Valley, integrate the state fully into the Indian Union without the barrier of an Article 370 and conversion of the Line of Actual Control into an international border. And finally and above all, the return of the migrant Kashmiri Pandit community to the warmth of their deserted hearths with the surety that never again would they ever have to forsake their "Mauj Kashir" because of the sinister designs of a devilish neighbour of India.

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Courtesy:- Dr R K Dhar and April-May 1995 Koshur Samachar