Weekend Reading: Spotlight on Jammu & Kashmir

This weekend, I will be focusing on Kashmir…To set the tone, here is a small selection of some great background articles on Kashmir…Pl do read through all of them. Some reiterate points made by other commentators; others raise fresh issues. All are thought-provoking.  Read on:

First, excerpts from A ‘moth-eaten’ India? by Chandan Mitra (Feb ’10; emphasis added):

A small but influential section of public opinion in India has been pleading for “flexibility” in the Government’s approach to the Kashmir issue. Some important opinion makers have, in fact, gone on record to suggest that India will gain, not lose, stature if it gives up the Kashmir Valley in order to buy peace with Pakistan…After losing nearly 1,00,000 lives in 22 years of insurgency, isn’t it high time that Delhi considered this “out-of-the-box” solution? And if that is not quite practical yet, what about joint sovereignty? Why can’t undivided J&K have a united quasi-Parliament thereby abolishing borders and giving equal say to India, Pakistan and the “people” of the State over its destiny?

…There may not be too many takers for such abject capitulation, but the fact that these views are increasingly aired in public appears to have put the Government on the defensive.

…This section of appeasement peddlers are, therefore, certain to overlook the menacing threat conveyed earlier this month by Jamaat-ud-Dawa (euphemism for Laskhar-e-Tayyeba) deputy chief Abdur Rahman Makki. Speaking at a Kashmir Day rally in Islamabad on February 5, the fire-spewing Makki not only let slip that Pune was on their radar, but also declared that jihad was also to be waged against the alleged denial of river water to Pakistan. This is a very significant addition to Pakistan’s agenda, doubly important because it is a “secular” inter-governmental matter rather than emotional or Islamist.

…This brings us to the fundamental question: Will Pakistan’s blood-feud with India ever end? Will Islamabad be satisfied even if, for argument’s sake, Delhi agrees to part with the Kashmir Valley? All these years, Pakistani leaders across political hues kept harping primarily on Kashmir, former President Musharraf candidly declaring it to be the core issue. After resisting this classification for some years, India succumbed, saying it was ready to discuss Kashmir if Pakistan addressed our concern over cross-border terror. At Sharm-al-Sheikh, India bent down further agreeing, first, to delink terror from talks acknowledging Pakistan too was a victim and, second, to bring Balochistan on the table. Events of the last few months culminating in Delhi’s latest genuflection clearly establish that the Sharm-al-Sheikh joint declaration was not a case of “bad drafting” as the Government wanted us to believe. It was, in fact, a formal statement of India’s revised position which also amounted to quietly admitting Pakistan’s charge that we have fomented disaffection in Balochistan.

A pattern is now rapidly falling into place. First Pakistan forced us to agree, howsoever reluctantly, that Kashmir was indeed the “core issue”. Second, it got us embroiled in the problem of Balochistan whose mere mention in an official document was sufficient for Islamabad to claim victory.

And finally, by getting jihadis to talk about the water dispute, Pakistan has ensured that the arena of its conflict with India continues to widen. As it gets its way on one, it pushes forward a second and then a third. Shrewdly assessing the Obama Administration’s burning desire to exit Afghanistan soon, Pakistan is cunningly seeking to get more and more pressure mounted by Washington on Delhi.

…The opening of the water front by jihadi groups is aimed solely at aggravating alleged Pakistani angst against India, thereby legitimising their ongoing campaign of terror. Makki’s bloodthirsty diatribe, saying that “denial” of water justifies targeting cities like Delhi, Kanpur and Pune, that is, places way beyond Jammu and Kashmir, gives the game away.

Who knows what more will be added to the jihadi wish-list in the years to come? Hyderabad, Junagadh, Assam, Kolkata? Jinnah complained in 1947 that he had been tricked into accepting a “moth-eaten Pakistan”. The jihadis are carrying forward the promised 1,000-year war to reduce India to a moth-eaten entity, within and without.

Image courtesy: Govt of Jammu & Kashmir’s official website

Next read Sh Jagmohan (former Governor, J&K)’s views on Constitutional Illiteracy on Jammu & Kashmir (Jan ’10; emphasis added):

Those who demand pre-1952/53 status or advocate maximum autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir take care not to address certain concrete questions. They remain conveniently vague and show little respect for the practical implications of their stand.

For instance, they suppress the fact that in the absence of full financial integration with the Union, Jammu and Kashmir would have no resources at all for development. It is the Union finances that provide the entire funds for the state’s five-year plans and also for a substantial part of the non-plan expenditure. The extent of finances available to it from the Union can be seen from the fact that while Bihar gets per capita assistance of Rs 876, Jammu and Kashmir gets Rs.9,754 — about 11 times more than one of the poorest states of India. Further, in the case of Jammu and Kashmir, 90 per cent of this assistance is in the shape of grants and 10 per cent as loans while for most other states it is 30 per cent grants and 70 per cent loans…What will happen if this link is ended? Who will fill in the gap?

…If funds continue to flow to Kashmir from the Union, as at present, and it is allowed, as is being advocated in certain quarters, to have an exclusive say on subjects other than defence, external affairs and communications, it could enact Islamic civil and criminal laws and even set up Shariat courts, on the same lines as has been done in Pakistan, and make it virtually a theocratic entity. Would not such a scenario do violence to the very preamble of our Constitution and also amount to secularism financing a theocracy propelled by forces of bigotry and fundamentalism?

The problem of Jammu and Kashmir has not been insufficiency but surfeit of powers.

…The crucial questions that need to be asked to the singers of the autonomy ode are…In what way is any welfare work or work of development held up for want of powers? Is there is any law or executive order or judicial pronouncement that has undermined the personality or identity of Kashmir or altered its culture or spiritual landscape?

It needs to be underlined that Jammu and Kashmir is the only state of the Indian Union, which has its own Constitution…The special position of the state also extends to many other spheres. While the citizens of Jammu and Kashmir are citizens of India and have six members of parliament as their representatives, the citizens of India are not ipso facto citizens of Jammu and Kashmir. They cannot hold property in the state. They have no right to vote in elections to the Assembly or the municipalities or the panchayats. A woman citizen of Jammu and Kashmir loses her property and other rights if she marries a non-state subject. Further, no declaration of financial emergency can be made in regard to Jammu and Kashmir. Nor can the president of India issue directions to the Jammu and Kashmir state government in exercise of the executive power of the Union — a power that he enjoys with regard to all other states.

Next, Vinod Sharma on why the enemy is in our midst, written in Jul ’10 (emphasis added):

…Unfortunately for India, (Barkha) Dutt is not alone in this defaming, this deforming, this defeating of India. The so-called liberal media and the academia are full of such people…They have been working over time even after 26/11 to convince India that Pakistan actually needs to be strengthened and that India must make fatal concessions to that country to buy peace. Friendship is what these people talk of all the time, even though Pakistan shows no sign or interest whatsoever in letting up on its proxy war. That,

some believe, is primarily because they are convinced that any tough talk, forget action, against a rogue state that needs to be whipped blue, will cost votes of Indian Muslims and thereby the throne of Delhi.

The violence which erupted in the Valley during the last month took everybody by surprise, when it should never have. This is not the first time that India has been so surprised. Worryingly, it will keep getting caught unprepared because those who should keep their senses alert when dealing with Pakistan readily trust –at least pretend to — the smiles and the blatantly fraudulent explanations that they are given, whether by leading Pakistani journalists..or the establishment, whose voice the former articulate with some sophistication.

More damaging than the stones that youth of a few districts of Kashmir Valley have been throwing at India are the ones that some Indian have thrown at their own country.

…The tragedy of India is that such fellows who have little qualms about betraying their own people made refugees by violent religious extremism — what to talk of India — are made members of the National Security Advisory Board and other national institutions. Should that surprise us any more? Can, in Pakistan, people with these kind of views even dream of finding such favour of the ruling establishment?

Let us not be under any illusion that the problem in Kashmir will go away if Manmohan Singh implements the Youth Empowerment Scheme that Matto is selling, even though he knows better, or if India signs the sell-out deal with Pakistan that Musharraf had proposed. Autonomy and azaadi are red herrings that will yield no return whatsoever; they have not in 63 years, will not in a hundred. The proposed deal with Pakistan will only result in handing over the Valley on a platter to it, with the rest of the state also being lost. As I and many others have been saying, there will be no peace in Kashmir till Pakistan swallows it. And — this is vital — if it does, there will be no peace in the rest of India.

…As long as Pakistan exists, blood will flow. Pakistan is not in a hurry. To its jihadi mindset, the dead give life; the more the better. There is no room for sentiment. To the emotional and soft Indian, tears are enough to wipe away the sight of what lies behind them. Pakistanis and Kashmiris know it all too well….Kashmiris only have to pelt a few stones at India’s hapless defenders. Mindless, even dishonest Indians are waiting to pick and throw them and some of their own too, at their own country, and earn fulsome praise of its only enemy.

India is fighting the Fourth Battle of Panipat in Kashmir. The next stop is Delhi. So those who are asking India to capitulate there are effectively asking India to surrender as a nation.

…India is being stoned by Indians. The enemy is in our midst. We cannot defeat Pakistan till we defeat him. The sooner we do it, the better.

And finally, a Jan ’10 report on the travails of Kashmiri Muslims outside Kashmir by Rustam (emphasis added):

…one thing is crystal clear: Kashmiri Muslims are an unwanted lot outside Kashmir and the reasons are not difficult to fathom. One of the most notable reasons is that Kashmiri Muslims are considered a threat to national security; they are mentally bracketed with those involved in anti-national, subversive and terrorist activities. This is not a positive development by any yardstick.

Hence the question arises: what has created such a hostile environment for the common Kashmiri Muslims…? Who is responsible for the emergence of such a situation..? The answers are not far to seek.

The prosperous and well-entrenched Kashmiri leaders, without any exception, including innumerable separatists, who lead a luxurious and secure life both in the state and elsewhere in the country; who have set up big business houses in different parts of the country; who have palatial houses in Delhi and other big towns; who send their wards outside Kashmir so that they could be educated and trained in prestigious educational and professional institutions; whose sons and daughters hold important positions in the government and semi-government establishments outside the state, as also in multi-national companies; whose highly educated sons and daughters are working in the big media houses and cinema industry; and so on, are squarely responsible. They are responsible for the unfortunate incident at Prayag, and they are responsible for the kind of treatment common Kashmiri Muslims are being meted out in other parts of India at regular intervals.

…They are responsible because

• they have been demanding self-rule, or a step short of independence, or a mechanism that treats aggressor Pakistan equally with aggressed upon India in Indian-administered Jammu & Kashmir
• they are denouncing the Indian Army and other institutions located in Kashmir and demanding their withdrawal from the state
• they consistently oppose the presence of non-state subjects in the Kashmir Valley and have already rid the Valley of all non-Muslims
• they have been opposing tooth and nail the idea of (Hindu) refugees from West Pakistan obtaining all citizenship rights
• they are refusing to include the terms of “secularism” and “socialism” in the preamble of the State Constitution
• they are propagating that “Jammu & Kashmir State is a disputed area” and that “the accession of the state to India is conditional”
• they have been mal-treating the minorities in the state and pursuing a policy of discrimination with Jammu and Ladakh regions…

…If the Kashmiri leadership really wishes common Kashmiri Muslims to lead a dignified life and carry on their trading and other social activities elsewhere in the country in a peaceful environment, unhindered, it has to reform itself.

It has to say good bye to Islamabad…The Kashmiri leaders have to prove by deeds and words that they are for India and stands for national unity and integrity; that they will evolve and pursue policies which are holistic, all-embracing, state-centric and people-centric, and not Kashmir and a particular community-centric. There is no other way.

Also read: Time for a drastic overhaul in Kashmir and

An excellent factual background to the Kashmir Issue

Bonus post: Sandeep on why this is not freedom but an Islamic republic

The rest of the series: Don’t spoil the brat with more candies… , Is this man the biggest roadblock to peace in Kashmir valley? and Starting Point of a Solution