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The Rediff Special/Brahma Chellaney on the Kashmir situation

Poor foresight compounds Kashmir situation

The outright rejection by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Cabinet of the demand for political autonomy by the Kashmir assembly may appear to be a slap to Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, but in reality it is more an effort on the government's part to be tough after its earlier clumsiness and poor vision set in motion unanticipated developments.

It was the release of Hurriyat leaders and the talks with them behind Abdullah's back that triggered a chain of events. Pushed to the wall, Abdullah struck back with the autonomy card.

The politics of the autonomy move is more significant than the actual demand. This is underlined by the fact that Abdullah waited more than 14 months after the submission of the state autonomy committee report to pilot a resolution on the subject in the state legislature.

The move to open dialogue with the Hurriyat was done at America's prodding. The Vajpayee government saw it as an innocuous move to placate Washington that carried no major domestic ramifications. In practice, however, that initiative unleashed events that went beyond the Centre's control.

It prompted Abdullah to up the ante, it impelled Ladakh and Jammu to rise in anger, it communalised the situation, it let loose divisive forces and it put an unstable state on the path of greater volatility. All that happened as a result of what the Centre believed was an effort on its part to blunt US pressure.

Ironically, its initiative on the Hurriyat came when the scourge of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir was on the rise.

Though the Vajpayee government has reason to be beholden to the Clinton administration for its help in getting the Pakistanis to withdraw from Kargil last summer, it needs to reflect on the manner it went about seeking to please Washington on Kashmir without thinking through the likely domestic consequences.

Even if it wanted to open a dialogue with the Hurriyat to expand the canvas of possible discourse on Kashmir, should it have done that behind the back of the state's chief minister in a manner that seemingly sought to marginalise him, if not make him irrelevant? Abdullah may be unpopular with a growing number of people of Jammu & Kashmir for his poor governance, but it is important to remember that he is an elected chief minister. He has stood with India at critical times when the country needed his support the most. If he were to get killed, New Delhi would find it difficult to continue even the present democratic semblance in Kashmir.

In contrast, the Hurriyat is a force implacably hostile to India's interests. More importantly, it does not represent anyone but itself. Yet, since the time Robin Raphel was the US assistant secretary of state for South Asia, some have tried to build it up as a force representative of the citizens of the valley. The Vajpayee government has also unwittingly contributed to its image building by giving it undue importance.

The Hurriyat, in reality, is a group of seven politicians with dissimilar views, some of whom face serious criminal charges. Several of the Hurriyat politicians are under Indian security for fear of assassination by militants. The poor forethought shown by New Delhi has unnecessarily compounded a bad situation in Kashmir. The turn of events has also senselessly set the Centre and State on a course of conflict, when the National Conference remains a partner in the governing National Democratic Alliance at the Centre. Even more importantly, the focus on narrow, shorter-term political objectives by both the Vajpayee government and Abdullah has put India's larger interests at risk.

India's unity, contrary to the smug feeling among Indians, is pretty brittle and breakable. Given that all large multi-ethnic, multi-cultural nations in the world have been under pressure, India needs to work to preserve its unity rather than take it for granted. No one expected the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia to disintegrate so easily as they did. Even tiny Czechoslovakia split.

India can unravel the way Indonesia seems to be unravelling at present. Had India's internal security situation been strong, it could have discussed special concessions to any one part of the nation. But in the given situation any special rights to J&K, over and above what it has in the form of Article 370 and the 1956 separate constitution, would send a wrong message to the rest of the country: That if you take up arms against the Indian State, you get distinctive autonomy as a reward.

The Vajpayee government thus is right in saying that it is willing to discuss devolution of powers to all Indian states (a need reinforced by the way the Centre has over the decades encroached more and more on the powers of the states) but not specially for one state. J&K, in any case, has been a pampered state even in terms of federal financial support.

Federal assistance to J&K, in per capita terms, is 14 times that to the poorest Indian state, Bihar. While most other states get assistance from the Centre in the form of 90 per cent loan and 10 per cent grant, the figures are just the reverse for J&K. Federal aid has fattened many Kashmiri politicians and bureaucrats who have ploughed such funds to buy large houses in the Indian capital. But, under the law, residents of New Delhi cannot buy property in J&K even with their hard-earned money.

At the root of the Kashmir problem lies the fact that although New Delhi has always claimed the state to be an "integral" part of India (an assertion also found in the J&K constitution), Kashmir has in practice never been treated as an integral component of India. With its own constitution and unique place in the Indian Constitution, it has always been different from other Indian states and psychologically never merged itself with India. So it has constantly sought to break out of India, even as New Delhi's control over J&K has shrunk to barely 45 per cent of the original state, with 20 per cent in China's occupation and 35 per cent with Pakistan.

While other countries have actively worked to change the ethnic composition of troubled regions in their favour, India has allowed the ethnic makeup in the rump J&K to become adverse to the mission of effective security management.

According to reports received by the Centre, Muslims (as if acting on instructions from militant groups and clergy) have been buying property on both sides of Highway 1A, driving out Hindus and Buddhists who refuse to sell their assets. Pakistan has not only effectively annexed the so-called northern areas from its 'Azad Kashmir', but also facilitated a gradual change in the ethnic composition of the latter. But there are many in India who still see a "solution" to Kashmir drawn in decades-old legal and constitutional terms.

The ire of the Bharatiya Janata Party over the latest Kashmir developments is understandable. This is a party that made a name by speaking up against Article 370 and the detrimental Nehru legacy on Kashmir. But in power the BJP not only has had to cast off its demand for abrogation of Article 370, it also finds the agenda on Kashmir to have now narrowed to azadi versus autonomy. This can only be anathema to it.

The BJP's discomfiture can heighten. With Vajpayee and Abdullah having set themselves little room for compromise, further political trouble on Kashmir cannot be ruled out. Abdullah earlier faced the choice of playing the autonomy card or getting completely marginalised before state elections next year. Now, he has the choice to stay in the NDA or walk out. If he quits the NDA and steps up his autonomy rhetoric, he can spell trouble for the BJP-led government's Kashmir policy.

Brahma Chellaney, a strategic affairs expert, is a well-known commentator and columnist.

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