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Croissants and Crescents|THE
SIEGE WITHIN
Special
Report (Column from TOI)
For Peace with Pak, India has to be
Strong
By M J Akbar
| August 24, 2008
 The
oddest fallacy within Delhi's current establishment is the conviction
that Pakistan's India policy is leader-centric rather than a
projection of national interest, which those in power might tinker
with here, or twist there, but cannot shift from a fundamental axis:
the belief that the Kashmir valley should be a part of Pakistan.
Definitions of national interest take much longer to change than
leaders.
The public lament of national security adviser M K Narayanan at the
impending departure of Pervez Musharraf may have been well-intentioned
but was ill-advised. It certainly did not help Musharraf, and may even
have hurt him with his core constituency, the army and the ISI. If it
is the prevailing view in the Manmohan Singh government that
Islamabad's promotion of violence in Kashmir, either through directly
sponsored terrorism, or encouragement of mass displays of
disaffection, varies with the inclinations of individuals, then it is
time to outsource Pakistan policy to less naive professionals.
Islamabad's policy towards Kashmir is calibrated on a sensitive
thermometer that measures the fever between circumstance and
opportunity. This was true of October 1947, when Jinnah launched a war
for the Valley after the peaceful resolution of Kashmir through
negotiations with Nehru and the Maharaja, with Britain as the fourth
party at the table, became inevitable. All three, India, Pakistan and
Britain, were agreed that independence was not on offer. Jinnah was
convinced that Nehru's inexperienced government, unable to control a
raging Hindu-Muslim civil war, would be incapable of fighting back a
"tribal incursion" and he would be able to join the congregation on
the first Friday prayers at the grand mosque in Srinagar within days
of the Pak-sponsored "uprising".
In 1965, Ayub Khan saw an opportunity in three critical facts: the
humiliation of the Indian Army on the China border three years before;
a Congress bereft of Nehru, who died in 1964; and a Kashmir still in
the tremors of an unprecedented upsurge over the mysterious
disappearance (and even more mysterious reappearance) of the mo-e-muqaddas,
a strand of hair from the beard of the Holy Prophet of Islam.
There is still some dispute as to who launched Kargil, but the
evidence points to a still-unknown general, Pervez Musharraf. He saw a
fragile coalition in Delhi led by BJP, and became convinced that he
could creep up and take up impregnable positions astride vital
communication lines while his prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, twiddled
his hamburgers in Islamabad. The Pak army did not envisage a larger
conflict because it had realized, as early as the early 1980s, that a
conventional war with India was no longer winnable.
The despot who ruled the country then, General Zia-ul Haq, therefore
stabilized relations on the surface and undermined them below
eye-level through blatant support for secessionism in Punjab and
Kashmir. The background and character of each man, whether democrat or
dictator, had less to do with what he did than circumstance and
opportunity. If India provides the opening, a Pakistani leader will
seize the chance to change the status of the Kashmir valley. The
latest Pakistani threat to take Kashmir back to the top of the agenda
at the United Nations has come not from a dictator but a democrat.
War and peace are not open-ended options; both are framed by
specifics. The good news for peaceniks (among whom I count myself) is
that the bomb has ended the possibility of formal war. The bad news is
that no one knows what peace means.
Can there be peace until Pakistan renounces its deeply held objective
that the Kashmir valley cannot remain an integral part of India? Can
any government in Delhi purchase peace by any compromise on the legal
and territorial status quo?
We have elided Kargil from Musharraf's CV and replaced it with Agra
and his periodic hints about an "out-of-the-box settlement" on
Kashmir. To be fair, Musharraf always made it clear that the status
quo was not acceptable as the solution. What precisely did Musharraf
mean?
Musharraf's peace-drive was running at least partly on an American
gear. With the Manmohan Singh government itching for its own American
embrace, it made sense for Washington to have both South Asian nations
on its side. The best American formula for Kashmir is obviously one
that would guarantee trilateral benefits, the third interest being the
American.
A model often proposed at Washington-encouraged conferences has been a
Kashmir delinked from Jammu and Ladakh, over which India might enjoy
at best a face-saving, limited sovereignty. Trifurcation is the first
step towards an "autonomous" or "quasi-independent" Kashmir, while
Jammu and Ladakh, unleashed from Article 370, integrate fully with
India.
To create the psychological conditions for such an option, we need the
same mindset that persuaded enough Indian Hindus to agree to partition
in 1947. On one margin today is the radical-soft, human rights view
that Kashmiris should be given their "azadi" because they want it. (It
would be equivalent to the CPI position before 1947.) This argument is
indifferent to two potential consequences. Indian Muslims, who have
already paid a heavy price for the "guilt" of 1947, would be condemned
to generations of discrimination for a second betrayal of the
motherland by some of their co-religionists; and there would be a
collateral rise in other "independence" movements in Punjab,
Gorkhaland, the North-East and the South. Welcome to Balkan India.
Kosovo could seem a large country compared with Gorkhaland.
On the obverse, this scenario needs a growing "enough-is-enough,
to-hell-with-Kashmiris" attitude among Hindus, aggravated by anger
against ingratitude - after all secular India provided Kashmiris not
only the chance to join a rising economy, but also a modern education
and the freedom of a multicultural society, and they rejected it. The
two points of view would coalesce from different directions.
Impossible? This is precisely what happened in 1947, leaving Gandhi
and Maulana Azad distraught but utterly helpless. Sixty one years
later, some opinion-builders in English newspapers have begun to
articulate the "enough-is-enough" argument.
Dr Manmohan Singh spoke a few days ago of finding a permanent
settlement to Kashmir. Implicit in the use of "permanent" is the
belief that the status quo is unsatisfactory and needs alteration. The
official position of India lies in a Parliament resolution, binding on
all governments, that Kashmir's status cannot be diluted. The
pragmatic position, which would find acceptance if ever put to the
test, is that the ceasefire line should be converted into the
international border. Even peace-loving Musharraf, who did not have to
worry about a popular vote, was not in a position to accept the
ceasefire line as the final destiny. His successors will not sign on
either, when they get time from their increasingly vicious internecine
battles for political supremacy. So what "permanent" solution does Dr
Singh have in mind?
Peace with Pakistan is possible, but it can only come when India looks
strong, not when it seems vulnerable. The health of India is what
Delhi should worry about, not the health of Pervez Musharraf.
Appeared in Times of India - August 24, 2008 |
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