Negotiating Kashmir peace at home

By Harish Khare

IN ANOTHER two weeks, Ramzan will be over. Will the ceasefire in Kashmir come to an end at the end of the holy month? Those with guns, explosives and brutal cynicism can even now easily queer the pitch and bring back to the Kashmir Valley its pre- ceasefire daily dance of violence and death. But if the vendors and strategists of violence have to be deterred, what would it take to sustain the peace process beyond Ramzan, without surrendering the initiative back to the gunwallahs? Another way to pose the problem can be: is it possible for a precariously-placed Government to achieve a breakthrough in a five- decade-old conflict without even a semblance of a lively domestic consensus behind the quest for peace in Kashmir?

The answer has to be an unambiguous ``no''. The answer, perhaps, has to do with the ruling BJP's own decades-old orthodoxy about how to ``solve'' the Kashmir crisis. That orthodoxy is no longer helpful. Therefore, if the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, has decided to play the statesman and is genuinely keen on ``peace'' in Jammu and Kashmir, then he will have to negotiate the idea of peace within his own backyard just as he will have to necessarily carry with him large chunks of the Opposition, especially the Sonia Gandhi Congress. A ruling party, of course, is entitled to encash in domestic politics its foreign policy triumph, just as the BJP did so cynically its Kargil ``vijay'' during the 1999 Lok Sabha elections.

Why, then, should we seek ``peace'' in Kashmir? The responsible and dominant sections of the Indian political leadership - in and out of power - need to answer the question for themselves. If Kashmir is ``an integral'' part of India, as we keep chanting to ourselves, why do we need to negotiate peace with the ``Kashmiri leadership'' or with Pakistan? And, what does ``peace'' mean? Is it merely the absence of daily bulletins of deaths of militants, jehadis and men and officers of this or that security force? Or, is ``peace'' something more positive, more enduring, and more satisfying? None of these questions can be answered adequately unless there is a domestic understanding over the basic elements that would constitute the parameters for the quest for a ``settlement'' in Kashmir. Only a mature and self-assured political class, confident of its capacity to persevere on a difficult course, can undertake the task.

The first element is simple common sense of statecraft. All those who have acquired and sustained a stake in the Kashmir conflict - the assorted power centres in Pakistan, the ``freedom struggle'' - wallahs, the denigratingly called ``pro-India'' political groups and voices, the Indian state establishment, besides the busybodies in Washington, London and other capitals - would have to understand, recognise and respect that what cannot be won in the battlefield cannot be achieved and will not be conceded at the negotiation table.

It follows, secondly, then, that we have to understand in our domestic discourse and thinking that there cannot be a military solution to the Kashmir problem. From time to time, impetuous hotheads in uniform, middle-aged strategists in armchairs, and lunatics at Nagpur will keep pushing for crossing the Line of Control and bombing to rubble the militants' training camps in PoK. If this proposition has not been accepted by successive Governments in New Delhi, it is not because this or that Prime Minister was not enough of a he-man, but because of an unsentimental realisation that it would only lead to a full- fledged war in which India cannot possibly have a clear-cut strategic objective. In any case, the option got permanently closed the day the ``nationalist'' Vajpayee Government decided to have that little explosion in the Pokhran desert, and Mian Nawaz Sharif returned the compliment.

The third element follows from the second. Pakistan, too, cannot impose a military solution. This has to be realised clearly by the pro- Pakistan elements in Jammu and Kashmir. For over a decade now the Kashmiri groups have carried on what they have believed was a ``freedom movement'' in the hope that sooner or later Pakistan would send its army to help ``liberate'' Kashmir from the clutches of the ``Indian imperialists''. By now the various jehadi groups must stand disabused of Islamabad's willingness to sacrifice even one Pakistani soldier for the sake of the Kashmiris' ``freedom''; those who refuse to disabuse themselves of this unsavoury fact will have to stew in their own bloody juices.

The fourth element concerns the All Party Hurriyat Conference leadership. The Hurriyat leaders need to understand that while Pakistan can egg on the Kashmiris to fight on till the last youth, it is only New Delhi that can cut a ``deal'' with them. Yet a responsibility is enjoined on New Delhi. So far the Hurriyat leaders have been happy to be stranded on their own little islands of fears, misgivings and vulnerabilities, afraid to swim across to the democratic mainstream of Indian opinion. It now up to New Delhi to summon imaginativeness to help the Hurriyat leaders find the courage, stamina and strength to test the depth of their Kashmiri identity.

At the same time the Hurriyat leaders can be under no illusion that their claims to being the ``sole representative'' of the people of Jammu and Kashmir will be acceptable (in either New Delhi or even Islamabad). They must forget the deluding analogy of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. They must be prepared to pass the traditional tests of popular acceptance, and will have to pit themselves against the arguments and organisational skills of a Farooq Abdullaha, a Mufti Mohammed Sayeed and a Ghulam Rasool Kar. The Hurriyat leaders are rightly afraid of the popular discourse; they know they do not enjoy the legitimacy of a Nelson Mandela and that there are many uncomfortable questions they will be forced to answer if they ever decide to enter the democratic arena. At the same time, a section of the Hurriyat leadership should give up its cynical calculation that at some point the ``IB'' will find it profitable to install one of them as the Chief Minister in Sringar, just as it has presumably been doing all these years.

Lastly, the sooner New Delhi finds a decent way to engage General Pervez Musharraf the better. The task of statesmanship and creative diplomacy is to cut one's losses, and it is about time New Delhi realises that already too much time has been lost in needlessly trying to pretend as if the General Saheb did not preside over Pakistan. After the rather fancy ``clemency-exile'' manoeuvre that got Mian Nawaz Sharif to declare himself to be a proven crook, there is little dividend for New Delhi in refusing to deal with the Pakistani dictator in order to work out a ``settlement'' in Kashmir.

All these elements can be worked into a coherent, workable strategy only if the Vajpayee Government is able to demonstrate to all the relevant players that it has the domestic consensus behind it to work for a peace out of the imbroglio. That means the Prime Minister cannot be peace- maker-in-chief one week, and the Ayodhya-controversy-raker-in-chief the next week, and the consensus-stoker-in-chief the week after. Only then can he demand and get responsible cooperation from the Opposition.

It has taken follies, cynicism and arrogance over the decades to create the mess in Kashmir; no political party or leader has the luxury to start on a clean slate in Kashmir. The bottom-line, therefore, remains for Mr. Vajpayee and the rest of the ruling establishment to appreciate that the quest for peace in Kashmir is inextricably linked to a pluralistic, secular and decent political order in the rest of the country.

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