A retrograde stance

THE UNION HOME Minister, Mr. L. K. Advani's statement in the Rajya Sabha unequivocally ruling out `autonomy' for Jammu and Kashmir reflects a rigid mindset that is recklessly insensitive to the concerns of an alienated people and, much more disquietingly, smacks of disregard of the solemn commitment the Centre had made to the State at the time of accession 50 years ago. While putting forth the somewhat hackneyed `the clock cannot be set back' argument for rejecting the idea of a return to the pre-1953 position, Mr. Advani sounded condescending when he said that the Centre would be ``willing'' to consider granting of ``special powers'' to it, if demanded, as part of an overall devolution package for the States in general. In a sense, his enunciation is more in the nature of a reiteration of the position the Vajpayee Government had taken last year in the wake of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly's resolution seeking restoration of the pre-1953 Constitutional status as recommended by the State Autonomy Committee. In the context of the failed Agra summit - which floundered, inter alia, on the issue of `cross-border terrorism', with Pakistan refusing to see the insurgency, even if unjustifiably, as anything but a `freedom struggle' - Mr. Advani's hardline stance could only heighten the grave implications of the anti-autonomy line.

Any credible formulation for resolving the J&K imbroglio has to recognise that `autonomy' in relation to it means much more than and vastly different from what is commonly understood by it or by the expression `devolution of powers' to the States in general. Jammu and Kashmir's claim for autonomy, which is rooted in the special Constitutional guarantees provided to it at the time of the State's accession to the Union of India, has to do with the restoration of what it has lost to the Centre over the years for whatever reason. Whether the return should be to the pre-1953 or pre-1975 status is not really a critical issue. After all, one cannot be dogmatic about the cutoff year, given especially the organic nature of the Centre-State relationship in a federal system. But the bottomline is that the `autonomy' package should, apart from recognising the ground realities, respect the spirit of the Instrument of Accession, which is exemplified in the special provisions under Article 370. Given this context, the promise of `special powers' held out by Mr. Advani to J&K sounds deceptive. Set as it is against the backdrop of the overall imperative of greater devolution of powers to States in the light of Sarkaria Commission's recommendations, the offer can only mean some extra weightage for the State in the sharing of powers in such areas of governance as finance and general administration. To make this proposition is to trivialise the Centre's sacramental obligation to J&K.

But then, the Vajpayee regime's responses to the autonomy-related issues of the insurgency-stricken State have always been conditioned by the ideological orientation of its major coalition partner, the BJP; after all the shelving of the party's commitment to the revocation of Article 370 is but a tactic to stay in power as the head of a disparate coalition. For instance, there was palpable non-seriousness in its attitude vis-a-vis negotiations with the Farooq Abdullah Government on the question of autonomy (which it initiated after having peremptorily rejected the Assembly resolution). No less striking an example was the totally unfocussed `dialogue' initiative (with Mr. K. C. Pant as the designated interlocutor) which in its own way appeared to sidetrack the necessary focus on autonomy and other related issues. It is all right for New Delhi to seek to pin down Islamabad on the question of `cross-border terrorism'. But, given the stark reality that the alienation of the people was inescapably the basic cause for insurgency to take root and flourish, the Vajpayee Government can ill-afford to pursue a policy line that obsessively concentrates on the Pakistan factor and skirts issues that require to be addressed for winning over the people.

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