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Kashmir at home

By Harish Khare

The BJP cannot talk of abrogation of Article 370 in the coming Assembly elections in several States and yet hope to defeat the calculus of "proxy war".

INCREASINGLY, IT is becoming clear that the ruling party at the Centre is in the thrall of its own clever-clever manoeuvres. After its success in Gujarat, the BJP now appears determined to gain electorally by deepening the Hindu-Muslim divide. In the strange logic of these `deshbhakts', from Lal Krishna Advani downwards, Mother India cannot be defended without first creating an ambience of perpetual civil war. These `deshbhakts' are convinced that they have found the perfect formula to keep Sonia Gandhi's Congress on the backfoot: hold the Congress responsible for every terrorist act, accuse its leadership of being "soft" on terrorism and of mollycoddling the Muslims whose loyalty is "suspect".

How the Congress copes with this BJP stratagem is a matter to be sorted out between that party and its omnipotent high command. But it would be a matter of much wider concern if the BJP's boorish calculations, based on an assessment of the Congress vulnerability, were to delay reconciliation at the periphery, particularly in Kashmir.

In other words, the question is whether our polity has the maturity to find ways and means of insulating the Mufti Sayeed Government's "healing touch" approach from the BJP-Congress competition over nationalism and patriotism. A central proposition of this "healing touch" approach is that democratic politics, conducted as per the liberal stipulations of an enlightened constitution, can address disenchantment and alienation of any section or part of India. This is also the larger promise of democratic India that it has the requisite experience and willingness to accommodate the reluctant and the alienated. The Centre, at all times and irrespective of its political colour, is obliged to reach out even to those who prefer to spurn Mother India's hospitality. In its own mysterious ways the BJP Government seems to be sincere in attending to this task, at least in Nagaland.

But in Kashmir the party has opted a different path. Even before the Gujarat verdict, the outline of an "action plan" in Jammu and Kashmir was being finalised. The "action plan" is based on a premise that the voters in the State have spoken up by participating in the elections as well as by throwing out the Farooq Abdullah Government. Hence, a time for a change of pace. There appears to be four elements in this action plan: first, initiate a dialogue with the elected representatives on the nature and quantum of autonomy; second, show the All-Party Hurriyat Conference its place as an assortment of marionettish individuals whose strings were firmly pulled by the ISI handlers; third, allow the security forces to mop up the militants, who seem to be running out of the public support; and, last, use the new international mood of cooperation to choke up the financial networks used by the terrorists and their political nominees.

All this boils down to a sensible approach. It combines two propositions. First, the political landscape in Jammu and Kashmir is to be detoxified by using vigorously and robustly administrative tools to ground the pro-Pakistan voices. Hence, the decision to unleash income-tax inspectors on Syed Ali Shah Geelani or the decision to ground Mirwaiz Umer Farooq. Those in the APHC who do not have the inclination to stand up to Pakistan must then be allowed to stew in their own ISI juices. In any case, the APHC has outlived its usefulness even to the Pakistani establishment and is due for a comprehensive restructuring.

The second proposition is that while the APHC has to be "fixed", attempts have to be made to reach out to the Hurriyat "constituency". The unstated assumption is that even though the Hurriyat leaders may have discredited themselves by so thoroughly mortgaging themselves to their Pakistani handlers, they do represent a sentiment. This sentiment is a combination of attitudes, beliefs, memories and experiences of people in Jammu and Kashmir. In this sentiment, every single misery the Kashmiris face is attributed to "promises" not kept by New Delhi. The Kashmiri inclination is to think of "azadi" as the only way out of the belied expectations of responsive governance or unpleasant experience of security forces' high-handedness. The APHC and other secessionist voices have manufactured a myth that, for example, roads would get built, or that there would be uninterrupted power supply, or that unemployment would be a thing of the past only if one outdated "UN resolution" was implemented.

The importance of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed happens to be that he is proceeding on the assumption that this Hurriyat "constituency" can be won back, partly by attending sincerely to the routine chores of governance, and partly by creating conditions of political reconciliation. The first part can be dealt easily, provided the Chief Minister does not allow himself to be distracted or disgusted by the compulsions of a coalition government. The second part is rather complex. The challenge before the State Government and the central security forces is to change the nature of political emotionalism; that is where the issue of release of "terrorists" is becoming a sticky point. Unless Srinagar and New Delhi gather the courage to acknowledge that not every political prisoner is a terrorist, the "healing touch" strategy would be reduced to a naught. If Isak Swu and Thuingaleng Muivah can be feted in New Delhi, there is no reason why thousands of young men should continue to languish in Kashmiri jails.

It follows, then, that the process of reconciliation in Kashmir has to be insulated from the BJP's electoral competition with the Congress. As in Gujarat, the BJP now proposes to accuse the Congress of providing aid and comfort to Pakistan and its terroristic designs by releasing "terrorists" from jails in Kashmir. This is clever tactics but not wise leadership. As the Home Minister of India, Mr. Advani cannot go along with the "healing touch" approach, and yet claim the freedom as a BJP leader to lay into the Congress for allowing its coalition partner in Jammu and Kashmir to release "terrorists". From the Prime Minister downward, it should be obvious to every sensible BJP leader that the party cannot talk of abrogation of Article 370 in the Assembly elections in several States and yet hope to defeat the calculus of "proxy war".

The issue is much larger than the BJP's cultivated duplicity. The major reason why the Hurriyat "constituency" has been able to sustain itself in Kashmir is because of the manner in which political disputes have sought to be sorted out in the rest of the country. In many ways, the Hurriyat "constituency" got consecrated on December 6, 1992. The irony is that while Mr. Advani goes about pretending that December 6, 1992 was the saddest day of his life, he continues to subscribe to the false tautology of a "glorious Ayodhya movement", which seeks to perpetuate the Hindu-Muslim divide. The deepening divide has complicated the task of reconciliation in Kashmir.

As a political party that is the political face of the Indian state, the BJP is enjoined upon to demonstrate the same degree of faithfulness, in letter and spirit, to the Constitution of India as it demands from the secessionist constituency in Jammu and Kashmir. The BJP cannot run its party and its Government at the Centre as if it suspects all Muslims to be Mian Musharraf's silent co-conspirators and yet demand the majority in Kashmir should accept at face value the offer of equal citizenship. The danger is that the small and clever men who call the shots in the BJP smell blood. And they are not averse to squandering away a historic opportunity in Kashmir if they can inflict one more electoral defeat on the Sonia Gandhi Congress.

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