Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Seize the moment in Jammu and Kashmir

Harish Khare

The Congress will soon have to decide whether it wants to claim the chief ministership. Its thinking should be based on a calculus of national interest in the present geo-strategic context.

FOR SOME time now Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been arguing that while borders between India and Pakistan cannot be changed they can be rendered irrelevant, allowing the divided people of Jammu and Kashmir greater access both ways across the Line of Control. Well, now the irrelevance of the LoC has been demonstrated in terms of death, devastation, and destruction. Both sides of the divided State stand united in grief and bereavement. Pakistan, unfortunately, turned down an Indian offer of joint relief and rescue operations, but Islamabad has had the good sense to accept humanitarian help from New Delhi.

While the 7.6 Richter scale earthquake wreaked much greater devastation on the Pakistani side, the loss on the Indian side is no less traumatic nor any less painful. The Indian security establishment has noted the possibility that some of the militants' camps across the LoC were most probably destroyed. That can only be a short-term gain. The United Jihad Council has rather grudgingly declared that it was suspending operations. But the most gratifying development is the ability of the Indian security forces — those very symbols of oppression in the Kashmiri perception — to have managed to seize the moment to showcase the Indian state's humane face.

Even more revealing is the response of the injured and the survivors to the men in uniform. By all accounts the traumatised citizens in Jammu and Kashmir have discovered, probably much to their surprise, that the Indian security personnel did not behave like an occupying army but, instead, performed a healing role. It is too early to say whether this new experience will obliterate the cumulative resentment and anger that the Kashmiris have felt all these years towards the Indian soldier. Nonetheless, the images of Indian Air Force helicopters making rescue sorties and ferrying the injured to field hospitals will remain etched in the Kashmiri mind for some time.

If the security forces were on the ball, the Indian political leadership showed itself capable of reaching out to the Kashmiris in the hour of an unprecedented tragedy. Congress president Sonia Gandhi was remarkably quick in visiting the Uri sector and managed to convey to the Kashmiris that the rest of India shared their grief and loss. Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani followed; and then the Prime Minister went to see for himself the extent of damage and declared it a national disaster. On her return, Ms. Gandhi has mobilised the Congress Chief Ministers into sending relief to Jammu and Kashmir. Most of them have already reacted. This image of shared grief too will seep in and engage with other negative images in the Kashmiri mind. Tragedies sometimes generate their own healing.

Having exhibited this remarkable sensitivity, the Congress president and other leaders of the party need to demonstrate yet another kind of wisdom and maturity. Within the next few weeks they will have to decide whether the Congress wants to claim the chief ministership of Jammu and Kashmir for its nominee, as per the People's Democratic Party-Congress pact three years ago. Under this pact, the two parties were to share chief ministerial responsibility. The PDP nominee, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, finishes three years as Chief Minister early next month.

In taking a decision whether or not to send in its own man as Chief Minister, the Congress leadership can be expected to be mindful of the political lessons of the last 15 years of insurgency. In other words, the Congress leadership does not have the luxury of taking a party decision; its thinking must be based on a calculus of national interest in the present geo-strategic context.

Becoming dignity

However unpleasant or jarring it may sound to many ears it nevertheless needs to be conceded and even appreciated that these three years the Mufti has succeeded considerably in erasing the burdensome impression that the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir is New Delhi's errand boy. Though a junior partner in the PDP-Congress alliance, the Mufti has conducted himself with becoming dignity and self-respect; never once did he give anyone reason to think that he was afraid to speak his mind or speak up for the people of Jammu and Kashmir. This has been in sharp — and pleasant — contrast to Farooq Abdullah's long, if often interrupted, chief ministerial innings. If fact, the disastrous Rajiv-Farooq Accord in the 1987 Assembly elections destroyed the National Conference's and Dr. Abdullah's claims to represent Kashmiri sub-nationalism. Dr. Abdullah was always seen as covering up the occasional excesses of the Indian security forces; in the Mufti's formulation, there was need for restraint on the "gun," whoever held it.

Nor can it be overlooked that the Mufti Government has attempted to attend seriously to the daunting task of governance in the insurgency-wrecked State. Panchayat elections have been held; the citizen's agenda is full of normal items — electricity, roads, schools, and sanitation. This is not to say that the troubled State has disposed of its decades-old and most debilitating problem: an entrenched kleptocracy. Though the Chief Minister himself is widely regarded to have maintained high standards of personal integrity, a similar clean chit cannot be given to the administration as a whole. Despite recurrence of this old disease, the average Kashmiri is no longer obsessed with the "azadi" war cry nor is he in love with the mujahideen.

Yet it would be premature to conclude that the separatist constituency has exhausted itself. Though much depleted and much deflated, the separatist constituency remains alive and kicking. And it is up to the Congress leadership to summon the political imagination to see to it that nothing is done that will revive the separatist sentiments. And the easiest — and the most unthinking — way to ignite the separatist political sentiments would be to make the Kashmiris feel that their "king" was being anointed in far away New Delhi — or, worse, someone from New Delhi was being sent to lord it over them.

Another folly would be making the chief ministerial chair a subject of negotiation between the Kashmir Valley and the Jammu region. Some petty voices in the Congress are busy making a claim on the chief ministership on the spurious plea that "it is Jammu's turn now." Nothing will be more ill advised than pitting Jammu against the Valley; Syed Ali Shah Geelani and his gang will be only too glad to pray for such a development. Admitted, the Jammu region has reason to feel resentful of those who rule from Srinagar. It is here that Mufti Mohammed Sayeed and his PDP have not been sufficiently mindful of the Jammu region's grievances, some real and some symbolic.

Anyone who truly believes himself to be the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir cannot for long try to rig the resource allocation and power sharing in favour of the Valley. But this is not an insurmountable problem; all that is needed is a bit of political sensitivity and administrative accommodation.

At a time when India and Pakistan are engaged in a search for some kind of honourable way out of the Kashmir quagmire, it would be entirely counter-productive for the Congress leadership to want to send a proconsul. As a party that can take legitimate pride in providing national direction and coherence all these years, it cannot now listen to small minds and even smaller men. Nor can the Congress leadership take the decision in the splendid isolation of 24 Akbar Road.

The Congress decision cannot ignore the given context. And the context is the recurrent theme of a promise that the Kashmiris would be allowed their own political space and their own face, if they spurn the vendors of violence and jihad. The context is P.V. Narashima Rao's promise of "short of azadi, sky is the limit"; as, also, of A.B. Vajpayee's commitment to "search for a lasting solution to the Kashmir problem, both in its external and internal dimensions"; as well as Dr. Manmohan Singh's often stated desire to bring peace and honour to the Kashmiris. Indian political ingenuity is on test.

The process of reconciliation and accommodation has just begun and it would be a grave national folly if the Congress were to allow its in-house intriguers to conspire their way to the Office of Chief Minister in Srinagar.

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu