Opinion - News Analysis

Blossoming mutinies in Kashmir

Praveen Swami

India-Pakistandétenteis transfiguring the structure of power within Jammu and Kashmir, sparking off an energetic struggle amongst political groups.

UNNOTICED, THE bright green billboards that had blossomed across Srinagar, proclaiming that that Muzaffarabad was just a few dozen kilometres down the road, withered away this winter. New political shoots, though, are starting to break out: shoots that bear little resemblance to the plants the gardeners who sowed the seeds had in mind.

Seen from the outside, Jammu and Kashmir's political responses to the détente process seem for the most part to have been confined to the National Conference's calls for rapid progress on federal autonomy, and the People's Democratic Party's endorsement of General Pervez Musharraf's calls for "self-rule."

But the real political news in Jammu and Kashmir still lies under the surface. In the wake of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's round-table talks on Jammu and Kashmir, long-established hierarchies of power between religious groups, between ethnic communities and regions — all these elements of the complex mosaic that constitute the State's political life — have been thrown in the air, as if by an enormous explosion. And, no one is quite sure where the pieces might fall.

Driving much political debate is the growing realisation amongst representatives of the State's marginal regions that the dialogue process holds out the prospect of seizing power from established elites in Srinagar and Jammu. "Jammu ruled us for a hundred years," says Pinto Norbu, an MLA and former Minister from Ladakh, "and then Srinagar for the last half-century. History isn't fair enough to give everyone a turn, but there is now a real opportunity to have our grievances addressed."

Ladakh's representatives hope to use the dialogue both to address specific regional issues and to free the future of their region from events in Kashmir and Jammu. "Like the other regions of the State," Mr. Norbu says, "we have our share of hardship and grievances. We did not pick up guns, though, and do not see why our fate should be tied to those who did." Politicians in both Leh and Kargil hope the opening of trans-LoC routes to Gilgit and Skardu will help diminish the region's economic dependence on Srinagar.

Key communities

Jammu and Kashmir's Gujjar and Bakkarwal communities, long consigned to the margins of both politics and development because of their pastoral lifestyle, also sense opportunity. With between 200,000 and 250,000 scattered across almost every teshsil of the State, Gujjar representatives know that they will play a key role in the fortunes of political parties in Kashmir and Jammu. By some estimates, Gujjar-Bakkarwal voters can tip the scales in up to a third of the State's 87 Assembly constituencies.

Gujjar and Bakkarwal leaders hope to leverage the round-table process to ensure that their special needs are met. Everything from special travelling Panchayat systems that will move with their livestock across the mountains to greater funding for schools and colleges to addressing the community's backwardness are being discussed. "We can make and unmake governments," says National Conference leader Mian Altaf of his community, "and any party which fails to recognise this fact will pay the price."

For its part, the Bharatiya Janata Party hopes to position itself as the representative of Jammu regional sentiment. One emerging plank for the party are new census figures, which will give the Kashmir province a marginal increase in its representation in the State Assembly. "These figures are manipulated," says State BJP leader Nirmal Singh, "fabricated to hide the fact that no proper census was carried out in Kashmir. How can the population of violence-hit Kupwara grow faster than Kathua otherwise?"

BJP leaders also hope to capitalise on the appalling status of the 120,000 Partition refugees and their descendents, who have still not been given State-subject rights essential to their acquiring property rights in Jammu and Kashmir. Members of Kashmir's Pandit community, displaced from their homes by Islamist terrorism in 1989-1990, are also targets of the BJP's efforts to expand its base in Jammu. "Ethnic Kashmiri leaders talk about the need to change our mindsets," says BJP leader Nirmal Singh, "but their mentality is in fact the problem."

What shape might this fractious chorus of ethnic and regional voices take? Chauvinist disintegration is, of course, one possibility — a real danger since major parties haven't even begun a serious debate on the issues. If the National Conference has a credible map for deepening State autonomy, the party is yet to make it public.

Neither has the PDP, mirroring President Musharraf's own silence on the issue, let it be known just what its understanding of "self-rule" in fact is.

Yet the mutinies blossoming across Jammu and Kashmir also offer real hope for the future. M. Aslam, an authority on the Panchayat Raj system in Jammu and Kashmir, is among the growing ranks of people who believe strengthening local institutions holds the key.

Just 1,659 of the State's 2,700 Panchayats exist even on paper, and fewer still provide anything resembling grassroots democracy. Local institutions, Prof. Aslam argues, alone can meet the complex needs of Jammu and Kashmir's civil society.

India-Pakistan détente, then, is transforming not just the relationship between the two States, but transfiguring the political life of Jammu and Kashmir itself. A long and complex series of negotiations between established elites and the new voices on the political stage lies ahead.

"We need to work out what our grievances are with each other," Prof. Aslam says, "and what vision we have for our shared future. Unless we find the will to sort out our own problems first, shouting across the LoC is of little use."

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu