KASHMIR: NO SOLUTIONS ACROSS LOC

There is undeniably a serious, continuing communication gap between North and South Blocks. It is almost as though they represent the views of two different governments.

How else does one explain the fact that while the Foreign Minister believes that Pakistan remains the epicenter of terror, the Home Secretary has manifestly seen such a major improvement in the Pak-sponsored terror situation in Kashmir that he has unilaterally announced a major policy shift? Despite Pakistan’s dogged refusal to bring to justice sponsors of 26/11, despite its Army continuing to push terrorists into the Valley, GK Pillai has announced a 25% cut in security forces there and unilaterally offered, in the words of MJ Akbar, “multiple-entry, six-month travel permits (not Indian passports, but specially designed permits that might leave the nationality question vague) to Kashmiris to cross the Line of Control into Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir,” and from there, seamlessly into Pakistan.

This, as MJ Akbar notes, suggests that India has forgotten 26/11 despite Pakistan making no move to bring to justice its perpetrators, and has almost surreptitiously decided to resume the pre-Mumbai equation with Pakistan. “The UPA may be entirely rational in conceding defeat in the stand-off against Islamabad,” he argues, “but confession and clarity before the Indian people would help.”

The unilateral decision of the Home Ministry to issue permits to Kashmiris on the Indian side of the LOC is part of a plan first mooted by General Pervez Musharraf which, as per former Pakistan Foreign Minister Khursheed Mahmood Kasturi, India and Pakistan were just a signature away from signing in 2007. It is generally accepted that the deal involved demilitarisation along the LOC and within the state on both sides, maximum self-governance, free movement of Kashmiris within the whole state, and some sort of joint mechanism comprising Indians, Pakistanis and Kashmiris on both sides of the LOC to oversee self-governance and other issues.

The entire deal was, to my mind, a sell-out by India even at that time. Now, considering the Islamist abyss into which almost all organs of Pakistan have descended, as developments there after the killing of Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer have shown, it should not even be thought of. But the shift, announced by the Home Secretary, leaves little room for doubt that not only has Pakistan succeeded in defeating India over 26/11 but India has also chosen to ignore the fact that the Pakistan it is dealing with now is not the one it knows, the one that has been trumping it on the negotiating for decades: Qadri’s Pakistan is a dangerous, different beast altogether, not one that should be given even the whiff of victory over ‘Hindu’ India.

According to Pillai, Pakistan -- pursuing a comprehensive solution to the core problem of Kashmir -- rejected India’s piecemeal proposal to allow Kashmiris to move relatively freely across the LOC. There can, thus, be little doubt that his unilateral announcement is but the first step towards reviving at least the original deal, even though under General Kiyani, who had earlier gone along with Musharraf, Pakistan wants India to make even more concessions.

Let us examine some of the dangerous implications and ramifications of the deal that is being revived by a government that seems to have been 'stoned' into submission and is being led to believe that it has no alternative but to capitulate.

• Free movement across LOC. It needs to be emphasised that for Pakistan LOC is not the solution but the problem. It is not satisfied with the part of the state it has and wants all of it; it “runs in its blood”. Only Pakistan will gain if the LOC is made irrelevant. Given the different ethnicities of various regions of the state, the so-called free movement across the LOC will eventually be a predominantly one-way movement from its side into not just the Valley but the whole of the huge state. Considering what happened to Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley, non-Muslims from the Indian side will not only feel discouraged to travel to the Pakistan side of the LOC, but will also, one way or another, be prevented from doing so by fundamentalists there. Movement across LOC will be permitted on permits. India has Article 370 in place, so there will be almost no cases of false permits being issued to non-state subjects by the state government. On the Pakistani side, however, there is no similar restriction and Punjabis who now dominate Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) are little different from those from Punjab province, from where many more many have settled there after 1947. Given that Pakistan's real objective is to amalgamate J&K into Pakistan, what we will see is planned settlement of “Qadris” over time in parts of Jammu province where they can relatively easily merge with locals and radicalise them too. Non-Muslims in the state will become even more marginalised than they are now. Terrorists will also drive them out from more and more far flung areas and close in on towns and cities over time. The separatist sentiment now confined to ethnic Kashmiris and the Valley, will spread to other parts of the state too, with the collusion and active assistance of government officials.India’s nightmare will come true, no one but its own blindness to blame.
  

• Joint Control.This is a misnomer. It will be nothing less than ceding control to Pakistan. On ground, control of Kashmir Valley has already been ceded involuntarily along many significant dimensions by India. The joint control mechanism will spread that span to Jammu and Ladakh regions too. Representatives of POK, Indian Kashmir, Pakistan and India will form part of this mechanism. Effectively, three out of four of these groups will be under Pakistan control ab initio. India will also, undoubtedly, be pressured to place religion-blind, 'secular' representatives in the body from its side. Need more be said? With such a body monitoring self-government, one can be sure that demands for more and more areas of governance to be liberated of Indian (notionally Pakistani too) control will be made, militants on call to drive home the point: that is how Pakistan will complete creeping acquisition of not just the Muslim majority Kashmir Valley but the rest of the state too.

• Demilitarisation. Demilitarisation of POK is virtually meaningless from the Indian point of view as there will no gain to India there along any dimension. It is the demilitarisation of the Indian side that will have devastating short and long term consequences. Almost immediately, thanks partly to joint control, the writ of the Indian state will become less than notional in the Muslim Kashmir Valley. Without a bullet being fired, the situation will become worse than it was in the early Nineties when Pakistani currency was openly used in parts of the Valley, and people had set their watches to Pakistan Time. The writ of militants - non-state actors if you like - will run unchecked over vast swathes. Coupled with free trans-LOC movement, it will also result in more and more areas being cleansed of Hindus with ease, often undetected, in a re-run of what happened to Kashmiri Pandits. After 20 years of fighting terrorists and after losing the lives of thousands of sons of India, its leaders will have done no more than quietly lay down arms and set the clock back to 1989, worse to follow.

These changes are not going to convert the whole state of Jammu and Kashmir into a Europe with people moving happily across as civilised human beings who are nicely settled and at peace with the world. When love and trust is absent across a settled international border drawn on the basis of religion, how can it blossom in an area that one desperately wants to snatch from the other on that very basis? Put another way, if the two countries can make their borders like the European ones, will the LOC not dissolve on its own? Why has that not happened till now? Is there even a remote chance of it happening given the trajectory that Pakistan is now on, that may well see it implode?

The answer is self-evident. Yet, a defeatist India continues to delude itself into believing that it has no choice but to give in to a failing Pakistan that is rapidly becoming become as radical and Islamist as the many groups nurtured by it. Qadri’s Pakistan is never going to be the strong and stable neighbour at peace with India that India hopes it will be after it gets what it want in Kashmir. Quite the contrary.

Solutions lie on this side of the LOC, problems on the other. India has to start thinking out of the box so that it can put Pakistan out of the Kashmir equation, not integrate it into it. Old templates need to be incinerated, not given a deceptive gloss.
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SHOULD PAKISTAN BE SAVED?

If the creation of Pakistan can be visualised as heavy snow falling on and covering upper reaches of precipitous slopes, then the calamitous avalanche that seems to have taken many by surprise, that suddenly seems unstoppable, that is poised to flatten everything below the snowline, should have been anticipated and strong barriers constructed in its predictable path so that it could have been checked and contained before it began its destructive descent.

Jinnah may have, at one level, visualised Pakistan as a modern Muslim state that viewed religion as a purely private matter – a mirror image, really, of secular India – but he would have known that the jihad that even he flirted with to violently snatch his state, was not an idea that would be forgotten after Pakistan was created. That is perhaps why he wanted to erect a barrier between the state and religion. But other Pakistanis, flush with success and angry that it was not complete, had different ideas. To cut the long story short, the snow continued to fall silently till General Zia-ul-Haq purposefully picked up a few fistfuls, made a snowball and set it rolling down the steep Islamist slope, in the hope that it would gather Kashmir and Afghanistan, and eventually the whole of ‘Hindu’ India, for Pakistan.

With the Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer’s assassination by Malik Mumtaz Husain Qadri, his bodyguard, only because he called Pakistan's blasphemy law a black law, and the subsequent developments on Pakistan, the avalanche has dramatically demonstrated how strong and powerful it has become and how powerless and defenceless are those who stand in its path.

Details of the Qadri-generated shock waves have been extensively covered in the media and by analysts, and I do not wish to tread the territory again. I would, however, like to draw the attention of readers to what two of India’s best and brutally honest Pakistan analysts have to say. MJ Akbar warns: “ we are seeing, unless we are lucky, the future of Pakistan on the face of Malik Qadri.” Tavleen Singh explains that the real danger of Pakistan imploding is because its “descent into venomous, violent Islamism is mostly the fault of their leaders and...this idea of faith has seeped into the fabric of Pakistani society. It is not just mullahs who spread the message but lawyers, policemen, judges and army officers.” It must be mentioned that it is not the first time this has been seen, though never openly on this scale. Even Imran Khan, the cricketer-turned-politician loved by India’s secularists, is a fundamentalist who supported handing over of Swat Valley to the Taliban and the latter’s system of justice. But, till Qadri struck, India’s media pretended otherwise and chose see only the ‘liberal’ PLU in him.

Many analysts have been arguing that a strong, stable Pakistan is in India’s interest and that India should make every concession possible, including over Kashmir, to strengthen the democratic government and, by implication, moderate voices there, because we are same people, because Pakistanis love Bollywood as much as we do, because you cannot change geography -- the usual nonsense. The frightening and ridiculous alternate scenario that some have been painting is that presently Pakistan stands between India and the Taliban – they are already just 150 km for our border, they shout -- and that if Pakistan goes, we will have thousands of armed radicals on India's border, creating havoc in India.

Let us face the harsh truth that but a few have been speaking about: the real danger that India faces is not from lightly armed groups like the Taliban and the LeT. There is no way that they can defeat a half-million strong military and take over Pakistan. The nightmare scenario, clear and near-present, is that the whole state, including the military, will become as Islamist as the radicalised groups nurtured by it.

It is worth recalling that in 1947, Muslim soldiers of Indian Army who opted for Pakistan, an idea that almost till the end many believed would not take the shape it did, overnight became enemies of their regimental colleagues. Within months of the creation of Pakistan, they fought against and killed the men they had fought with and killed for. If that dramatic transition was easy, formal adoption of the radical and extremist ideology that has been pursued by the state of Pakistan for decades will be seamless. In fact, as the Qadri case shows, it is substantially already in place in not just the military but all organs of the state and civil society too.

The radical Islamism that is now no longer deniable in Pakistan has been visible almost openly in India’s Kashmir Valley for many years. It manifestation, not growth, has been restrained because of the presence of Indian security forces. But India as not been looking. Partly because its liberals have got the idea of secularism messed up and, more importantly, because its policy makers have embraced a ‘drift, hope and react-only-when-forced-to’ policy. Eyes wide shut. Even the US has not paid attention to the mistakes India has made in Kashmir. It is repeating them, much to Pakistan’s joy. No amount of bribing or “winning of hearts and minds” is going to work in Afghanistan. The billions of dollars it is giving to Pakistan too is not going to make the latter give up its duplicity and help the US win its war in Afghanistan. Nor is it going to retard the unstoppable radical avalanche.

Tavleen Singh knows that there is little that can now be done to stop the tearing avalanche from reaching the bottom of the Pakistani mountain. Unlike Sudheendra Kulkarni and others like him, she knows India can do nothing to save Pakistan. But she too falls into the trap, perhaps due to the pain she feels for that country, of seeing a faint flicker of hope if the US stops the war in Afghanistan because then, according to her, Pakistanis will not be able to find someone else to blame for their problems.

This is as naïve and dangerous an argument as asking India to leave or, at the very least, make major concessions on Kashmir to Pakistan. One more perceived victory against a super power will be the perfect fuel to fire Islamists to re-energise Pakistan and put India in the fore sights of their Kalashnikovs -- nuclear bombs too -- with renewed confidence and venom. If India too ‘loses’ in Kashmir, both will only be doubled.

The time for indulging in the luxury of romanticising a strong, stable, non-radicalised Pakistan that is at peace with India and the West is over. That such a Pakistan was never going to be a reality has been clear for a long time. Qadri has only made sure no one can pretend anymore. An Islamist Pakistan is a danger not just to India but to the whole world. This reality has to be confronted head-on and the danger neutralised, sooner the better.

Has anyone heard Pakistan ever say that a strong, stable India is in Pakistan’s interest? How can the reverse be true? Let us stop even thinking of saving Pakistan. Five fingers, separated, cannot deliver the punch that a fist can. They need to be worked on. Carefully.
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AKBAR TURNS JINNAH, ASKS FOR A MUSLIM STATE

"What the Muslims... are looking for... is a defined political space within which they can find food-and-faith security." Were these words uttered by MA Jinnah a little before he formally articulated the demand for a separate nation, a homeland, for all Muslims of India? Not at all. 63 years after India was violently divided on the premise that Hindus and Muslims cannot live together, a well-known and secular Muslim journalist and writer has quietly re-voiced what is essentially that very demand on that very unstated premise. On behalf of Indian Muslims who, in 1947, chose a secular India over an Islamic Pakistan.

MJ Akbar, writing in the Times of India of November 15, 2009, has, in one stroke, felled the very concept of secularism on which India is founded, by reiterating that not just mullahs, but even so-called secular Muslims like him, place their religious identity above all else. Should India be surprised? If a Westernised, whiskey-drinking, pork-eating, non-practicing Muslim like MA Jinnah could effortlessly don a separatist, communal coat and tear the country apart, are the likes of MJ Akbar going to face any difficulty in doing a volte face and attempting an encore?

Akbar, conscious of the heavy baggage of history, has begun with a call for carving a separate state in western Uttar Pradesh, comprising of areas where Muslims live in large numbers. "Such a state will have a substantive Muslim population, as well as a string of important Muslim educational institutions, from Aligarh to Deoband. It will become a natural socio-economic magnet for Muslims of the north." Pakistan was also visualised as a similar "magnet" for Muslim iron filings programmed to crowd out those following other faiths. Kashmir Valley, a part of India still, is another such magnet where the outcome has been duplicated.

It is evident that MJ Akbar has not thought up this pernicious demand on his own. It is probably being debated quietly among the clergy and has, not surprisingly, struck a chord with progressive and secular Muslims too. To give it concrete shape, the strategy being worked on is to find a vulnerable politician or political party ready to sell this nation to communal, divisive and regressive elements in exchange for captive Muslim votes, only to grab power at any cost and then loot the nation. Remember how some secular leaders like Mulayam Yadav and Amar Singh kept saying for a long time that SIMI was a secular organisation? Remember how some of them behaved after the Batla House encounter?

MJ Akbar says that the Congress has nothing new to offer to Muslims and that they have gone back to it due to lack of choice. So, he has zeroed in on Mulayam Yadav to "unlock the next dimension of Muslim demands", the one mentioned above being the first. This, in all likelihood will unleash a race between the Congress and Mulayam Yadav, both desperate to claim credit for conceding this demand, even if it is done obliquely by calling it "Harit Pradesh". In this unholy fight, many rootless media luminaries who sound like Congress party spokesmen will help the Congress by generating a wave of public opinion in TV studios and newspapers in support of India's first communally carved state.

Just a few days back, the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind passed a series of resolutions in Deoband which effectively rejected secularism completely and asked Muslims to look at themselves solely from the prism of a version of Islam that is followed by the Taliban in Pakistan too. Ominously, media discussion was limited to the issue of Vande Mataram only. Forget flinging of panties, those who cry murder at the slightest pretext otherwise, did not even open their mouths. It must be mentioned that the Deoband seminary from which both the Jamiat and the Taliban draw ideological guidance is going to be part of the new "Muslim" state that Akbar wants secular India to create.

Before Independence, the Congress blundered in not taking the challenge posed by separatist Muslim leaders seriously enough, and was stunned into submission by the violence that Jinnah unleashed with his call for Direct Action in 1946. This happened despite the fact that the party had giant leaders of spotless integrity and credentials. Now, India has few real leaders. Most so-called leaders have become businessmen and view politics as the fastest, safest and surest way to ill-gotten billions. Propagation and protection of dynasties has, as a direct result, become their primary concern. Such leaders can do anything. With eyes wide open, all faculties working. MJ Akbar has spotted in Mulayam Yadav what many believe is the most vulnerable and the most easily corruptible target. He also knows that this will have, at some stage, a domino effect as greedy politicians try every unacceptable trick to quench their almost totally unprincipled lust for power and pelf.

To my mind, the question is very simple. Are Indian citizens who are Muslims not ever going to look beyond their faith, not as a personal belief but as a communal, political tool? Are 15 crore Muslims really a minority in India when, as everyone knows, there is really no "Hindu" majority at all? What do we call Yadavs who vote for Mulayam Yadav? Or dalits who vote for Mayawati? Or Tamilians who vote for Karunanidhi or Jayalalitha? Where and who are the so-called "Hindus" who are oppressing Muslims and denying them their faith? Why are Muslims again seeking power communally as Muslims alone? Why do the same Muslims rush to denounce those who talk of Hindus as a whole and call them fascists?

In the dispensation that presently rules India, where are the Hindus? The PM is a Sikh, Chairman UPA, Sonia Gandhi, is a Catholic and her closest advisor, Ahmed Patel is a Muslim. Many other persons in her powerful inner circle like Oscar Fernandes, Ghulam Nabi Azad, AK Antony, Tom Vadakkan, Margaret Alva (she used to be Rahul's nanny on many outstation visits earlier) etc are all non-Hindus. In fact even many of the other so-called Hindus in this power ring, including media stooges, are actually rootless atheists who equate secularism with an abhorrence for the religion of their birth.

However imperfect, this is secularism at work and as Indians we are all proud of it. The question is: if it is working for Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jains and others, why are Muslims, even secular ones, having a problem with it?

Had this demand for a separate Muslim dominated state been made by a fundamentalist group that believes that it is the duty of all Muslims to establish the political rule of Islam over the whole world, one could have given it a miss. But when a leading secular media luminary articulates it, however subtly, it must ring alarm bells immediately everywhere.

People have forgotten that the idea of Pakistan had a lot to do with principle of religion based reservations. This "splittist" idea is again being flirted with very seriously by the same amnesic political party which presided over the Partition of this nation. The manner in which the Congress instituted the manifestly pre-programmed Sachar Committee with a clearly communal political objective in mind, is indication enough that the party has not learnt any lesson from history.

That is not surprising, considering the people who wield all the power in the party. Therefore, though it talks of secularism, there is little doubt that it will now even more readily capitulate to communal demands than it did before Independence. All that the coterie has to do is keep its First Family happy and in business. One example of the dangerous dynamics that are being mindlessly - or is it deliberately? - being set in motion is the recommendation of the Sachar Committee to do away with reserved constituencies where Muslims are in greater proportion in numbers than dalits. Why this change only on the basis of religion in a secular country? Why not in constituencies where other communities of other religions are similarly placed?

MJ Akbar is already speaking of the next dimension of Muslim demands after the first repeat of communal division already under implementation. He has undoubtedly studied Jinnah and Partition of India in great detail. India's leaders and media stars have either forgotten about it or have not bothered to read about it at all. In fact many want to pretend it never happened, because they do not know how to handle their vacuous notions of secularism with that reality in their face.

What do you think will be the next step after this "magnet" for Muslims becomes a reality right next to Delhi? More and more Muslims will systematically migrate to the new state till their numbers reach a level where only a Muslim party is in a position to form the government there. Then the bargaining power of Muslims will increase exponentially and communal demands will increasingly become more strident and uncompromising. Deja vu. Given the manner in which an Islamic Pakistan is imploding today, thanks to the Deoband-inspired ideology of the Taliban, and considering what has happened in Kashmir, one needs little imagination to visualise the danger that India will put itself in in the long run.

Muslims have never been suppressed by "Hindus" anywhere at any time in India's history. They have fallen behind primarily because they have fallen prey to isolationist religious leaders who are afraid of losing their hold over them and who want to use them as pawns in their political power games. The security-and-space ruse being thrown now is the same old lie that has been repeated everywhere; the ultimate objective is always the same: to seize power or to force a division on a communal basis whenever and wherever the numbers are right.

India's secularists never tire of speaking about the secular Mohammad Iqbal who penned the immortal "Saarey jahan se achha". But they don't want to be reminded that the same Iqbal was the leading ideologue and co-creator of Pakistan. They want to limit their vision to Dr Jekylls only and pretend that there were no Mr Hydes who violently hacked India on a communal basis. Unless they open their eyes to both dimensions, they will never see the events that shaped India's recent history in the correct perspective, and will wind up helping the likes of Akbar push India into repeating old mistakes and more.

Will India's so-called leaders, particularly the ones who fraudulently call themselves secular, wake up and put the nation above their narrow interests and ensure that the communal virus that first rejected India and secularism more than 70 years ago is not allowed to spread again and destroy the very idea of a secular, inclusive India?

We must not forget that there is no Raj and there is no British Indian Army too now. When things spin out of control next, ignited by a tiny spark somewhere, the fires will not die down and the dead will be beyond count.