'Truth spoken without moderation reverses itself'
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Thursday, August 25, 2016

Mohan Guruswamy - For azadi for all, it is time to break the fiction of Jammu and Kashmir // BR Singh - Kashmir: Any workable solution would have to include restoration of full autonomy to Kashmir

Until the mid-19th
century, “Kashmir” denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the
Pir Panjal mountain range. The name Kashmir derives from the Sanskrit
Kashyapmeru. The Greeks knew it as Kaspeiria. Herodotus called it Kaspatyros.
Emperor Ashoka, who called it Shrinagari, founded the capital near present day
Srinagar. The ruins of this Ashokan city still stand. Kashmir evolved with a
strong Buddhist tradition, but Buddhism here like in the rest of India drowned
in the wave of Hindu revivalism initiated by Adi Shankaracharya in the 9th
century AD.

Muslim rule was
ushered in by Shamsuddin Shah Mir (1339-42), a courtier in the court of King
Udayanadeva who seized the throne after his death. The Mughals took control in
1586 during the rule of Jalaluddin Akbar. The region came under the control of
the Durrani Empire in Kabul from 1753 to 1819 when the Sikhs took over. In 1846
the treacheryof Gulab Singh, a Dogra general and governor of Jammu
towards the Sikh kingdom of Lahore was repaid when the British gave him Jammu
for it and further turned over the Kashmir Valley to him for Rs 75 lakh. And
thus under the treaty of AmritsarGulab Singh became the first
Maharajah of the so-called princely state of Jammu and Kashmir – the first time
Jammu and Kashmir became one administrative entity.

As governor of Jammu,
Gulab Singh had also captured Ladakh and Baltistan. His son Ranbir Singh added
Hunza, Gilgit and Nagar to the kingdom. Thus, a composite state of disparate
regions, religions and ethnicities was formed. This is reflected in the present
day demographics.

The Kashmir Valley of
about 6.9 million people is 96.4% Muslim with Hindus and Buddhists accounting
for just 3.6%. Jammu which has a population of 5.4 million is 62.6% Hindu and
33.5% Muslims, mostly concentrated in Poonch. Ladakh has a population of just
30 lakh with its 46.4% of Shia Muslims concentrated in Kargil, 40% Buddhist
concentrated around Leh and 12.1% Hindus. Pakistan Occupied Kashmir areas,
including Gilgit-Baltistan, are almost 100% Muslim. The total population now of
J&K is 12,541,302, POK is 2,580,000 and Gilgit-Baltistan is 870,347.

The purpose of
elaborating on this is two fold. Historically, all the regions of Jammu and
Kashmir are part of the present narrative of India’s composite history. Despite
its preponderant Muslim population, the history of the people of the Kashmir
Valley is intertwined with all the different local histories of the many
nationalities of present-day India, which is also home to the world’s
second-largest Muslim population. There is no separate Kashmir story as there
is for Afghanistan or Nepal. It was always a part of India, except for a brief
rule from Kabul. There is no cause or case for a separate Kashmir, as the
Tibetans may have or the Palestinians have.

The second point here
is that the Kashmiris are a distinct ethnic group with little or no historical
or social affinities, except Islam, with those of the other regions of the
erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. This Jammu and Kashmir, with or without
Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, is an artificial entity of recent origin.

Jammu and Kashmir is
not the only princely state that acceded to India with some early hesitations
and a bit of acrimony. The Maharaja of Jodhpur was an early ditherer who even
contemplated acceding to Pakistan till sanity prevailed. The story of Junagadh
is well known. Hyderabad, India’s biggest princely state and an inheritor of
varied traditions including the Sathavahanas, Kakatiyas, Bahmanis and Mughals
was, like J&K, stitched together with three large and distinct regions. If
J&K had to be rescued by the Indian Army from tribal raiders from present
day Pakistan and encouraged and provisioned by the new state of Pakistan,
Hyderabad, surrounded on all sides by former British Indian Presidencies, had
to be taken by the Indian Army from the dithering Asaf Jah ruler and his
coterie of Muslim nobles and proselytising rabble.

But look at how
differently these one-time princely states were dealt with. .. read more:

Indians and Pakistanis
tend to comprehend Kashmir through catchphrases – ‘Heaven on Earth’, ‘Paradise
of the East’, ‘Switzerland of India’ and so on. Another set of catchphrases
‘atoot ang’, ‘shah rug’, and now ‘Kashmir banega Pakistan’ and ‘azadi’ dominate
our image of the place, conjuring up visions of frenzied crowds and disfigured
faces pockmarked and blinded. The ugly images of the results of crowd control
measures repel sensitive Indians. The question is, what is to be done?

First, we should rule
out what cannot be done. A plebiscite is not possible. Of the many resolutions
the UN passed on Kashmir, only two are relevant to the plebiscite: those of
August 13, 1948 and January 5, 1949. A plebiscite was to follow the complete
withdrawal of tribal invaders and Pakistan forces from the invaded areas of
Jammu & Kashmir, after which India would draw down its forces to a number
just sufficient to maintain law and order and hold a plebiscite. Pakistan never
withdrew its troops, and one cannot imagine it withdrawing them now. That rules
out a plebiscite permanently.

Imagining what can be
done in Kashmir requires suspending prejudice, and abandoning preconceived
notions. The grievances of Kashmir’s Muslims are not only genuine, they fester
at the core of their emotional being. Any workable solution begins with recognition
by Delhi that the root of the problem lies in its own actions since 1953,
bearing in mind that what would have worked in the 80s had lost traction in the
90s and the openings available in the new millennium may no longer work in
2016.

Despite the hardline S
A S Geelani, and the more recent Islamist tendency among youthful protestors it
is wrong to suppose that there are no reasonable voices left in Kashmir. It is
not possible in this short piece to detail the grievances Kashmiris have
against India, many real, some imagined. They have multiplied as the decades
passed. The Sheikh’s arrest, rigged elections, police rule under Bakshi and his
successors are some.

After militancy
erupted, India’s record of human rights violations, the humiliations inflicted
on Kashmiris and the sheer indifference to their plight only added to the
alienation. India prides itself on its democratic traditions and the rule of
law. Kashmiris have seen little of either. They firmly believe that Sheikh
Abdullah made the wrong choice in 1947, when he chose Hindu India over Muslim
Pakistan.

Any workable solution
therefore must address the full gamut of Kashmiri anger, even if no solution
can fully assuage the intense negative sentiment about India. It is a feeling
of impotence against an overbearing Indian state that propels successive
generations to increasingly violent expression of their rage. In the short run,
India can hope at best to neutralise the anger. It cannot build emotional
bridges, let alone win hearts.

The solution must distinguish
between the Kashmir problem, which is an international issue between India and
Pakistan, and India’s problem in Kashmir, which is a domestic matter. The
Kashmir problem may never be solved, but India’s problem in Kashmir is amenable
to positive outcomes even now. Subtly handled it can have a favourable impact
upon the international issue as well.

A flexible approach
will allow various paths to a solution. It must be acceptable to the majority
of Kashmiris as well as satisfy Jammu’s Hindus and Ladakhi Buddhists, and
non-Kashmiri Muslims. It must provide for the expelled Pandits living in forced
exile.

Amendments can always
take care of constitutional impediments if they arise. We amend that document
more than once annually on the average. In fact, the J&K Constitution will
need amendment too. Separatists are prone to think of J&K as sacrosanct: it
is however only the malformed and malfunctioning product of a treaty between
Gulab Singh and the British, a treaty upon which Kashmiri leaders regularly heap
curses.

It is possible to make
the entire state autonomous as the Constitution envisages, or only parts of it,
such as the Valley, and if the residents want, the adjoining Muslim majority
areas. Regional autonomy is possible for Ladakh and Jammu. Special
relationships between Delhi and some parts of the state such as Leh can be
envisaged in a deal, which gives Kashmir full autonomy over all matters outside
those specified in Article 370.

Pandits who want to
return should be enabled to do so, unconditionally. It is their legal right;
Kashmiri Muslim clusters have come up in Jammu city without interference from
its Hindus, the same principle applies to the Pandits. Government sponsored
colonies are a bad idea; but what is there to prevent housing cooperatives?

Article 370 allows
trade and travel across the LoC. The restricted trade across the LoC needs to
be expanded through a currency arrangement. If Kashmiris want their own
currency, why stop them? Scotland after all has the Scottish pound freely
useable in the UK.

When Prime Minister
Narendra Modi finally spoke on Kashmir he commented that Kashmiris have as much
‘azadi’ as other Indians. This misses the point. Kashmiris have not been
struggling for the ‘azadi’ that other Indians have; they want more. It is what
the Constitution promised them. All states want less control from Delhi, but
only J&K had it guaranteed under Article 370. If Islamists are gaining the
upper hand it is because Delhi will not relent on restoring what it has taken
away without popular sanction.