Reviving true kashmiriyat

by Malini Parthasarathy

In this era of post-nationalism, it is possible to preserve the distinct Kashmiri cultural identity in an autonomous political framework that is not at odds with the idea of it being part of a larger Indian Union.

While bleakly pessimistic readings of the escalating violence in the Kashmir Valley are already declaring that India's more than 60-year painstaking quest to retain the picturesque State within its Union has collapsed, there are strong signs that the situation can be easily pulled back from the brink. What is called for is not just deft political management but some transparent introspection that can be shared loud and clear between New Delhi, Srinagar and the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

It will have to be a conversation that is audible to the outside world, so that it has authenticity and thereby credibility. But most important, the dialogue must reach into history, examine the commitments that have been made especially in recent years and ensure that the faith of ordinary people in the capacity of politics and in the political system is substantively renewed.

The fast moving events in the Valley with the death count of innocent youths rising every day since June 11 in the increasingly violent standoff between civilian protesters and the security forces, served as a wake-up call for New Delhi. The Srinagar stone-pelting campaign brought back the unsavoury memories of the movement for azadi as the slogans shouted on the Srinagar streets were mainly for India to “go back”.

It was a rude jolt to the United Progressive Alliance's self assured and even complacent perception that the peace process initiated in 2006 by the Manmohan Singh administration was in place. The reconciliatory process was clearly in shreds and the situation had spun out of control. Officials and politicians in Srinagar and New Delhi were evidently overwhelmed by the vehemence and intensity of the anger that was spilling out on to the streets.

Some of that realisation appeared to reflect in the Prime Minister's rueful recalling of the steps that his government had taken since 2004, in his meeting with the all-party delegation from Jammu and Kashmir on August 10. Noting that his government had invested heavily in the peace process, having been given the space by the “brave rejection” of militancy by the people, Dr. Singh signalled his recognition of the inevitability of a dialogue with Pakistan on the historical dispute over Kashmir's status. He also admitted that what was needed was “a political solution that addresses the alienation and emotional needs of the people” which could only be achieved through “a sustained internal and external dialogue.”

The Prime Minister sought to remind his audience that his government had set up a number of round tables and working groups in order to bring about a durable peace. Yet in his recounting of the past, he did not offer an explanation of the sudden ebbing of momentum in that very process as a result of the gap between these professed intentions and what had actually transpired in the last three years after the last roundtable concluded in April 2007. There is no doubt that the fatal blow to the Manmohan Singh initiative on Kashmir was the abandonment of the working group process after 2007. After showcasing the Roundtable meetings and working group process as the “way forward” in addressing the alienation of the Valley, for New Delhi to have dropped that entire process was a disconcerting signal.

At the end of the third roundtable conference in April 2007, the Prime Minister had proposed that as a sequel to the constitution of the working groups, a “standing committee of the roundtable conference” be set up “to meet as and when necessary to take stock of the implementation of the recommendations of the working groups.” He had also left it to the Chief Minister to finalise the membership of the standing committee. At that point it was a Congress-PDP coalition that was at the helm with Ghulam Nabi Azad, the Congress candidate as the Chief Minister. Yet inexplicably, the concept of a standing committee to oversee the implementation of the working group recommendations never took shape.

It has been argued that because of the change of regime in Srinagar and the various agitations such as Amarnath and Shopian, the stakes that New Delhi had invested in the peace process could not be successfully sustained. But to have left the Kashmir peace process, an issue of critical national importance, to the vagaries of partisan party politics is an unacceptable lapse of judgment. As a result, critical political and strategic space has unnecessarily been conceded to the separatists.

Yet it is not at all too late for New Delhi to regain the initiative. First, the South Asian regional dynamics have radically changed as a result of the post-9/11 context. The 1990s were dominated by the aftermath of the break-up of the Soviet Union, when campaigns for self-determination and cultural nationalist assertions received worldwide attention and empathy. But vastly different political currents are driving the 21st century, with the global powers led by the United States and including China, for their own strategic reasons having little stake in encouraging fragmentary and breakaway impulses, founded on ethno-nationalism.

Recognising these changed dynamics, the former Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, offered his four-point formula which in essence suggested rendering boundaries irrelevant by allowing a substantive unification of the two Kashmirs, a proposal that New Delhi felt had potential. The key point to recognise in approaching the Kashmir issue is that in this era of post-nationalism, it is possible to preserve the distinct Kashmiri cultural identity in an autonomous political framework that is not at odds with the idea of it being part of a larger Indian Union.

New Delhi's bureaucracy, traditionally suspicious of any formulations that would loosen Srinagar's ties with New Delhi, has failed to grasp the enormous creative potential in engagement with interlocutors such as Mirwaiz Moulvi Farooq, a visionary who is fiercely anti-fundamentalist but seeks to protect Kashmir's unique political identity. In a recent interview in the August issue of the new Srinagar periodical Conveyor, Mirwaiz explained that he believed that the Kashmiris were “in a situation where things have changed, it is not 1947 and the realities are entirely different in 2010.” He also said “we have to move beyond history now and look at options where we can create opportunities of addressing the problem.” Significantly he added “Self determination should not be viewed as a limited or closed thing … we have to look at the broader concept of things.”

The potential in Mirwaiz's views must be explored as also the ideas of the Mehbooba Mufti-led People's Democratic Party, the Congress party's erstwhile coalition partner, which envisage cross-border power-sharing arrangements between the people on both sides of the Line of Control to be able to “gain an uncontrolled access to our own resources and the bounties of nature that are shared by our region as a whole”. In the PDP proposal for self-rule is also a careful acknowledgment that the present national boundaries of India and Pakistan must be preserved.

The Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, has the historic responsibility of ensuring that the much delayed constitutional, political and economic processes that enable a radically autonomous status for the State under Article 370, are set in motion. In June 2000, it was his father Farooq Abdullah, then the Chief Minister, who got the J&K State Assembly to adopt a path breaking resolution based on its State Autonomy Committee (SAC) Report proposing that “matters in the Union List not connected with … Defence, External Affairs and Communications … should be excluded from their application of the State”.

It is time for India to uphold the unique circumstances of Kashmir's accession to India and accept the inevitability of loosening its ties to the Union. One positive signal would be to agree to the SAC proposal that the word “temporary” which couches the provision on Article 370 be replaced with the word “special”, thereby protecting the State's special status from the frequent political assaults on it, especially from Hindu nationalists.

The second important aspect of the task ahead is to assure the support of both the Centre and the State government for the project to revive genuine kashmiriyat, the historically unique ethos of the Kashmir valley that is in essence syncretic, harmonious and independent of both the national constructs of India and Pakistan. Respecting kashmiriyat is not by any stretch of imagination anti-Indian. Kashmiriyat is as much a part of the sub-continental heritage as is the rich Dravidian culture of Tamil Nadu.

Kashmiriyat is a proud assertion of a unique Kashmiri cultural identity that is unabashedly pluralist in its moorings, inclusive in its orientation that embraces both Muslims and Pandits. It is as far removed from the hard-line Islamists who seek to hijack this sentiment and turn it into a movement for self-determination, as it is from the Hindu nationalists who demand Kashmir's complete integration with the Indian Union.

The way forward is to revive the true spirit of kashmiriyat. It is a test of India's political ingenuity to find ways and means of upholding it without necessarily compromising the larger issue of national boundaries.

source: hindu

The only package Kashmir needs is justice

by Siddharth Varadarajan


If the Prime Minister does not take bold steps to address the grievances of the Kashmiris, there's no telling where the next eruption will take us.

Whatever his other failings, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah deserves praise for acknowledging that the protests which have rocked the Kashmir valley these past few weeks are ‘leaderless' and not the product of manipulation by some hidden individual or group.

This admission has been difficult for the authorities to make because its implications are unpleasant, perhaps even frightening. In security terms, the absence of a central nervous system means the expanding body of protest cannot be controlled by arresting individual leaders. And in political terms, the spectre of leaderless revolt makes the offer of ‘dialogue' or the naming of a ‘special envoy' for Kashmir — proposals which might have made sense last year or even last month — seem completely and utterly pointless today.

Ever since the current phase of disturbances began, intelligence officials have been wasting precious time convincing the leadership and public of India that the protests are solely or mostly the handiwork of agent provocateurs. So we have been told of the role of the Lashkar-e-Taiba and ISI, of the ‘daily wage of Rs. 200' — and even narcotics — being given to stone pelters. A few weeks back, an audio recording of a supposedly incriminating telephone call was leaked to the media along with a misleading transcript suggesting the Geelani faction of the Hurriyat was behind the upsurge. Now, our TV channels have “learned” from their “sources” that the protests will continue till President Obama's visit in November.

Central to this delusional narrative of manipulated protest is the idea that the disturbances are confined to just a few pockets in the valley. Last week, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram told reporters the problem was limited to Srinagar and two other towns. No doubt, some areas like downtown Srinagar, Sopore and Baramulla were in the ‘vanguard' but one of the reasons the protests spread was popular frustration over the way in which the authenticity of mass sentiment was being dismissed by the government. For the women who came on to the streets with their pots and pans and even stones, or the youths who set up spontaneous blood donation camps to help those injured in the demonstrations, this attempt to strip their protest of both legitimacy and agency was yet another provocation.

In the face of this mass upsurge, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has two options. He can declare, like the party apparatchiks in Brecht's poem, that since the people have thrown away the confidence of the government, it is time for the government to dissolve the people and elect another. Or he can admit, without prevarication or equivocation, that his government has thrown away the confidence of the ordinary Kashmiri.

This was not the way things looked in January 2009, when Omar Abdullah became chief minister. Assembly elections had gone off well. And though turnout in Srinagar and other towns was low, there was goodwill for the young leader. Of course, those who knew the state well had warned the Centre not to treat the election as an end in itself. The ‘masla-e-Kashmir' remained on the table and the people wanted it resolved. Unfortunately, the Centre failed to recognise this.

It is too early to gauge the reaction to Mr. Abdullah's promise of a “political package” once normalcy is restored. But the people have thronged the streets are likely to ask why this package — which the chief minister himself admitted was “long in the pipeline” — was never delivered for all the months normalcy prevailed. What came in the way of amending the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act? Of ensuring there was zero tolerance for human rights violations? Of strengthening the “ongoing peace process both internally and externally”, as the all-party meeting in Srinagar earlier this month reminded the Centre to do?

At the heart of this missing package is the Centre's failure to craft a new security and political strategy for a situation where militancy no longer poses the threat it once did. The security forces in the valley continue to operate with an expansive mandate that is not commensurate with military necessity. Even if civilian deaths are less than before, the public's capacity to tolerate ‘collateral damage' when it is officially said that militancy has ended and normalcy has returned is also much less than before.

The immediate trigger for the current phase of protests was the death of 17-year-old Tufail Mattoo, who was killed by a tear gas canister which struck his head during a protest in Srinagar in June against the Machhil fake encounter of April 30. Many observers have blamed his death — and the deaths of other young men since then — on the security forces lacking the training and means for non-lethal crowd control. Tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon are used all over the world in situations where protests turn violent but in India, live ammunition seems to be the first and only line of defence. Even tear gas canisters are so poorly designed here that they lead to fatalities.

Whatever the immediate cause, however, it is also safe to say that young Tufail died as a direct result of Machhil. Though the Army has arrested the soldiers responsible for the fake encounter, the only reason they had the nerve to commit such a heinous crime was because they were confident they would get away with it. And at the root of that confidence is Pathribal, the notorious fake encounter of 2000. The army officers involved in the kidnapping and murder of five Kashmiri civilians there continue to be at liberty despite being charge-sheeted by the CBI. The Ministry of Defence has refused to grant sanction for their prosecution and has taken the matter all the way to the Supreme Court in an effort to ensure its men do not face trial. What was the message that went out as a result?

Had the Centre made an example of the rotten apples that have spoiled the reputation of the Army instead of protecting them all these years, the Machhil encounter might never have happened. Tufail would not be dead and angry mobs would not be attacking police stations and government buildings. Impunity for the few has directly endangered the lives of all policemen and paramilitary personnel stationed in Kashmir. There is a lesson in this, surely, for those who say punishing the guilty will lower the morale of the security forces.

Mr. Abdullah may not be the best administrator but his biggest handicap as chief minister has been the Centre's refusal to address the ordinary Kashmiri's concerns about the over-securitsation of the state. Today, when he is being forced to induct an even greater number of troops into the valley, the Chief Minister's ability to push for a political package built around demilitarisation is close to zero.

At the Centre's urging, Mr. Abdullah made a televised speech to his people. His words do not appear to have made any difference. Nor could they, when the crisis staring us in the face is of national and international proportions. Today, the burden of our past sins in Kashmir has come crashing down like hailstones. Precious time is being frittered in thinking of ways to turn the clock back. Sending in more forces to shoot more protesters, changing the chief minister, imposing Governor's Rule — all of these are part of the reliquary of failed statecraft. We are where we are because these policies never worked.

The Prime Minister can forget about the Commonwealth Games, AfPak and other issues. Kashmir is where his leadership is urgently required. The Indian state successfully overcame the challenge posed by terrorism and militancy. But a people in ferment cannot be dealt with the same way. Manmohan Singh must take bold steps to demonstrate his willingness to address the grievances of ordinary Kashmiris. He should not insult their sentiments by talking of economic packages, roundtable conferences and all-party talks. He should unreservedly express regret for the deaths that have occurred these past few weeks. He should admit, in frankness and humility, the Indian state's failure to deliver justice all these years. And he should ask the people of Kashmir for a chance to make amends. There is still no guarantee the lava of public anger which is flowing will cool. But if he doesn't make an all-out effort to create some political space today, there is no telling where the next eruption in the valley will take us.

Faesal becomes first Kashmiri to top UPSC exam

by Urvashi Sarkar


Transforming a hurdle into a moment of opportunity, Dr. Shah Faesal coped with personal tragedy to become the first from the Kashmiri province to top the Union Public Service Commission 2009 examinations.

The untimely death of his father in 2002 at the hands of “unidentified militants” days before his Pre-Medical Test did not deter Dr. Faesal from clearing the test or from becoming the first candidate from Kashmir in several years to be selected to the Indian Administrative Service through open merit.

Dr.Faisal who turns 27 on May 17 was only 19 when his father, a teacher, was killed in Kupwara.

As friends, well-wishers and the media on Thursday thronged the Hamdard Study Circle premises here where the doctor took coaching for the Civil Services examination, Dr. Faesal said: “I had only two choices — to be bogged down or to stand up and face the challenge.”

A festive atmosphere prevailed as Dr. Faesal, attired in brown formals, articulated himself in well thought out and measured words, surrounded by people eager to shake hands with him and feed him sweets.

Asked why he chose not to pursue medicine, he said: “I felt that I could not have made a change by being at a hospital and wanted to work with the government.”

Appearing resolved about which service he wanted to get into, Dr. Faesal said: “I have chosen the Indian Administrative Service already.”

He would like to serve from Kashmir, as he was familiar with the environment and had a vision for it. However, he would not mind serving in any part of the country.