There is no dishonour in exploring the flexibility and leeway provided in the Constitution to satisfy the demand for self-governance in Kashmir.
LAST MONDAY, voters in four Assembly constituencies of Jammu and Kashmir turned out in large numbers to exercise their franchise. The average turnout in the four by-elections is reported to be more than 50 per cent, highest since the insurgency broke out in the late 1980s, despite a boycott call by separatist outfits. By engaging in the electoral process, the people of the troubled State are expressing faith in the potency of the democratic idiom to unleash sufficient political energy and imagination to help find a solution to the Kashmir problem and lead to normalisation of relations between India and Pakistan. Are the ruling establishments in New Delhi and Islamabad in a mood to respond to the new urges and aspirations on both sides of the Line of Control?

On its part, the Manmohan Singh Government has remained consistently focussed on the need to solve the Kashmir problem. The Prime Minister is scheduled to hold a second round of talks across the table with various Kashmiri groups in Srinagar on May 25. It is not clear whether the separatist groups will put in an appearance at the conclave. But it is clear that after the nuclear deal with Washington, the Manmohan Singh regime has doubled its efforts to reach some kind of understanding with the Pervez Musharraf Government and the alienated groups, all in a spirit of give-and-take. Indications are that New Delhi and Islamabad are in advanced stage of negotiations on some kind of agreement on demilitarisation of Siachen.

Inevitably, the opposition has already started in India. Resistance to the idea of peace emanates from three overlapping sources: (1) those who believe that every effort and initiative of the present regime has to be opposed. This includes assorted voices belonging to the old National Democratic Alliance regime and its loyalists as also those who remain intractably hostile to the Congress, and more particularly to its president; (2) the unreconstructed Right, which joyfully subscribes to a theory of inevitable hostility with Pakistan and with Islam; and (3) the hardcore security establishment including elements in the Indian armed forces, the ubiquitous "agencies" that have a strong institutional stake in continuation of a conflict with Pakistan. This group's familiar argument is premised on General Musharraf's untrustworthiness and a deep distrust of the Pakistani army's jihadi links and its ideological hostility to India. The Pakistani army's intractably hostile intentions are being cited to scupper the Siachen demilitarisation proposals.

In our self-righteous way, we have convinced ourselves that Pakistan alone is responsible for all the tensions, conflicts and confrontations. We have also come to believe that a tendentious conflict with India gives the Pakistani state its raison d'etre. This presumably unquestionable ingrained hostility in Pakistan towards India has been the basis for our own massive military machine and vastly bloated defence budgets. This pre-occupation with Pakistan has found its resonance in our domestic politics. In the last decade, this hostility helped the BJP and the sangh parivar make the vital breakthrough at the national level. However, towards the end of his regime, Atal Bihari Vajpayee too sought to mend fences with Pakistan. Now back in the Opposition, the BJP leaders have once again started chanting the "national security" mantra.

This confrontationist engagement with Pakistan has always been mired in the politics of the past. It is natural that those who believe — ideologically or doctrinally — in enmity with Pakistan have the greatest of difficulty in breaking out of this paradigm of permanent hostility. True, the advocates of an endless confrontation with Pakistan constitute a very small slice. But since, over the years, national security has been elevated as the most sacred mantra in our public discourse, there is a marked reluctance among the political, bureaucratic, and armed forces leaders to think innovatively beyond clichés and prejudices.

Changing India


India is changing and its foreign policy cannot remain out of sync with the changed sentiments, preferences, values, and ambitions of the Indian society. The recent debate on the relationship with the United States revealed the mismatch between those who chose to remain anchored in the past and those willing to move on to the possibilities of a new globalised world. Indian nationalism and statehood no longer need a sustained hostility with Pakistan for our collective equanimity. Whatever pent-up emotions there may be get exhausted in the rivalry between the two cricket teams. In the new middle class India, nationalistic sentiments get tapped daily and hourly by the market forces, with global companies wrapping their products in the "national tricolour." Even on the popular level, there are no takers for the over-heated national security mythology, as the calm and reasoned responses to the bombs in Varanasi and Jama Masjid demonstrated. Neither the invocation of the Hindu-Muslim animosity nor an invitation to a confrontation with Pakistan seems to distract the new self-assured India from its pursuit of affluence, consumerism, and global engagement.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has to be given the credit for realising that India cannot achieve its potential as a great nation as long as it remains mired in a bleeding confrontation with Pakistan. Having boldly stated to the Pakistani leader that boundaries cannot be redrawn, he is prepared to walk the extra mile. Like most sensible Indians, he too recognises that if India wants to be recognised as a major global player it will have to give evidence of its ability to iron out differences with countries in its own neighbourhood. More on international reputation, peace with Pakistan will have massive peace dividend in both the countries and the South Asia region, opening up possibilities of economic cooperation and trade to everybody's advantage.

But any definite rapprochement with Pakistan would inevitably involve some kind of a new deal in Jammu and Kashmir. Now that India has demonstrated its stamina and wherewithal to defeat any kind of militaristic or jihadi takeover of the Kashmir Valley, it is our obligation to ensure that the people of Jammu and Kashmir do not lose faith in the efficacy of the Indian democracy and its potential to accommodate and to re-entice the alienated and the angry. The Indian leadership has always been committed to the "short of azadi, sky is the limit" formulation. In fact, all that is required is for the Indian leadership is to respect the promises that have been made to the people of Jammu and Kashmir under the Constitution. Whether he belongs to the BJP or the Congress or the communist party, the Prime Minister gets his legitimacy and authority from the Constitution, and there is no dishonour in exploring the flexibility and leeway provided in it to satisfy the demand for self-governance in Kashmir.

Peace with Pakistan along with reconciliation in Kashmir is a morally defensible project, and it is important that the Manmohan Singh Government undertake this project in a transparent manner. That means mobilising the democratic voices and sentiments in favour of a workable accommodation with Pakistan. Kashmir, no doubt, is a complicated and messy business, but the Indian establishment is smart enough to keep at arm's length the meddlesome foreign do-gooder, just as there is enough experience in sifting the bogus from the genuine in the Kashmiri separatist camp.

The problem, however, is that the Manmohan Singh Government is prone to doing things secretly. Admitted, diplomacy cannot be conducted in a bazaar. At the same time, it is necessary to spell out openly and boldly what India is prepared (and not prepared ) to do in the cause of peace. As the experience in the India-United States nuclear agreement demonstrated, it was the in-house opposition that almost derailed the deal. At the same time, democratic opposition from the BJP and the Left parties did help Manmohan Singh's negotiators in their tough bargaining with American interlocutors. The Prime Minister is yet to put in place an empowered negotiating structure; too many peacemakers are at work and this does not add to the Government's reputation for competence. Perceptions of sloppiness invite opposition.

A rapprochement with Pakistan will represent a dramatic paradigm shift. Democracies cannot introduce dramatic changes surreptitiously. The people of Pakistan, including the military establishment, erratic political parties, and their equally erratic leaders, should feel that it is a new India, democratically self-assured and economically forward-looking, that is offering reasonable terms of friendship and reconciliation. And the people of Jammu and Kashmir, too, feel the accommodative potential of Indian democracy. Peace need not be a frightening prospect.

Courtesy :The Hindu