Thank You Pakistan,
For Advani-APHC Talks
By
Kuldip Nayar
NEW DELHI should thank Islamabad for a positive response from
the All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC) to Deputy Prime Minister
L.K. Advani's offer for talks.
Had
Pakistan not encouraged Syed Ali Shah Gillani, its Trojan horse,
to break away from the organization, the APHC might not have agreed
on the meeting. Gillani would have insisted, like in the past,
on having a third chair for Pakistan at the negotiating table.
New
Delhi could not have accepted such a proposition because it would
have meant extending recognition to Islamabad as a partner. It
is true that India has conceded in the Simla agreement (1972)
that it will meet Pakistan to have "a final settlement on
Jammu and Kashmir." Off and on, New Delhi has reiterated
the assurance. Even otherwise, if India had been able to find
a permanent solution to the Kashmir problem without involving
Pakistan, it would have done so years ago.
Where
Pakistan goes wrong is in its belief that such a situation can
force India to discuss the Kashmir's accession de novo. A few
Pakistani leaders took the same route in the past but realized
even after hostilities that it was not possible to reopen the
whole issue. No government of any party can stay in power if it
ever tries to tinker with the accession. Cross-border terrorism
is an irritation but it is not something with which India cannot
live. It has been doing so for more than 12 years.
In
any case, after the 9/11 happenings in the US, the whole scenario
has changed. Terrorism of any kind at any place has come to be
considered an act of violence against humanity. As President Pervez
Musharraf has himself admitted, there is a perception that he
and his government are supporting extremists and terrorists. Islamabad
would realize, if it has not already done so, that the 85-odd
camps it has established along the Line of Control (LoC) to train
jihadis are counter-productive. They may be seen as an evidence
of the Al Qaeda activity.
What
is going to hurt Pakistan the most is the split in the APHC. Its
main leaders like Mir Waiz Omar Farooq, Abdul Ghani Bhatt and
APHC's new president Abbas Ansari have been looking towards Islamabad
for years. They are so much cut up that they did not attend even
the Iftar dinner party of the Pakistan high commissioner to India.
Their decision to talk to Delhi is not at the expense of Pakistan.
They say so.
Policy-makers
in Islamabad have turned out to be short-sighted. Fearing the
talks at some time, they have cut the ground from under their
own feet by playing the Islamic card through Gillani, the Jamaat-i-Islami
leader. His stand for Kashmir's merger with the Islamic state
of Pakistan is not popular. It has, in fact, alienated the state's
two other regions, the Hindu-majority Jammu and the Buddhist-majority
Ladakh, on the one hand, and pushed up the back of communal elements
in the rest of India, on the other. New Delhi too has contributed
towards communalizing the situation.
Some
13 years ago, it appointed Jagmohan, now a union minister, the
governor of Jammu and Kashmir to fight against militancy. He made
deep furrows in the muddy road to parochialism and encouraged
the Kashmiri pandits to migrate to Jammu, Delhi or some other
places. The day they left the valley - nearly 300,000 of them
- the demand for self-determination or independence assumed a
communal tone and pro-Pakistan tenor. The APHC, then influenced
by Gillani, did not stop the exodus of Kashmiri pandits.
Since
then the whole question has got mired in communalism. Jammu and
Ladakh have drifted away from the valley, both emotionally and
otherwise. They have begun to assert their own identity, regional
and religious. The APHC has been forced to admit that its sway
is confined to the precincts of the valley.
Yasin
Malik of JKLF has fired the imagination of Kashmiris by raising
the slogan of independence. The situation today is such that the
majority of the population that was once pro-Pakistan is now pro-Azadi.
But it is increasingly realizing that independence is a pipedream.
The
biggest loss of the APHC has been at the hands of the Pakistan-sponsored
jihadis. One, they have damaged the cause of the Kashmiri youth
who had raised the standard of revolt against New Delhi. Two,
they have given a religious color to the movement which was purely
national in character. The movement became suspect. Thousands
who sacrificed their lives did not make the kind of impact they
would have made if there had been no outsider.
Gillani
sabotaged the movement in another way: he argued that the Kashmiris
would join Pakistan after they had "freed" themselves
from India. Even the question of pandits' return to the valley,
he said, would be decided after Kashmir dispute was settled. Some
APHC leaders were unhappy with the approach. But they felt helpless
because there were too many Pakistani guns in their midst. Too
many foreign diplomats visiting them had spoken in different voices
and given them an exaggerated notion of the world's support to
their cause.
When
the 9/11 happenings jolted the APHC's thinking, it did not want
to be seen linked with terrorism in any way. Their fear was that
they might one day be dubbed partners of the Al Qaeda which mentioned
Kashmir as one of the territories they would free for Muslims.
However, it must be said to the credit of the Kashmiris that not
a single person from among them participated in the Taliban's
jihad in Afghanistan. There were Muslims from every part of the
world but not from India.
Gillani
and Pakistan have miscalculated their support. The Kashmiris are
not fundamentalists. Nor are they willing to launch another liberation
struggle. They are too tired and too sick of violence. They want
peace with honor. New Delhi's attitude towards the APHC underwent
a change when Abbas, a liberal, came to head the organization.
Gillani's exit and Shabbir Shah's entry had already made the APHC
acceptable. The rest is too familiar to be repeated.
The
question that arises is whether the talks would be on the lines
that Sheikh Abdullah had with the government under Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi. There was an agreement as well in 1975. Gillani
is already pooh-poohing the talks by saying that they would be
another Sheikh-type exercise without purpose.
New
Delhi should be prudent in its approach. The APHC has come to
the negotiating table for the first time and it has put no prior
conditions. That it has dissociated itself from Gillani's support
for accession to Pakistan and Yasin Malik's demand for independence
is an indication that the APHC wants to avoid the two extremes.
Can some formula be worked out to give the valley an autonomous
status?
A
map showing the division of Jammu and Kashmir has been attributed
to the APHC. Jammu and Ladakh are shown under India and the valley
and most of Kashmir now with Pakistan under the dual control of
New Delhi and Islamabad. Some features are similar to the trifurcation,
a formula that the RSS had adumbrated.
Before
discussing anything concrete, it would be better if New Delhi
and APHC were to agree on some principles which would govern the
settlement. And one of them should be not to entertain any arrangement
on the basis of religion. The subcontinent has gone through the
traumatic experience of partition. It killed 10 lakh people and
uprooted 20 lakh of families. India cannot afford to have another
situation like that.
The
writer is a leading columnist based in New Delhi.
