October 30, 2010 8:17:01 PM
Ashok Malik
In the absence of any clarity on what the Government wants to achieve, the group of interlocutors is unlikely to make headway in Jammu & Kashmir
Speaking to journalists at the conclusion of the newest Jammu & Kashmir committee’s first visit to Srinagar, Ms Radha Kumar, one of the three interlocutors appointed by the Union Government, said it was possible the Constitution would need to be amended if a lasting peace were to be achieved in the Valley. Prima facie there is nothing wrong with this contention. Those who argue that it amounts to agreeing to the disintegration of India or the granting of independence to the Kashmir Valley are talking through their hat. They simply don’t understand the philosophy behind India’s — or any — Constitution.
A Constitution is a social contract that a people draw up to organise themselves into a nation or a sovereign entity. A Constitution reflects the aspirations and beliefs of its people at a particular stage in an individual society’s evolution. The people who draw up the Constitution also agree to be ruled by it; however, they do not agree to be its slaves. The difference is crucial. It explains why Constitutions can be amended, rewritten or even replaced as a people, a society and a nation move on.
It is worth pondering that when the Mizo insurgency came to an end in 1986, with the signing of the accord between the Rajiv Gandhi Government and Pu Laldenga’s Mizo National Front, it led to the granting of full-fledged statehood to Mizoram. This required a constitutional amendment and created the framework for what is now seen as a model conclusion to an insurgency problem. To this day, Mizoram remains among the most tranquil States in the North-East.
Yet, in 1966, backed by foreign powers, the MNF was bent on Mizos seceding from India. In one of the most disturbing events in Indian history, the Indian Air Force was ordered to bomb Aizawl, the biggest city of the Mizo people and today the capital of Mizoram.
The point here is not to advocate a separate State for the Kashmir Valley; nor is it to compare the Mizoram and Kashmir situations. It is only to stress that a creative re-interpretation of the Constitution cannot be discounted and to merely suggest this should not be a crime. What the exact modalities of this re-interpretation/amendment — if it is required in the first place — will be are impossible to predict, but it needs to be in the menu of options. So long as the basic structure of the Constitution and the Republic of India are not questioned — and India’s territorial integrity is not compromised — where is the problem?
As such, the objection cannot be to the idea that the Constitution may be amended, but to the manner in which this was suggested. Indeed, in their eagerness to speak to the media and provide journalists a running commentary on their daily schedule in Srinagar — who they were meeting, what they were discussing, what they were willing to discuss, who would be part of the final resolution of the Kashmir issue — did the interlocutors serve any purpose?
Was it really necessary for them to make themselves available to television channels every evening? If they had gone to the Kashmir Valley as listeners, they should have listened and reduced their media engagements to bland one-liners — ‘We are here to hear others’ or ‘We are open to all options’ — without quite spelling out the options.
Frankly, the lack of political experience and craft — loaded word that, but appropriate in this context — among the members of the committee is beginning to show up. In publicly taking positions such as ‘We can discuss independence’ or ‘Pakistan will have to be part of the resolution’, the interlocutors are making commitments they are in no position to fulfil. They are setting themselves up for failure.
The Kashmir problem has an external dimension and an internal dimension. While stressing it has no brief and ‘red lines’, the committee of interlocutors is being disingenuous if it believes its mandate extends to the external dimensions of the dispute. It is not negotiating with Pakistan — though a reference to and recommendations about dealing with Islamabad may well form an ancillary part of its final report.
Its principal task is to focus on domestic parameters: On the structure and soul of the relationship between the people of the Kashmir Valley and the rest of the State of Jammu & Kashmir, the Government of India, and the rest of India. This is an ambitious enough job, without bringing in external factors.
Old hands in Srinagar are, however, disheartened at the absence of political representation in the committee. As a senior member of the All-Party Hurriyat Conference puts it, “Certain goodwill was generated by the all-party delegation that visited Srinagar. If you notice, there has been no serious violence or disruption after that. With a light-weight committee, you will squander that goodwill.”
Ideally this committee needed to have been headed by a senior Congress politician who was not a Minister. That would have given the Government the space to manoeuvre, and perhaps it could have entered into Minister-level interlocution at a later stage, if and when proposals had been firmed up. If the Government were audacious, it would have invited the BJP — maybe the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha — to head the committee and offered to place a serving Cabinet Minister as a subordinate member.
Unfortunately, the UPA Government took neither course. The Congress has too much historical baggage when it comes to Jammu & Kashmir, or the North-East or even Punjab in the 1980s. It wants New Delhi, the ruling party and the intelligence agencies to control or otherwise buy off the Chief Minister, the leading Opposition group and the touchstone of street extremism as well. Then it can play off one against the other.
Consider the Kashmir Valley. The Congress backs Chief Minister Omar Abdullah of the National Conference, flirted through the summer with Mufti Mohammed Sayeed of the People’s Democratic Party, and is now patently shoring up Syed Ali Shah Geelani of the Hurriyat to prevent younger extremists from hijacking his status as the hawkish face of overground separatism.
Absent in all this is any honest negotiation or exploration of what India can actually achieve or at least put on the table. That is why this committee — like its many predecessors — will probably end up as just a talking shop. Can one blame ordinary Kashmiris for feeling cheated?
-- malikashok@gmail.com
The Pioneer
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The Times of India
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