Radhavinod Raju
The Kashmir issue has an internal and an external dimension. Sheikh Abdullah’s movement against the Maharaja to get justice for the people of Kashmir in the early 1930s gave rise to the internal dimension. In 1947 when Sheikh took over as the Prime Minister of J&K (as the chief minister of J&K was called in those days) this was addressed and the external dimension with Pakistan started.
The Sheikh’s incarceration in August 1953 revived the internal dimension which was addressed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1974, after the Simla Accord with Pakistan in 1972, which was supposed to have taken care of the external dimension of the conflict. After detailed discussions between the prime minister’s special envoy G Parthasarathy and Sheikh Abdullah’s representative Mirza Afzal Beig the Kashmir Accord was signed by them on November 22 1974. Following the Accord, Sheikh Abdullah took over as chief minister of J&K in February 1975, supported by the Congress. The vast majority of Kashmiris joyfully greeted Sheikh Abdullah on his return as head of the state government, and thronged to hear him in public meetings. The Sheikh ruled till his demise in September 1982, except for a brief period when the Congress withdrew support to his government in early 1977, but came strongly back after elections in mid-1977. This period of over 7 years was by and large peaceful, with the state Cabinet meeting periodically in different districts to take the government to the people.
Pakistani machinations to stoke trouble in the Valley would just not work when the Sheikh was in charge of the state. The whole Valley was in grief when Sheikh Abdullah passed away. In mid-1984, when Farooq Abdullah, who had succeeded his father as chief minister, was dismissed by the central government, and his unpopular brother-in-law G M Shah installed in his place with Congress support and after engineering defections in the ruling National Conference, Farooq became even more popular in the Valley. After a couple of years, Farooq Abdullah was re-installed as the chief minister, but by then had lost most of the sheen, having compromised with the Congress and got into an alliance with them.
This was a time when the Afghan jihad was gaining momentum, and the Pakistani dictator, the wily General Zia-ul-Haq was planning the Kashmir jihad using the Jamaat-e-Islami and the ISI. Pakistani academics and journalists have now come out with accounts of Zia’s plans for Kashmir using disgruntled youth from our part of the state. The alleged rigging in some of the constituencies during the Assembly elections in 1987 followed by alleged ill-treatment of some of the Muslim United Front candidates led to disenchantment among the youth in the Valley, some of who crossed over to Pakistan for arms training, thus walking into the arms of Zia. The rest is history.
An insurgency spearheaded by the independence-loving Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front was, by Pakistani design, gradually converted into a jihad to establish Islamic rule in Kashmir, initially through the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, the militant wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami of our part of Kashmir, and later by inducting hardcore jihadis of the Afghan jihad. Later Kashmir-specific jihadi groups nurtured by Pakistan, like the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad were inducted into Kashmir leading to violence and mayhem on an unprecedented scale. Kashmir the Happy Valley, became Kashmir the Miserable Valley, with thousands of innocent people getting killed along with terrorists and members of the security forces.
While the so-called jihad is controlled by outside forces, the people in the state are tired of violence, and would love to go back to their simple, happy lives. While economic development of this backward state will certainly help the youth with employment and other benefits for the people, Kashmir is basically a political problem. There is lack of trust between Delhi and Srinagar, and this has only grown over the last nearly 60 years. The alienated people in the Valley believe they can never get justice from Delhi. Trust has to be slowly built, through appropriate political moves. Genuine autonomy that would guarantee them a life of dignity, preserving their unique culture, would go a long way in addressing their grievances, though there will be hardcore separatists like Syed Ali Shah Geelani of the Hurriyat (G), who would like nothing short of merger with Pakistan.
Two Indian prime ministers have at different times, broadly laid down the limits that India was willing to go in search of an acceptable solution to this issue. In 1995, addressing the people of Kashmir from far away Burkina Faso, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao said that sky was the limit in regard to autonomy that could be worked out for the people of J&K. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was essentially addressing Pakistan when he said from the Valley that there cannot be a further division of the state on communal lines, but that the boundaries between the two Kashmirs can be made irrelevant.
The time has come for the government to make a major political move to tackle the internal dimension of the Kashmir issue. The three interlocutors nominated by the Centre have given their report after meeting a wide cross-section of the people of all the three regions of the state. The separatists stayed away, though some individuals among them did meet the interlocutors. While efforts can be made to get them to participate in future discussions, there are the Geelanis among them who are irreconcilable. They should not be allowed to block this process. There is no single leader this time, like Sheikh Abdullah, with whom the Centre can initiate a dialogue.
The Centre will therefore have to talk to leaders of all the mainstream parties and separatists who are willing to participate in talks and others from the three regions, and work out a political deal. The earlier Indira-Sheikh Accord recognised that the Centre-State relations would be governed by Article 370 of the Constitution. This can be the basis for further discussions.
Radhavinod Raju is a former director general of the National Investigation Agency. E-mail: radhavinodraju@gmail.com
Courtesy : The New Indian Express
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