It would be ridiculous to read too much into the statement Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif issued after their talks in the Russian town of Ufa. Far from entitling BJP diehards to gloat over the statement not mentioning the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, silence on this crucial matter indicates that the Pakistanis are keeping their options open. Tomorrow, Pakistan might again raise Kashmir at the United Nations, claiming it didn’t promise in the Ufa statement not to do so. Islamabad can even argue that New Delhi acquiesced in this position by not insisting on a specific mention.
These are word games Pakistan has played for 68 years. The only way of ensuring that India is not forever at the mercy of a wily and prevaricating adversary is to deny it grounds for mischief and exploitation. It will have both so long as disloyal Kashmiri separatists are able to whip up Muslim passions against “Hindu India”. The only way of depriving them of this scope is to dilute Kashmir’s demographic composition so that it more closely reflects India’s secular balance. Demographic engineering such as the Chinese practise in Tibet and Xinjiang may not be very appealing to a liberal pluralistic democracy such as India’s but there may be no alternative, given the strength of Pakistan’s animosity.
Over an elegant lunch once at his residence, the distinguished Pakistani diplomat, Humayun Khan, vigorously rejected every single Indian charge of abetting terrorists, smuggling, gun-running, etc. Then he rounded it off by saying, “And even if they were true, could we be blamed after Bangladesh?” He could also have said Kashmir. The twin grievances corrode the soul of Pakistan. They explained (or explain) Pakistan’s Cold War alliance with the US, membership of military pacts, coziness with China, courtship of West Asia’s Islamic regimes, understanding with the Taliban, and continued meddling in Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s desperate search for an answer to what it perceives to be the threat from India has also drawn it into dangerously playing footsie with terrorists. It’s all very well for Mr Modi to declare in Bishek, the Kyrgyzstan capital, that “extremism and terrorism have become a threat without borders.” But for Pakistan, both are specific weapons in a particular campaign.
Islamabad’s coyness over a logical interpretation of the joint statement’s promise to “discuss ways and means of expediting the Mumbai case trial, including additional information like providing voice samples” bears this out. It would be surprising indeed if voice samples of Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi are handed over for comparison with recordings of telephone conversations with Ajmal Kasab and other Mumbai attackers.
Whatever the bonhomie in Ufa, India can expect no serious help from Pakistan in solving the problems of either Kashmir or terrorism. Even if Pakistan’s prime minister appears to agree, a judge like Malik Akram Awan or a prosecution chief like Chaudhury Azar (both in the Lakhvi case) will always trot out legal excuses for thwarting the political will. And if the courts are brought into line, there remains the grey eminence of the intelligence establishment. Many Pakistani analysts have commented that no matter who wins Pakistan’s elections, the ISI is the real winner.
It is in this light that the Modi-Sharif agreement must be judged. It called for talks between the national security advisers of the two governments to discuss all terrorism issues, and for measures to expedite the trial of the 26/11 Mumbai attackers. Other points include the need for early meetings between representatives of the two border security forces and the two Directors-General of Military Operations, especially with an increase in the number of incidents on the border.
But as Syed Ali Shah Geelani, regarded as a hardline Hurriyat leader, reminded us the other day, “more than 150 rounds of talks have been held since 1947” but “nothing could be achieved.” That’s from his point of view, meaning that although the Hindu pandit community (some 300,000 according to the American Central Intelligence Agency) has been evicted, Jammu and Kashmir remains a state of India.
Mr Geelani, who is under house arrest, is not one of the world’s most principled operators. The self-appointed supreme leader of Kashmir’s separatist politics has no compunction about calling himself an Indian citizen to obtain a passport but says, “Every Kashmiri has affection for Pakistan because that’s the only country in the world which openly supports our right of self-determination and favours a referendum.” He made himself notorious during the 2008 agitation by declaring “Hum Pakistani hai, Pakistan hamara hai (We are Pakistanis, Pakistan is ours).”
Kashmir is India’s only Muslim-majority state. That makes it especially valuable to Indian secularists, and would give responsible Kashmir leaders tremendous leverage in national politics if only they didn’t try to use it for blackmail. In 1941, Kashmir’s population was 77.06 per cent Muslim, 20.46 per cent Hindu, 1.37 per cent Sikh, 1.01 per cent Buddhist, and 0.10 per cent others.
Hindus constitute 66 per cent of the population of Jammu where Muslims are in a minority, being 30 per cent. Sikhs account for 4 per cent of Jammu’s population. Muslims constitute about 47 per cent of Ladakh’s population, the rest being Buddhists (46 per cent) and Hindus (6 per cent). Ladakhis are of Indo-Tibetan origin, while many inhabitants of southern Jammu trace their ancestry to Haryana, Punjab and Delhi. Overall, Muslims constitute 67 per cent of the population, Hindus about 30 per cent, Sikhs 2 per cent, and Buddhists 1 per cent.
Sir Owen Dixon, the distinguished Australian jurist and wartime ambassador to the US, whom the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan appointed as mediator, didn’t think Kashmir was a single state. He noted in 1950 that the issue was so complex because Kashmir was not a holistic geographic, economic, or demographic entity, but, on the contrary, an aggregate of diverse territories under the rule of one maharaja. In an attempt to resolve the conflict, he propounded the notion of trifurcating the state along communal or regional lines, with the Kashmir Valley, Ladakh and Jammu as three separate units.
That is now an internal Indian matter for New Delhi to sort out with the local leaders of Jammu, the Valley and Ladakh. The overall question is complicated by Pakistani occupation of the so-called “Azad Kashmir” and by Pakistan’s transfer of some territory to China. While desirable, an Indo-Pakistani resolution such as Indira Gandhi envisaged with Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto at Simla in 1972 is no longer an immediate prospect. Nor can India and Pakistan exchange populations as Greece and Turkey did in 1923. But India can cut its losses and draw the fangs of malcontents at home by reducing their capacity for mischief. Removing restrictions on settling in Kashmir would have that effect. This month, marking the 114th anniversary of Syama Prosad Mukherjee’s birth, is a good time for BJP government at the Centre to consider that.
