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| Kashmir Valley Strife - Containment Strategy | | | Hari Om
Jammu & Kashmir ac-
ceded to India on Oc-
tober 26, 1947, since then it has been witnessing unrest. Kashmiri Muslim leadership has been accusing New Delhi of diluting the Valley's distinct identity, eroding the State's separate status and bringing surreptitiously the State under the ambit of certain provisions of the Indian Constitution. The Kashmiri leadership is vertically divided into six groups demanding self-rule, greater autonomy, independence, merger with Pakistan, implementation of the 1975 Indira Gandhi-Sheikh Abdullah Accord and implementation of the Musharraf's four-point formula as a first step towards the final destination.
The ruling partner Peoples Democratic Party vouches for self-rule: Limited accession to India, India-Pakistan joint-control over Jammu and Kashmir, demilitarisation, porous borders and irrelevant Line of Control, Islamic banking and dual currency. The opposition National Conference has been demanding greater autonomy, bordering on virtual sovereignty. It is demanding restoration of the system as was in vogue in the State under the Jammu and Kashmir Constitutional Act of 1939. Under this archaic Act, the ruling elite exercised unbridled and absolute judicial, legislative and executive powers, including the power to interpret the Constitution. The Congress has been insisting on the implementation of the 1975 accord that empowers the Valley's ruling elite to review the central laws and seek withdrawal of such central laws as are considered injurious to Kashmir.
Separatists like Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Shabir Shah want the merger of the entire State of Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan, saying the State is an unfinished agenda of partition and being a Muslim-majority State, its fate has to be linked with the Islamic State of Pakistan. Separatists like Yasin Malik wants independence of the State from both India and Pakistan and, at the same time, considers Islamabad a stakeholder in Jammu and Kashmir. There is another group of secessionists in Kashmir and it is led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, head priest of Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. He is all for Pakistan, but says that it would be desirable if New Delhi and Islamabad adopt the Musharraf formula - India-Pakistan joint-control, self-governance, demilitarisation and soft borders - as the starting point. The roads, though diverging from each other, lead towards the same destination: Separation of Jammu and Kashmir from India and its conversion into a theocratic State.
All the Kashmir-based six groups, which are led by the Sunni leadership, do not consider Jammu and Kashmir a settled issue. The upshot of their whole argument has been that they could not have any kind of truck with Hindu India and they have no faith in the Indian constitutional and political structure. There is but one way in which the unrest in the Valley could be ended and that is by empowering the Kashmiri Muslims to determine their own fate themselves outside the Indian constitutional and political framework, they have been consistently saying. The worst part of their whole approach has been that they also want to submerge the people of Jammu region and Ladakh under the rising tide of Kashmiri Muslim sub-nationalism or impose their will on all the non-Kashmiri population living outside the Valley.
On the other hand, Jammu has been witnessing another kind of unrest. They have been fighting tooth and nail the Kashmiri Muslim sub-nationalism and appealing to the Government of India since decades to evolve and implement a scheme of political reforms that segregates them from Kashmir and empowers them to shape and control fully their political and economic future within India and under the Indian Constitution. Their watchword and battle-cry all along has been the State's complete merger with India, application of the Indian Constitution to the State in full, minus Article 370 under which the State enjoys a special status in the Indian Union, and the establishment of regime that ends the age-old Valley's domination and hegemony over them and makes them master in their own house. They have been demanding some definite political instrument invested with legislative, executive and financial powers, as also an instrument that enables them to control the land and address all the issues pertaining to the whole land mass in Jammu region. Complete control over the land is imperative to check the "dubious" efforts of those in the Valley who have been meticulously changing the demographic profile of Jammu region with a view to create Kashmir-like situation has been one of the major refrains of the people of Jammu region.
Their belief is that there are elements in the establishment who have been hand-in-glove with separatists in the Valley, whose single-point agenda has been to create an impression the world over that the entire population of Jammu and Kashmir is against the Indian presence in the State.
The belief appears to be well-founded when considered in the light of the numerous colonies that have come up around Jammu city and elsewhere in the region after 1994, when Pakistan suffered a humiliating defeat at Geneva and the European Union countered the Pakistani view by saying that the entire non-Sunni population in the State was against the secessionist movement in the Valley.
Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was very much present at the Geneva Conference on human rights. He witnessed the situation under which the cornered Pakistan had to withdraw resolution on the alleged human rights abuses in Kashmir. The fact of the matter is that the people of Jammu region do not want any kind of tie with what they call "radicalised, regressive and intolerant Kashmiri leadership".
The story of Ladakh has been no different. It, like Jammu, has been longing for its separation from Kashmir since 1947 with its leadership consistently saying without mincing words that it has linked the fate of Ladakh with India for ever and no power on earth can force its people to accept the Kashmiri domination and Kashmiri ideology. They have already achieved an autonomous hill development council and are now striving hard for obtaining the status of Union Territory for the region. The BJP and the Congress back their demand.
The fact of the matter is that the story of Jammu and Kashmir post-1947 has been one of inter-regional bitterness, animosity and rancour. Jammu and Ladakh, which constitute over 88 per cent of the State's land area and house more than half of the State's population, have been from day one opposing the Kashmiri politics and crying for justice. Similarly, the Kashmiri leaders of all hues have been from day one vehemently opposing what the people of Jammu and Ladakh have been demanding. In fact, they have been describing Jammu and Ladakh as millstones around the Kashmir's neck and also accusing them of being a stumbling block in their way. It would be only desirable if New Delhi appreciates all these facts and charge its policy-planners with the responsibility of working out a framework that enables Jammu and Ladakh to achieve their most cherished goal of complete merger with India and also helps the official trouble-shooters and conflict-managers to deal exclusively with the separatist and terrorist-infested Kashmir. In fact, limiting the area of strife to the Valley is the only option available. Even the late President R Venkataraman had urged the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to give the status of statehood to Jammu, confer Union Territory status on Ladakh and deal differently with Kashmir, saying it was always better to limit the area of strife.
(Courtesy:www.niticentral.com) |
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