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| Article 370: Radical Change in Attitude | | Obstacles to nation-building needs to be consigned to dustbin | | RUSTAM
JAMMU, June 30: Even "progressive" and "secular" India-watchers and well-known commentators have started making adverse comments on Article 370 under which the solitary State of Jammu & Kashmir enjoys the right to have a separate constitution and separate flag and exercises residuary powers. It is a great development. No one had ever imagined that a keen observer and a recognized commentator like Bharat Karnad would oppose Article 370 and virtually ask New Delhi to consign the Kashmiri separatists to the dustbin in case they prove an obstacle to territorial expansion and nation-building. This is not an overstatement. It is a statement of fact.
Take, for instance, what he wrote in his "Time to revisit Article 370", which was published only the other day. It was a wonderful piece of writing. He has written thus: "The enduring problem (in Kashmir) was created by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who instead of pushing to militarily recover all of the presently Pakistan-occupied-(Jammu &) Kashmir, including Northern Areas (Hunza, Gilgit and Baltistan), which the Indian Army was poised to do at the time of the 1948 ceasefire, took the dispute to the United Nations. There it instantly became a pawn in big power politics. Having made this horrible mistake, Nehru compounded it by agreeing to the right of self-determination based on nothing more than his conceit that, offered the choice, Kashmiris would join India rather than the rump state of Pakistan".
"A still graver internal problem Nehru created for the country was to accord J&K separate constitution status (Article 370) within the Union. The question remains: What is so unique about Kashmir that it should enjoy such status? If one were to go by legal documents and the accords signed by the various princely states, the British Raj accepted a differential scale of sovereign functioning. Meaning, some kingdoms within the colonial architecture functioned more freely than others. By this criterion, Travancore and Manipur, for example, deserved special status far more than did Kashmir".
"If, on the other hand, the issue boils down to Nehru's promises to Sheikh Abdullah, these have even less sanctity than the constitutional mandated privy purses Indira Gandhi abolished. Signed accords and paper deeds have been routinely abrogated by newly founded countries in the process of consolidating themselves as nation-states. Consider, for instance, the innumerable treaties the US government signed with native American-Indian tribes and consigned to the dustbin once they became obstacles to territorial expansion and nation-building".
"It is, however, Nehru's faulty premise that has seeped into the Indian liberals, that nation-building is a morality tale, an exercise in ethical norms. Actually, as history shows, nations are sewn together, often from disparate parts, by craft, graft and bloodletting. It is dirty, usually violent business in which people who would otherwise have remained separate were dragged kicking and screaming into the national fold, and no nonsense about it. Again, ask the American Indians who, because they resisted, were exterminated. By reinforcing the notion of their distinctness, Article 370 has perennially fuelled discontent and insurgency, stoked dreams of independence of Kashmir, ill-served India and should be done away with. It is best that the Kashmiris be told that once however in, there's no out. If the Hurriyat and that ilk don't accept it; they can go take a hike. Better still, they should be placed in a tub alongside Arundhati Roy - who seceded from the Indian republic (remember, she threaten to do that)? Towed out to sea, and there left to contemplate their virtuous selves. Outside the 12-mile territorial limit".
Karnad is candid and unambiguous. He has said what needed to be said. And, what he said is an indication that opinion in India on Article 370 is undergoing a radical change. This augurs well the country which has suffered huge losses during all these more than 65 years. |
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