At the All-Kashmir
People's Convention in 1968, a more understanding Sheikh Abdullah admitted that
"it was fear and suspicions of one region regarding the other which
apparently prompted Jammu to opt for merger with India against Kashmiris
wanting to join Pakistan" and assured that their regional interests would
be safeguarded. Times of India, October 25, 1969.
The
winter of 1989-90 marked the onset of the Kashmiri insurgency, while the
Ladakhi Buddhists began their violent agitation for status as a union territory
in August 1989. The next few years witnessed a growing communalization of the
political idiom, strategies, and goals of various political movements in the
state. Where the Kashmiris cast their demand for secession in terms of a
Hindu-Muslim divide, especially after the Pandit exodus in 1990, the Buddhists
mobilized against the Kashmiris on the basis of a Buddhist-Muslim divide, which
they also extended to the Shias of Leh, who are almost all of Balti stock and
ethnically similar to Ladakhi Buddhists.
Significantly,
the seeds of communalization were planted in the late 1960s when leaders in the
Valley sought to undercut the political base of groups demanding regional autonomy
by creating alternative political alignments along communal lines. The Congress
Party, under Kushak Bakula, had been agitating for the restoration of a direct
central administration in Ladakh. This was first introduced in the NEFA after
the Chinese aggression in 1962. Under this system, Ladakh was manned by the
Indian Frontier Administrative Personnel. The deputy
commissioner-cum-development commissioner of the district and the assistant
commissioners of Kargil, Nubra, and Nyoma were also drawn from the same service
cadres. (See Karan Singh, Autobiography, Oxford University Press, 1994).
To
scuttle this movement, Chief Minister Ghulam Mohammad Sadiq promoted a new
leadership oflamas by favoring Kushak Thiksey over Kushak Bakula, and at the
same time favored the Muslim leadership of Kargil over the Buddhist leadership
of Leh. In the 1967 Legislative Assembly elections, the Congress nominated
Kushak Bakula's nominee Sonam Wangyal for the Leh seat, but unofficially his
opponent Kushak Thiksey enjoyed the patronage of the state government. The
relations between Ghulam Mohammad Sadiq and Kushak Bakula were further
embittered when Sonam Norbu, till then Ladakh's deputy commissioner, was
nominated to the legislative council as a prelude to his inclusion in the state
cabinet. Bakula's supporters perceived it as an attempt to divide the Ladakhi
Buddhists by ignoring the claims of the elected representative.
Although
84 percent of the population of Leh district is Buddhist, Bodhi teachers were
provided in only 32 of the 252 government schools. Despite specific
recommendations of the Gajendragadkar Commission, the state government had not
set up a degree college for two Lakh inhabitants of the region. The Jammu and
Kashmir Secretariat had only one Buddhist employee, and there was no Buddhist
among 18,000 employees of nine corporate sector units. (Hindustan Times, New Delhi , May 14, 1992).
Annoyed
by some communal incidents in 1969 and fearful of being relegated to a minority
within Ladakh, the Buddhist Action Committee decided to demand the status of a
Scheduled Tribe. It also asked that Tibetan refugees be settled in Ladakh, the
Bodhi language be made a compulsory subject up to high school, and that
Ladakh's political representative be a full-fledged cabinet minister. Apart
from the induction of Sonam Wangyal in the cabinet, most of these demands were
rejected by the state government on account of strong opposition from the
Muslim Action Committee, which feared that such changes would upset the ethnic
balance in the region. As a result, the Muslims of Kargil, who were
predominantly Shia, began to see their in terests
inextricably linked to those of Kashmir, even though the vast majority of its
Muslims were Sunnis. Sheikh Abdullah's decision to divide Ladakh into two districts
in 1979-Leh and Kargil-created yet another communal fault line in Ladakh,
between its Buddhist and Muslim identity. This became much more pronounced
during the agitation in 1989.
The
trouble began with a minor scuffle between a Buddhist and some Muslim youth in
Leh market in July 1989, which then snowballed into a violent separatist
struggle by the Ladakh Buddhist Association. Its members demanded that Ladakh
be given separate constitutional status as a union territory, accusing the
"Kashmiri Sunni Muslims" of inciting the local Argon Muslims, who
were decidedly in the minority, to "dictate terms" to the Buddhist
majority and thereby dominate both the administration and economy. Buddhists
also complained that the rich Bodhi language was being suppressed in favor of
Urdu, now being imposed on Ladakhi children. Ladakhis leveled an assortment of
other complaints against the Kashmiri Muslims and the Kashmiri-dominated
bureaucracy: they were accused of halting development contracts for the
construction of buildings, roads, and bridges; of orchestrating the gross
underrepresentation of Buddhists in the state services (of the state's 2,900
government employees, only 2 were Ladakhis); and of adopting unrealistic norms
for the allocation of plan funds to Ladakh. Between 1987 and 1989, for
instance, the state government had received more than Rs 100 crore from the
prime minister's Special Assistance Fund, but Leh got only Rs 211akh. Under the
J awahar Rozgar Yojna, the Valley was given Rs 7.2 crore, while Leh was given
only Rs 20 lakh.Rs 25 crore was spent under the World
Bank-aided Social Forestry Schemes, but Leh district was ignored. It had no
share in the funds disbursed by the Central Land Development Bank and the Khadi
and Village Industries Corporation in the state. For tourism development
schemes in 1990, the sum of Rs 59lakh was earmarked for the Valley, whereas Leh
was given only Rs 7lakh, and the neighboring Kargil district Rs 17 lakh.
(Hindustan Times, May 15, 1992, and April 20, 1995).
More
significantly, the systematic dismantling of important forums for Ladakh
development (such as the Ladakh Affairs Department), the absence of Ladakhi
representatives in Farooq Abdullah's coalition government, and the fact that
Buddhists were given only one of Ladakh's four seats in the state assembly
reinforced their belief that the Valley was still treating Ladakh "as a
colony:' The Buddhist agitators called for a boycott of the Kashmiri Muslims.
Valley traders soon vanished from the Leh market, and their hotels and
restaurants were shut down. The machinery of government became paralyzed as
Kashmiri officials fled the areas ofLeh, Khalsi, Nubra, and Zanskar. Denouncing
"Kashmir's imperialism" and "hegemonism," LBA activists
called on the local population to "free Ladakh from Kashmir." The LBA
president asserted that "the Kashmiri rulers have been systematically
eroding the Buddhists' ethnic and cultural identity for the last forty-two
years and it can be saved only by making Ladakh a union territory." The
social boycott against Kashmiri Muslims was soon extended to the local Muslims,
rupturing the centuries-old bonds of amity.34 For the next three years, the
Buddhists avoided Muslim-populated areas and did not enter hotels, restaurants,
or shops run by Muslims. Farmers were prohibited from exchanging tools. No
interreligious marriages were allowed, and meetings among relatives of
different faiths were stopped. See Martijn Van Beek, "Dangerous Liaisons:
Hindu Nationalism and Buddhist Radicalism in Ladakh:' in Religious Radicalism
and Security in South Asia, edited by Satu P. Kimaye, Robert G. Wirsing, and
Mohan Malik (Honolulu: Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, 2004, pp.
193-218.
Throughout
Kashmir's history, the world's great powers-most notably the United States, the
former Soviet Union, and China-have accorded the state a place in their
strategic agendas only insofar as it served their global interests or concerned
their respective regional partners. However, none were willing to be dragged
into the Kashmir issue by those partners. Furthermore, despite Indian and
Pakistani expectations, outside support for either side has been limited. All
in all, no global power has high enough stakes in the Kashmir conflict or the
leverage to arrive at a solution acceptable to all the principal players. More
to the point as we have seen in P.1, the complex character of the Kashmir
conflict does not make it amenable to an externally driven peace process.
With
the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan in 1947, Kashmir became
entangled in a dispute arising in part from two mutually exclusive ideologies.
At the outset of its long period of turmoil, Kashmir's fate was neither
preordained nor decided on ideological grounds. Being part of the
subcontinent's princely order, the Dogra state of Jammu and Kashmir lay outside
the domain of British India, which in 1947 was divided on the
basis of the two-nation theory. At that point, Kashmir was not yet
considered an inalienable part of either Pakistan or India but an important asset
from the standpoint of geographical consolidation and the defense needs of the
respective dominions. Hence the battle between India 's Congress and the Muslim
League over Kashmir 's accession was fundamentally political in nature. Since
independence, the two ideological rationales at the heart of the dispute have
not gone unchallenged, both within and outside Kashmir. Pakistan, some argue,
has not yet arrived at a clear formulation of its foundations, which are rooted
in Islam. That is to say, the meaning, content, and relationship of Islam and
state have never been systematically established. Pakistan has remained
suspended between the ambiguity of the call for a Muslim homeland by its
founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and the varying expectations of the majority of the religious establishment and populace for
an Islamic state. The continuing debate between modernist and orthodox
interpretations of Islam within Pakistan mirrors this dilemma. From the
earliest demands for a separate state and the creation of Pakistan in 1947,
Islam has been both a rallying force and a legitimizing ideology that along
with the Taliban next, included a wide array of political and religious
leaders. Modernists reject the notion that a state founded on Islamic
principles must operate as a theocracy; rather, they identify Islamic ideals
and principles with democracy, freedom, equality, tolerance, and social justice
for all, including minorities. Orthodox opinions, most notably those of the
Jamaat-i-Islami school of thought, equate the state with Islam and therefore
would apply its guiding principles in all matters-legal, constitutional, and
political-to the point of establishing Nizam-i-Mustafa (the Rule of Islam)
throughout Pakistani society. Jihadi groups such as Lashkar-e- Taiba place yet
another interpretation on Islam, emphasizing the integration of tabligh
(education) and jihad (holy war) needed to acquire the military skill essential
for wielding political power. In fact 2001-02, Pakistan was home to fifty-eight
religious political parties;111d twenty-four armed religious militias, For
details see Ayesha Jalal, Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A
Comparative and Historical Perspective, New Delhi, 1995, and Saeed Shafqat,
"From Official Islam to Islamism: The Rise of Dawat-ul-Irshad and
Lashkar-e- Taiba," in Pakistan: Nationalism without a Nation?, New Delhi,
2002, pp. 143-45).
The
Kargil war of 1999 however was the one, military confrontation in a nuclearized
South Asia. Although nuclear weapons were not used, nuclear capability
unquestionably permeated the conflict, and there were reports that both India
and Pakistan may have alerted or deployed nuclear weapons and delivery systems
at the time. For reports that Pakistan prepared "nuclear-tipped missiles,"
see Bruce Riedel, American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House,
Policy Paper Series 2002 (Philadelphia, Pa.: Center for the Advanced Study of
India, 2002). For reports that India placed its nuclear arsenal at
"Readiness State 3" (ready to be mated with Prithvi and Agni missiles
and Mirage 2000 aircraft for delivery), see Raj Chengappa, Weapons of Peace
(New Delhi: Harper Collins India, 2000), p. 437.
When
Pakistan attempted to link its withdrawal from Kargil to negotiations with
India on the Kashmir dispute, the Clinton administration clearly alarmed,
insisted that Pakistan 's withdrawal be unambiguous and unconditional. In
return for Pakistan 's pledge to take "concrete steps ... for the
restoration of the Line of Control in accordance with the Simla
Agreement," Clinton promised to personally encourage "an expeditious
resumption and intensification" of Indo- Pakistani detente, "once the
sanctity of the Line of Control has been fully restored." Spokespersons
for the Clinton administration took pains to emphasize that its major concern
in brokering the agreement was "the immediate crisis," in other
words, Kargil, not the Kashmir dispute. The United States also garnered support
from Saudi Arabia to nudge Islamabad into swallowing the bitter pill of a unilateral
withdrawal. During the height of the Kargil dispute, China reportedly rebuffed
Pakistan 's former prime minister' Nawaz Sharif, when he visited Beijing to
seek political support in the ongoing conflict. Raj Chengappa, "Will the
War Spread?" India Today International, July 5,1999, p. 14; and John
Lancaster, " U.S. Defused Kashmir Crisis on Brink of War," Washington
Post, July 26, 1999.
Elected
representatives generally associate the Kashmir conflict with the insurgent
movement of the 1990s and think the key to a just and lasting peace is to end
the violence, initiate a dialogue with the separatists (including militants),
and most important, develop new political and constitutional arrangements to
meet popular aspirations for self-governance. People's faith in the electoral
process as a legitimate instrument of political change is already on the
upswing following the 2002 assembly elections, which ended twenty-seven years
of dynastic rule through the ballot box.
The
meeting between India 's prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan 's
president General Pervez Musharraf at the South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation summit in Islamabad in January 2004 finally restarted the “peace
process” known as the "composite dialogue." With Vajpayee's successor
Manmohan Singh carrying it forward.
However
elected representatives generally associated the Kashmir conflict with the
insurgent movement of the 1990’s and think the key to a just and lasting peace
is to end the violence, initiate a dialogue with the separatists (including
militants), and most important, develop new political and constitutional
arrangements to meet popular aspirations for self-governance. People's faith in
the electoral process as a legitimate instrument of political change is already
on the upswing following the 2002 assembly elections, which ended twenty-seven
years of dynastic rule through the ballot box.
By
2004, political forces in Kashmir as a whole; could be roughly divided between
traditional political parties such as the National Conference, People's
Democratic Party (PIW), Congress, BJP, plus a number of
elected representatives, separatist groups, plus minority groups. With the
National Conference continues as the largest political party. In the 2002 State
Assembly elections for eighty-seven seats, the National Conference polled 28.18
percent of the vote, while the PDP took 14.64 percent in the seats it
contested, and just 9.28 percent statewide. Congress won 24.24 percent of the
votes in the seats it contested and 24.24 per cent statewide. Praveen Swami,
"The Question of Power"
(www.flonet.com!fl2220/stories/20051007004602900.htm).
By
early 2004 then, a regional party the PDP represented a class of
political leadership whose pro-Kashmiri stance is trying to appropriate the
Hurriyat's political agenda without the latter's secessionist
overtones.Separatist groups however believe that Kashmir's final future remains
to be decided along the lines of their ideological leanings, political
strategies, and goals, but they have become a divided lot. The largest
political body representing the separatist agenda and thus an important player
during 2005 was the Hurriyat Conference, but it
is sharply divided between moderate and hard-line factions. Growing differences
with other centrist leaders such as Yasin Malik hav" also depleted its
already limited political capital. (See Hindu, Chennai, June 16,2005).
Soon
after Hurriyat's first public foray across the Line of Control in 2005, Azad
Kashmir's prime minister, Sardar Sikander Hayat Khan, questioned its
credentials: "How can we accept any decision (on Kashmir ) by those who
live under compulsions, do not have unity among themselves and are not
representatives of all regions?" Hurriyat continues to grapple with a
crisis of legitimacy in attempting to be the "sole representative" of
Kashmiris. That is because it has always sought this status from the "top
leadership" of Pakistan and India rather than earning it through a popular
mandate. But if Hurriyat leaders did not toe the line, they were threatened,
marginalized, or eliminated. The lesson has yet to sink in that if
"sole-representative" status is bestowed from above, it can also be
taken away by its patrons.
On
the Indian side, too, Hurriyat had hoped the central government would
acknowledge it as the representative of a de facto nation, something that no
political authority in New Delhi is likely to concede. Hurriyat exercises no
leverage over militants, either, as is evident from the United Jihad Council's
public refusal to even meet Hurriyat leaders during their visit to Azad Kashmir
and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen's outright dismissal of a Hurriyat plea to stop the
violence and give peace a chance. The Hurriyat has not yet decided on a new
agenda after Pakistan 's dismissal of the old proposal for a plebiscite, which
was also rejected as obsolete by the international community. And the idea of
an independent Kashmir is ruled out by both India and Pakistan. The mirwaiz-led
centrist faction of the Hurriyat is now being coaxed into supporting
Musharraf's proposal for an autonomous Kashmir, although the idea of
self-governance or self-rule is far from a new one in the Valley's context.
Much older and traditional players such as the National Conference, which have
championed this cause since 1947, are clearly better equipped with the
political skills needed to fight this battle. If Hurriyat were to abandon its
separatist agenda, it would not only run the risk of being eclipsed as a
political force but might also invite the wrath of Kashmiris for having misled
a generation of young men and women and for sacrificing thousands of lives.
Finally,
there are the jihadi forces, with the strength of more than one hundred
organizations in Azad Kashmir. They are not much different in their character,
goals, and strategies from the jihadi groups based in Pakistan.In the Northern
Areas, political forces are broadly organized in two clusters.
The
first contains sectarian Sunni and Shia organizations, which are politically
very active with a substantial support base, though confined to their
respective communities. While many sectarian organizations have been banned in
the post-9/11 period, their political dynamics in the Northern Areas is very
different from that in the rest of Pakistan. First, the entire spectrum of
political issues ranging from school curriculums to fundamental rights,
representation, and the constitutional and legal status of the region is framed
and debated along the Shia-Sunni divide. In 2004-05, the controversy over the
Islamiat curriculum in schools was explained as the administration's attempt to
divert attention from the issue of representation. In the absence of
traditional political parties, which were not allowed to operate there before
1994, the majority Shia community in fact do not have access to any
well-established, alternative political platforms to voice its grievances.
Because Islamabad is afraid that the local demand for a separate province-a
Shia-majority province-is gaining ground, it is unlikely to reverse its policy of
encouraging a Sunni influx in order to change the area's demographic character
or seriously crack down on the Sunni sectarian organizations, which the
administration relies on to undercut the Shias as well as to keep the
population divided.
Meanwhile
the Shia populace in the Northern Areas labors under oppressive state
structures that have deprived this group of a constitution, fundamental rights,
normal political channels of mobilization such as political parties (until
1994), and a locally accountable government. Not surprisingly, the
"toothless" Northern Areas Legislative Council (NALC) drew a dismal
voter turnout of 31 percent in the October 2004 elections, and local bodies
less than 25 percent. This was because the NALC had no powers to address popular
aspirations for better development, infrastructure, or jobs.
Having
thus failed to recognize that the different communities living in Jammu
and Kashmir interpret the right to self-determination differently, some
Kashmiri leaders allow their thinking to become enmeshed in contradictions.
Sheikh Abdullah, for instance, argued that self-determination was the inherent
right of all peoples and demanded it for Kashmiris, yet denied the same to the
people of Jammu and Ladakh. Jammu and Ladakh in turn demanded full and
unconditional accession to India, but this acted as a countervailing force to
the Valley's demand for independence. The current separatist leadership,
including the Hurriyat Conference, faces the same dilemma. While it claims to
speak on behalf of the "people of Jammu and Kashmir;' it represents the
political interests of only a part of the majority community-Kashmiri Muslims
in the Valley. Meanwhile, the minority social groups in Jammu and Ladakh seek
autonomy from the Kashmir Valley. Clearly, the secessionist agenda underlying
the demand for the right to self-determination lacks an inclusive character.
Hizb-ul-Mujahideen
by early 2006, was the only militant group with a substantial Kashmiri cadre,
since its chief led an unprecedented hunger strike in Muzaffarabad in protest
of the Musharraf regime's. Its dilemma however is twofold. First, it clings to
Pakistan's old political line-being the only player to insist that New Delhi
formally recognize that all of Jammu and Kashmir is a disputed territory-yet
seeks the status of the principal interlocutor, which only India can concede
(though precisely for that reason is not likely to do so). Second, like
Hurriyat, the Hizbul expects to be rewarded, although it has little to offer in
terms of ending the violence because in the past decade it has been
marginalized by none other than its patron-the Pakistani establishment-in favor
of Lashk-e- Taiba and Jaish-i-Mohammed, which have been at the forefront of the
Kashmiri jihad. The field commanders of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen also feel that
‘the wages of war are greater than any payouts that may come with peace;'
albeit for different reasons, which make jihad a lucrative proposition. Such
entrenched vested interests in continued violence need to be taken
into account in any initiative that seeks to bring Hizbul, especially
its Valley-based leadership (of both factions), into the peace process.
Plus
there are also the political leaders of the minority communities-the Kashmiri
Pandits, Ladakhi Buddhists, Shia Muslims (of Kargil), Gujjars, Paharis, and
Dogras- and other popular representatives of both parts of Jammu and Kashmir
who to date (early 2007) never have directly, been involved in bilateral
negotiations mainly because it is assumed that only two seats are available at
a single negotiation table, one for New Delhi and one for Islamabad.
Just
before his first visit to the Valley, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced a
reduction in troop levels in the state. An army battalion numbering 3,000
soldiers was de inducted from the Khannabal area of Anantnag district in south
Kashmir, followed by another battalion in the Sunderbani area of Rajouri
district and 1,200 soldiers from Uri in Baramulla district. In February 2006,
India 's defense minister Pranab Mukherjee announced the redeployment of
another brigade-sized formation of 5,000 troops to the northeast.
In
February 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh next was the first, to hold a
roundtable conference in Kashmir in February 2006, that had the potential
to recast the long-established hierarchies of power, spreading some of it to
religious, ethnic, and linguistic groups as well as regions in Jammu and
Kashmir . Here the Gujjar and Bakkarwalleaders for example, expressed their
hope to see that the special needs of their communities are met, for example,
through traveling panchayat systems move with their livestock across mountains,
more funding for schools and colleges, and efforts to overcome backwardness in
their communities. Around that time also President Musharraf presented a new
focus on "maximum self- governance," a departure from Pakistan's
traditional demand and closer to the Indian about offering Jammu and Kashmir
maximum political autonomy. A terrorist strike in Mumbai in July 2006, led the
Manmohan Singh government to suspend the peace process.
As
for Pakistan and Kashmir, both mainstream political parties-the Benazir
Bhutto-led PPP and the Nawaz Sharif-led Muslim League (PML-N)-are keeping
aloof. This raises serious questions about how far General Musharraf can sell a
Kashmir settlement to the domestic constituencies in Pakistan. Though
dissenting voices underlining the costs of Pakistan 's Kashmir policy are, for
the first time, being heard in the public discourse, whether they or General
Musharraf will succeed in bringing about a paradigm shift remains open to
question.
But
today (early 2007) the deep pluralities of Kashmir society and diverse
nature of political demands-ranging from affirmative discrimination to more
autonomy to a separate constitutional status within the Indian or Pakistani
states or a sovereign independent state-preclude the possibility that a
"single spokesperson" will not do anymore. A next step that will take
a decade or so, will be to augment the levels of dialogue, so that exchanges
occur between the Indian government and representatives of Jammu, the Valley,
and Ladakh; between various representatives of Jammu, the Valley, and Ladakh
themselves; between Indian and Pakistani parts of Kashmir across the LOC;
between representatives of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and the Northern Areas; and
between the Pakistani government and representatives of Azad Jammu and Kashmir
and the Northern Areas.
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