It is election season in India, which means commentatorsanxiously analyzing and predicting events and expectations in the world’sbulkiest democracy of mind-boggling diversity and, increasingly, divergence. Aseason, also, when politicians trudge out platitudes without real debate aboutthe crucial issues of state-building and nation-creating in India.
This season the BJP, officially, insists on its own translation of “secularism” rather than clearly acknowledge its implicit rejection of it. The Congress, unofficially, mutes its voice on minority rights, as it edges towards majority mollification. Politics [of conscience] is dead; long live politics.
Similarly, in foreign policy, non-alignment remains at India’s core while phrases like strategies of “partnership” and “multi-laterality” flounder. Meanwhile, the world’s comity of states continues its search for a “new world order” following the collapse of the Cold War regime.
It is all uncharted ground and best left for expertcommentators probing India’s electoral politics and its foreign policies.
It is equally difficult, arguably, to anticipate any freshangles of discussion about the J&K state in the context of the Lok Sabhaelections, apart from the old debates between electoral boycott andparticipation, and choosing between the dilemma of and the disregard for thedispute over the state. That said, this season is a pivotal one for us, sounderstanding its many dimensions is important.
There are three dimensions to understanding the meaning ofthe Indian election season for Kashmir: namely, the local (Srinagar-New Delhi)dimension, the regional (South Asian) dimension, and the international (global)dimension.
The Local Dimension – red-herrings and speculation
On the local front, there are the usual red-herrings; some old and some new. The BJP manifesto reiterates its resolve to abrogate Article 370 and to annul Article 35A. While both promises, strictly speaking, are not new terrain, the use of the words “abrogate” and “annul” reveal a lethal nuance in understanding that must be counteracted on.
In confirmation of that dangerous trajectory, the BJP Government deferred the state’s assembly elections and extended President’s Rule until after the Lok Sabha elections. Both actions are meant to hold on to the assumed stranglehold of the BJP at the center in Kashmir. Yet another issue is the unprecedented highway closure for two days of the week (Wednesdays and Sundays) to facilitate military movement, disrupting life for millions of civilians within the two-hundred and fifty kilometers with the closure negatively impacting livelihoods, civil governance and social interaction.
These actions have generated endless speculation and debate among us. But such speculation is a barren exercise in the best of circumstances.
And the word “debate” implies that the discourse would be subject to the rules of logic. We profit from neither. For example, in threatening to abrogate and annul articles of its own constitution, the Government of India overtly threatens to act outside of the law.
To be sure, such criminality would have dire implications for us. But equally certain is the fact that India is enabled in Kashmir by half a million conventionally armed soldiers and an unapologetic bigotry against both Kashmiri and Muslim. There is a need for a strategy to counter it, but to do so there must also be, at minimum, a unity of perspective.
To determine a strategy, we would be well advised to bear in mind that it is not law, logic or morality that determines BJP strategy in Kashmir. It is unalloyed bigotry. They do not want us, like us or care to understand us because of who we are – Kashmiri and Muslim.
It is this that the J&K State’s unionist parties, the Hurriyat parties and civil society must recognize as the root of Delhi’s dilemma if we are to form a united front. Acknowledging this will help us, diverse though we be, to devise a strategy and, eventually, an end-game vision. All else is stray talk.
The Regional Dimension – the Pulwama shuffle
We are prone to a degree of passivity in Kashmir because ouroutright rejection of Indian rule leaves us isolated at Delhi’s whim, atIslamabad’s convenience and the international community’s caprice. But in thelast month and a half, events in Kashmir have caused us to pivot onto theregional radar screen as Pulwama has hurled the dispute into that position.
By any standards, the shuffle that the Modi government made from Pulwama to Balakot was astonishingly swift and seamless, worthy of a movie that might be titled “Wag the Elephant”.
In less than two weeks, without any discussion about evidence or rationale, the Indian Air Force stuck deep into Pakistan doing questionable damage to its intended targets. Less than twenty-four hours later, Pakistan’s Air Force struck across the line of control.
In tandem with this, the unspeakably reckless social and conventional media nudged their governments towards using nuclear arsenal. Suddenly, the world’s most dangerous place also became the world’s most irresponsible region.
Thankfully the moment has passed without mishap, at least sofar. But it has left the world wondering whether it can continue to trustdysfunctional South Asia to steer clear of disaster in a world struggling tofind stability and order and between growing authoritarianism and strugglingdemocracy.
The International Dimension – back to hyphenation
The global lesson of Pulwama is that if Delhi thought thatits braggadocio and victimhood complex would win it support in the world, itneeds to think again.
As the political commentator, Andrew Korybko, noted in a recent op-ed on Pulwama in Global Research, “India will always be important because of its location and attractive consumer and labor market potentials…”. But the insightful analyst of Eurasian political affairs was quick to argue from his perch in Moscow that “Russia”, India’s former all-weather friend, “regards India and Pakistan as equals”.
He also points out that the “OIC slammed India for its atrocities in Kashmir despite hosting its Foreign Minister as the bloc’s official guest of honor during its latest summit”. The same article argues that Pakistan’s military responded ably to India on land, sea and in the air.
Perhaps more damagingly Christine Fair, the well-knowncritic of Pakistan’s army, was at pains to point out during a Delhi-basedtalking heads show, that she was alarmed by India’s lack of military capacityto counter its neighbor. China, as usual, was mostly silent but would not havebeen displeased by this observation about its “all-weather” friend which, as notedby Andrew Small, some of its political practitioners regard as “China’s Israel”in South Asia.
More harmfully still for India many observers have notedthat Pakistan’s Prime Minister has emerged the adult in comparison to hisIndian counterpart after the repartees. Indeed, the entire incident hasunwittingly led to hyphenating India and Pakistan once again – with Kashmir asthe cause.
Kashmir in the Middle – and the return of geopolitics
The final sentence of the last paragraph is not idle hope asit is simple empirical scrutiny. Off late we in Kashmir either despair orbecome cynical because of our historical position of “being in the middle” ofpowerful status quo states. To be sure, it has divested us, incrementally andrelentlessly, of our political agency in the world’s comity of states. But weafford to ignore the direction of history in the making. We must derive hopefrom what that means, as it is within our control to observe that we are on theright side of history. Let me attempt the briefest of recapitulations toillustrate this.
When Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru invited Nikita Khrushchev to declare the State of J&K as Indian territory in 1956 to sooth his conscience for jettisoning the promised referendum on its future, he plunged Kashmir from being a territory negotiated for geostrategic positioning into being coveted as a bone of contention in the Cold War context.
When Indira Gandhi signed the Simla Agreement in 1972 with Pakistan (after the crushing defeat of the latter in 1971) she extracted Kashmir from the Cold War paradigm to make it a “bilateral issue”, assuming a permanently defeated Pakistan. In 2019 we have come full circle; amidst the continuing three-decade quest for a “new world order”, Kashmir is once again a geostrategic concern rather than a bilateral political dispute.
This seesaw has happened for three reasons. First, because of the emerging global rivalry between Washington and Beijing in which South Asia is an important theatre. Second, because of China’s interest in Afghanistan via Tibet, Xinjiang and Kashmir.
And third, because of China’s presence in the Aksai Chin, the Shagsgam Valley and its projects in Gilgit and Baltistan in the cause of the CPEC and BRI projects. All these developments have returned Kashmir to a geostrategic frontline for what is being touted as the “Asian century”. The catch is that it is a game in which Delhi and Islamabad are rendered adjunct partners if not downright bit players.
In all this the lesson for Kashmir is that history does repeat itself; and, sometimes, it can be for the good. But to translate it into our betterment we must observe and analyze developments because our future depends on it.
To do so is to not be influenced by those who have a vested interest in bending our opinion to doubt ourselves. Rather, it is to heed the advice of the mathematician and musician Tom Lehrer, as only the combination of his vocations can articulate:
“Bad weather always looks worse through a window.”
We need to go out into the weather, become familiar with itand draw our own conclusions.