Some of you might remember me. I used to write a weekly column on this very page of the hallowed Greater Kashmir daily till March 2016. Around three years ago, I decided that I needed to take a break after marking my presence on this page, week after week, for eight long years. It’s now time for me to return to Greater Kashmir, and to Kashmir.
I have been busy in these three years. I travelled widely, met interesting people, wrote extensively and embarked on several new initiatives. Allow me to give you a broad overview of what I did over the past three years. In early 2016, I began an ambitious research project to understand the causes and consequences of ceasefire violations (CFVs) on the Line of Control (LOC) between India and Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir. In mid 2016, as part of the study, I went on a month-long field trip with the Indian army and the BSF on the LoC and the International border in J&K, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat. Soon thereafter, in late 2016, I went off to the Central European University in the picturesque city of Budapest for under a year to work on my book project. I needed some solitude to think, and write.
I returned to India in 2017, and in December that year I went to Pakistan. I had been to Pakistan several times. But this time was to be special because the journey was to the Pakistani side of the LoC and the General Headquarters of the Pakistan army in Rawalpindi, to be specific, for I knew my study would have been incomplete without a trip to the Pakistani side. That December trip to Pakistan was one of the most stimulating intellectual journeys I every undertook as a researcher and author. My research finally reached its logical conclusion in the form of two books. The first one, entitled “The Line of Control: Travelling with the Indian and Pakistani Armies”, a travelogue, was published by Penguin Random House in December 2018. An academic study followed in January this year from the Oxford University Press, entitled “Line on Fire: Ceasefire Violations and India-Pakistan Escalation Dynamics”.
I continued my association with several India-Pakistan track-II forums even though I must admit that despite all sincere efforts, India-Pakistan relations are worse than ever, well almost. I also began a new talk show, a series of high-profile interviews, called “National Security Conversations” for renowned journalist Siddharth Varadarajan’s new website TheWire.in. So as you can see, I have been busy.
Kashmir has been busy too. You had an intensely fought Assembly election and, what I consider today, a disastrous coalition between the BJP, a party that is becoming far too rightwing for even mainland Indians, and the PDP, a party that had a great deal of sympathy amongst you Kashmiris. There were some compelling reasons for the coalition and one was sympathetic towards it – but neither did the coalition live up to its promises nor did it serve Kashmir’s interests. Kashmir today is worse off, and the BJP-PDP coalition is partly to blame.
Kashmir is once again at the intersection of the frosty relationship between India and Pakistan. Pakistan is back to Kashmir with a vengeance, sensing an opportunity. New Delhi is either clueless on how to deal with Kashmir and the complex politics in the Valley or is thoroughly incompetent. Try fusing ignorance, political incompetence and hyper-nationalist smugness: that’s what you have today in Kashmir.
Pakistan wants to talk Kashmir and until talks begin on Kashmir, it will continue to do what it does in Kashmir. But for New Delhi Kashmir is non-Kosher and there can be no talks on Kashmir with Pakistan on the Kashmir question, for good or bad. That’s where Kashmir is struck today – between the extreme political positions of two powerful states, between a rock and a hard place. This will go on until at least the elections are over. In the meantime, there has been a general and deeply worrying uptick in violence in the state. Consider this: in 2013, just six Kashmiri boys joined the ranks of militancy which went up to 126 in the wake of the killing of Burhan Wani. Last year, the figure crossed 200. Terror incidents and militant casualties have also spiked. The ruling party in New Delhi seems to argue that it is doing a great job because it is killing more terrorists. But wait a minute, you are killing more terrorists because there ARE more terrorists. So the question to be asked is why there are more terrorists in the first place.
Globally and regionally, too, these are interesting times. There is a general sense of chaos and purposeless in the international order today. Be it great power relations, arms control, or climate change – there is a global disorder that is setting in. Any astute observer of international politics would tell you that what happens at the systemic level will eventually have ripple effects at the regional and bilateral levels. Regionally too, there is a great deal of unpredictability of uncertainty – the rise and rise of China, the rapid inroads it has made into the South Asian region, replacing the Indian primacy, and the further deepening on Sino-Pak relations, and New Delhi’s uneasiness with all that will also have implications for Indo-Pak relations and Kashmir, one way or another.
We must therefore brace ourselves for the times ahead, to take their impact in our stride.
Once again, it’s wonderful to be back to Greater Kashmir, and to Kashmir.