The ferment in Kashmir

By HL Shishoo
Nearly half a century back, the then Prime Minister of the Jammu & Kashmir State was asked about the density of pro-Indian people in the valley. Without any effort he said that along with him every body was pro-Indian and without him every body was anti-Indian.

Nothing much has changed since then, for those in power every person is for India and for those opposing the present status quo every person is a separatist. In broad perspective all leaders claim to be one with the people and for the people but the essence of all political activity in the State is firstly power, secondly, power and thirdly power, animated of course by covetousness and ambition.

However great leaders the State may have produced they were not great enough to forgo lust for power, voluntarily for the sake of pride of their people, because self-interest was the operating force of their political thought. The power equation between power holders and power seekers kept changing like an orchestra in the auditorium but music remained unchanged.

The most puzzling thing is that Kashmiris could not produce a quality leadership bound by the rules of honor, representing the wave of the future and dedicated to the cause of building a sense of dignity in local politics. In absence of leadership of excellent abilities and honest intentions, people are left hanging on a trembling and doubtful balance.

A number of factors may have contributed and even conspired tg bring the common man’s state of mind to the present stagnation but the most obvious cause is inaction and lack of positive attitude towards building a stable political system. The harsh reality of the political equation in Kashmir is that people are neither honest to themselves nor to others, even in the pressing times they are scheming and fighting for personal advantage.

They have no doubt become articulate by showing faith in the political realism that offers something to every body without seriously offending any body. By shedding the very genius and spirit of political morality they are trading larger interests for individual prosperity, one good result being that the specter of separatist politics disappears in the final tally of profit. The consequences are that in spite of illusory quest, most of the people want to retain the present status quo to preserve their privileged economic and social status.

The crudest understanding is that the mental backup of common man in Kashmir has been bolted by revenge killings and overwhelming social pressure but Kashmiris posses amazing adaptability and disposition born of self-preserving instincts. Violence, intimidation and fear are no doubt integral part of daily life but even in the most unrewarding circumstances people’s creative energies are intact and very active. For most of their common day problems people find answers on the ground of pure logic and pure mathematics and having intensely inert intellectuals on their side is an added advantage that helps a great deal to dull the political advantage of the separatists.

People committed to the dignity of work have since disappeared from the scene, displaced in physical sense by the people who make gains from the benefit of delayed task of finding a solution to the political issues.In order to make a strict distinction between the separatist tendencies in Kashmir and rest of the State, the picture presented by the separatists must be corrected by more balanced perception of reality. There exists a different position in Jammu and Ladakh where separatist intentions did not get the support to proceed beyond the first stage.

Despite Violence, separatism looks more or less a surface phenomenon to most of the people but on the grounds of pure logic they have assumed a mask to supersede inner expressions and emotions. On the one side people’s immersion in separatist politics is shallow and tenuous and on the other side their interest in the elected Government is need based and transitory.

Let us be very honest that the secessionist movement is not a revolution by common consent but it is the fear that stands between slave impulse and in the way of freedom of expression, accommodation and reason.Inability of the main political parties, Congress and the National Conference to satisfy the political aspirations of the people undoubtedly led to the eruption of pent-up forces whose intention is to break through the status quo.

The movement instead of working through legislature and parliament relies on rigorous and ruthless programme of implementation and has worked two ways, one by paralyzing the will of the people and another by giving respectability to the separatists who were desperately trying to gain recognition among the masses. Militancy worked like a juggernaut rolling on regardless of innocent people crushed beneath it but it failed to clean the Augean stables or solve the political problems.

The greatest good that has happened to the common man is the economic reconstruction, the impetus of which is towards development of infrastructure and creation of jobs for the educated unemployed. Separatists are using intoxicating phrases in political sense to influence the political understanding of the common man who is paying heavy price for the contradictions in their fundamentals.

Separatist conduct does neither make them the prophets of a new era nor do they hold the winning edge but they are definitely working against the future. Separatism will survive in the State as long as it receives indirect support from legislature and the bureaucracy, former by consistent wavering and later by running a State within the State. It is not surprising that bureaucracy works at various levels in most intricate ways that is difficult to detect, to strengthen the separatist movement in the State.

A strong current of thought works in the bureaucracy that fixes jobs for separatist cadres within the police and administration, strengthens its finances by arranging economic assistance, helps in securing Government contracts, facilitates loans from Banks and Financial institutions, manipulates financial relief on flimsy grounds and ensures striking of work in Government institutions to compliment the separatist propaganda.It will be absolutely disastrous for India if any attempt is made under the influence of political turncoats to roll back the history of the State.

Militancy will stay long even if a solution is found but a strong will is needed to blunt its potency and base because the people of the country particularly the armed forces have accepted enormous sacrifices in the spirit of service to the nation. In local politics rational and irrational forces are so intertwined that these cannot be separated and whatever the script of the authors of self-rule and demilitarization, their real intention is to lay the snares for the desperate souls in Delhi to strengthen the separatist agenda.

The think-tank of Government of India should not fall prey to self-deception and irrationality in view of delay in finding a solution. They must understand the political mechanism in the State, grasp the dangers posed by organized deceit and hypocrisy of the politicians professing high principles and public interests but in practice contributing to evil imaging and evil doing fraught of course with dangerous consequences.

The most obvious fact is that there exists a peculiar relationship and diversity between the three regions of the State and this introduces great complexity in managing the solution to the present conflict. The task would be simpler if the separatists and the nationalist employ the vocabulary of reason and realism, harmonize the conflict of interests to make reconciliation a potent reality. Self-patting and chest thumping leaders, who claim exclusive right to the political wisdom, literally demanding a place in the Sun, give the impression that the solution to Kashmir issue is in their brief.

Many a desperate soul believes unwittingly in these diverse and heterogeneous elements that cultivate and cater to foreign interests. Peace is undoubtedly a beautiful dream but two widely divergent views of political thought and action can neither produce unity nor solution but only perpetual conflict.

The problems that seem so simple to the men of ludicrous self-importance seeking headlines in the local media are highly complicated, as no alimentary canal can be a substitute for the stomach. With the loosening of the social bonds people are without a shepherd, they need a real regenerator at some space and time, the man who can hold their emotions as Sheikh Abdullah did in 1940’s but unlike him, who works for permanence and fresh efflorescence in the concept of politics. Let us be clear that Jammu and Kashmir is politically fluid and Geographically fractured State and any new concept cannot be founded on the ideology of terror. The people may be contributing to the collective paralysis of will under threat but they have not completely surrendered their faculty.

Separatist must accept that the participation of the people in the Hurriyat is not voluntary and without their interior and natural cohesion of a pervading sense of homogeneity there can be no solution. We cannot ignore the strong lay elements of the State and its intellectualism in the long run, without whom solution to the conflict is impossible. The real issue to be addressed by people, their leaders and the Government should be what degree of autonomy can be pressed for keeping in view the diverse social, political and economic interests of the three regions of the State. Government of India must stop political gaming for temporary relief, understand and accept the tremendous reverberations in the changing political thought and prepare the ground for granting reasonable degree of self-expression on domestic policy not only to Jammu and Kashmir but also to other States in addition to reasonable degree of decentralization in the economic matters.