Pakistan’s latest self-projection as eager and constructive about resolving Kashmir has evoked the usual welcome from Indians frustrated by Delhi’s seemingly endless, if not masterly, inactivity. Indo-Pakistani normalisation must obviously be a prime objective for India’s foreign policy. Since Pakistan rejects it as impossible unless we first satisfy its demands regarding Kashmir, we should certainly explore any rational possibility for conjuring up such satisfaction. But does any such possibility exist?
Pakistani proposals boil down to reducing, if not eliminating, India’s sovereignty in regard to J&K. All the ingenious devices being floated, from soft borders between the two halves of the original state, somehow reconstituted as some kind of entity under some kind of joint control, through condominium to a fresh partition giving the Valley some kind of status outside the Indian Constitution, ultimately require India yielding its sovereignty. Why should we do so?
Two reasons could compel us: military defeat or moral untenability. Although Pakistan throws demands at us as only a victor dictates, we are neither defeated nor going to be. As for moral considerations, as a State founded on and devoted to certain values in life appropriate also to State conduct, it would besmirch India to hold on to J&K in violation of those values, though there are valid arguments that sometimes survival is a moral necessity, transcending temporary breaches. But granted the immorality of holding Kashmir simply by brute force, that is not what we are doing, nor what the future holds for us or the Kashmiris.
The real bone of Indo-Pak contention is generally taken to be the Valley, the home of the Kashmiri-speaking element. It is their misfortune that, apart from their terrible sufferings, they have very little choice about their future. Both India and Pakistan — and, whatever their inner preference, as realists, most Kashmiris themselves — rule out independence. And as between the two neighbours, only its paid agents have any inclination towards Pakistan.
{{/usCountry}}The real bone of Indo-Pak contention is generally taken to be the Valley, the home of the Kashmiri-speaking element. It is their misfortune that, apart from their terrible sufferings, they have very little choice about their future. Both India and Pakistan — and, whatever their inner preference, as realists, most Kashmiris themselves — rule out independence. And as between the two neighbours, only its paid agents have any inclination towards Pakistan.
{{/usCountry}}Yet it is also true that, for nearing 20 years, there has been profound and bitter discontent in the Valley with India. That the violence this has facilitated is Pakistani-instigated and controlled must not blind us to the enormous extent of genuinely indigenous unhappiness. Thus, Kashmir presents two different problems, intertwined but distinct: one between Delhi and Islamabad, one between Delhi and Srinagar. If the former is insoluble, we could live with it, as we did for decades before 1989 if we could resolve the second. Delhi’s real failure has been to work out this modus vivendi with the Kashmiri people.
That the latter saw their salvation in India at the very beginning of the conflict is beyond question but, alas, also no longer of active consequence. Too much has changed, both in Kashmir and in India, to negate the forces that worked then to encourage a blending of national sentiment. The ties between the peoples of Kashmir and of the rest of us can still be strengthened by the attraction of an India of such strong democratic pluralism, with both political and economic opportunities, all beyond Pakistani capabilities, as to reinvigorate Kashmiri faith in a future in India (as indeed applies to other disaffected regions of India). It is perfectly possible to find a solution for the Delhi-Srinagar problem on the basis of umpteen ideas for recasting the relationship within the framework of our Constitution that have been around for years. Why Delhi wastes decades delaying this passes all understanding.
Let us take the worst case as having been true till now: that the Kashmiris never really liked being part of India, as Pakistan alleges. What Pakistan has so successfully obscured, but cannot get away from, is the fact that, apart from their initial good-will, at least because of their continuous mistrust of Pakistan, the Kashmiri peoples acquiesced in the Indian nexus more or less willingly until Delhi’s criminal mishandling of 1989 drove them to revolt.
Until then, the worst that Pakistan could devise, including the second invasion of the state in 1965, could make no impact on the Kashmiris — as is well-known, in 1965 they again helped the Indian forces against Pakistan. That they did so again in Kargil is only one illustration among many others of how feasible it still is to retrieve that Kashmiri acquiescence in the Indian nexus — i.e. to resolve the Delhi-Srinagar problem even while the Delhi-Islamabad problem lingers.
That should be the overriding, immediate and sustained priority of Delhi’s policies: by all means keep doors open for Delhi-Islamabad possibilities, but go all out to settle the Delhi-Srinagar problem. Pakistan will do all it can to prevent that; and perhaps the greatest failure of Indian statecraft over the years has been the expansion of Pakistan into the Delhi-Srinagar equation. From being denied any role in regard to Kashmir, and after decades of minimal effect, Pakistan seized upon our mistakes to make itself both a party to discussions with India on the future of the state and a major player in its internal politics.
Between 1965 and 1989, Pakistan could only raise the issue pro forma, while Delhi and Srinagar could ignore it. Even at the height of its mischief, when its terrorists were making life miserable for both Kashmiris and the Indian security forces in the Nineties, a Pakistan floundering at home and internationally disregarded could be kept at bay politically
— India’s eternal solution-seekers notwithstanding. It was only after the post-9/11 resurrection of Pakistan’s global importance that its meddling in Kashmir has inflated the notion of a negotiated settlement into a proposition to be taken seriously.
Pakistan’s greatest asset in this diplomatic campaign is the widespread desire in India for good relations. Even those most firmly agreed that there can be no diminution of India’s sovereignty — as distinct from almost limitless expansion of autonomy within it — succumb to the illusion that some solution with Pakistan is nevertheless feasible. We have yet to learn that at given moments in history, there are no solutions: you must wait for circumstances to change and permit of solutions unthinkable today. And when existing circumstances do not permit of solutions, it is no use devising ingenious formulae that look like substitutes: you must work to change the circumstances.
If the two countries could develop positive interactions, cooperating across the wide spectrum of mutual benefit open us, vested interests in avoiding conflict would develop. In insisting this cannot happen without ‘settling’ Kashmir first, Pakistan’s rulers are really saying they will not let it happen. Their reason is obvious: Pakistan’s power structure, specifically army dominance, depends on tension with India. Allow trade and economic interdependence, people-contact, educational-cultural exchanges and you undermine your claim to be the saviour of a nation-in-danger, and so to run Pakistan. This is not to underestimate wider Pakistani misgivings. Fifty years of brainwashing were sadly illustrated when, instead of extending help to the disastrous earthquake victims, the Pakistani army units reportedly rushed to guard the frontiers lest India take advantage!
Faced with such army mentality we cannot expect real détente till the Pakistanis deal with their power structure — something they alone can do. Our job is to come to terms with the Kashmiris while containing Pakistani mischief. Ultimately, the most effective answer is to keep becoming so strong, economically, politically, militarily, ideologically, that Pakistan cannot harm us. That is well within our capabilities, if we will but use them. Knowing that, and witnessing daily the appalling decline in our State apparatus, Islamabad seeks to undermine us as a nation by extending terror from J&K to India’s mainland. If we fail to see what stares in the face, if we persist in the sloppiness — of thought no less than of administration — that keeps us from realising our potential, our misfortunes will be of our own making.
The writer is former Ambassador to Pakistan, China and the US, & Secretary, External Affairs