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Wednesday, Apr 13, 2005

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Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Keeping the bus going

By Harish Khare

The people of Kashmir who lined up along the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road have offered their self-appointed custodians an exit route. It is up to Manmohan Singh and Pervez Musharraf to seize the moment.

ON THURSDAY (April 7), a small press contingent travelled from New Delhi to Srinagar for the historic occasion of the re-opening of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad route. It was a grim and unappetising morning when the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, flagged off the bus with 19 intrepid Kashmiris on the inaugural run. More than the weather, the mood was dark and the vibes were unpropitious. Six months earlier, we had witnessed the Prime Minister address a public rally at the same venue, and a vast crowd was there to hear him out as he promised jobs and finances to kick-start the process of governance in Jammu and Kashmir. This time there were too many policemen and too few Kashmiris.

The observer was left wondering whether, like all other events, the "bus ceremony" — extensively reported live by the national and international electronic media — was indeed another elaborate production, staged for an audience beyond those gathered in the Srinagar stadium.

Be it a fidayeen attack, a Hurriyat hartal call, a general election, or panchayati raj elections, everything in Kashmir is invested with significance and meaning for audiences in and outside the Kashmir Valley. Inevitably, there is a contest among various entrenched "constituencies" over the presumed significance of this or that development.

So on April 7, the Indian state and its political establishment flew out to Srinagar to showcase a new initiative aimed at churning the Kashmir sentiment without having any idea of what the churning should or would produce. Though the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus idea is identified with the Mufti Mohammed Sayeed-Mehbooba Mufti duo, it is also a fact that the idea would not have taken off without the blessings of the entrenched "security" watchdogs or without a sense of cautious adventure on the part of the Foreign Minister, Natwar Singh.

Those of us who had travelled from Delhi to Srinagar left for the airport as soon as the flagging-off ceremony was over. On our way to the Srinagar airport, we witnessed the same deserted streets, closed shops, and saturated security bandobast that we had observed on our way into the town. Srinagar appeared to us to be deliberately indifferent to the emotive symbolism and the promise of the "bus." Perhaps no one was prepared to overlook the dramatic attack the previous day on the Tourist Reception Centre where the bus passengers had been sequestered; after all, it was the first time the "freedom fighters" had attacked the very people in whose name they had all along sought justification for indulging in violence against the Indian state. One could understand if the people of Kashmir had got so used to cowering before anyone who had an AK-47 across the shoulder.

By the time the press party was back in Delhi the television was beaming out an altogether different reality, consisting of cascading images of people on both sides of the Line of Control rejoicing in a symbolic reunion of their "divided" society. What was obvious was that this outbreak of popular expression could not have been choreographed by any "agency" on this or that side of the LoC. Nor could anyone have coerced the popular participation in the "bus." The genuineness of the moment could not be questioned. More importantly, this genuine expression was anchored not in anger. The popular participation seemed laced with uninhibited hope and optimism — a definite denial of the claims and pretensions of those who had attacked the Tourist Reception Centre the previous day.

The immediate question then is: has the bus redefined the nature of the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan? Or, more pertinently, will India and Pakistan be willing to re-assess their respective understanding of the core of the "core" issue? Arguably this was the first time the two sides enabled the two "Kashmirs" to come together without in any way prejudicing their traditional claims and positions.

Having unleashed (even if unwittingly) a new fizz of Kashmiri sentimentality, can the "strategists" in New Delhi and Islamabad move beyond their over-pickled solutions and counter-solutions? Is there sufficient imagination not to let these violence-kings (on both sides of the LoC) drag everyone down into their professional intransigence?

Suddenly confronted with an expression of popular emotions, the Syed Ali Shah Geelani School of thinking refuses to see any significance in the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus. The Syed even regrets that the people on both sides of the LoC have fallen prey to "false slogans." This camp will continue to exert pressure on the powers that be in Islamabad to ensure that the Hurriyat's definitions and its exclusive representative claims remain unquestioned. The Hurriyat crowd knows that the ruling establishment in Pakistan continues to feel itself under pressure to keep "working" for the "Kashmiri cause." President Pervez Musharraf finds himself having no option but to grant an audience to the Hurriyat leadership.

The larger question is whether "alienation" in the Kashmir Valley is so entrenched, so immutable, so impregnable that nothing short of azadi would do. On the face of it, cumulative dissatisfaction got congealed into present-day alienation at a certain stage in the life of the Indian state. The "alienation" acquired a sharp cutting edge because of a hope — and a promise — that sooner or later Pakistan would chip in militarily in the Kashmiris' "freedom struggle." Every Kashmiri was convinced — as is probably every Indian "strategist" — that the most enduring and permanent segment of the Pakistani establishment wanted revenge for Bangladesh.

That hope has died a thousand deaths. Today the Kashmiri knows that the much-promised "jehadi" onslaught too has been contained and will be contained. The bottom-line remains that Pakistan cannot win for the Kashmiris at the peace table what it cannot win for them in the prolonged "proxy war." Nonetheless, it should also be clear that Pakistan's diminishing capacity to intervene in the Kashmiri "freedom struggle" does not necessarily make the separatist sentiment melt away.

That is where the "bus" sentimentality beckons both India and Pakistan to think anew. Whether or not Islamabad is able to seize the significance of the moment, it is imperative that New Delhi proceeds on an assumption that a new beginning is possible. The country would need to demonstrate the same kind of thinking that Indira Gandhi summoned in 1974 when she presided over the Mirza Afzal Beg-G. Parthasarathi agreement. In one act of magnanimity and accommodation, she consolidated the mainstream opinion in Jammu and Kashmir behind the Indian state.

It was not just that Sheikh Abdullah was anointed as Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister; it was a considered gesture to reach out to those who felt alienated or hurt. That consolidation of the mainstream opinion has stood the test of time, from 1974 to 2005. It is time now for a new attempt at a new accommodation.

But before the Indian state can offer any kind of accommodation to the separatist camp, the current political establishment would have to exhibit unusual sound common sense. The Congress leadership will soon be confronted with the delicate question of whether it should insist on going by the letter of the 2002 Congress-People's Democratic Party coalition agreement. Under this agreement, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed would need to make way as Chief Minister in October for a nominee of the Congress.

In 2002, when the Sonia Gandhi-Manmohan Singh-M.L. Fotedar thinking prevailed to produce the Congress-PDP coalition, the unsentimental view was that the Mufti had come to represent a certain kind of Kashmiri sentiment that the Congress ought to recognise, respect and accommodate.

That prescription remains valid; the fragile coalition between the "Indian" and the "Kashmiri" personas need not be thoughtlessly disturbed, just for the satisfaction of having one more chief ministership in the Congress kitty. Now that the Congress has a leading responsibility in presiding over the country, its leadership has an added responsibility to blunt the intriguers' machinations. This is time not for intrigue but for inspiration.

If the PDP-Congress alliance is allowed to remain undisturbed, only then can the much more difficult task of reaching out to the separatist constituency be undertaken. The people of Kashmir who lined up along the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road have offered their self-appointed custodians an exit route. It is up to Dr. Manmohan Singh and President Musharraf to seize the moment and help the separatists come to terms with the new reality.

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