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| Vol. 4, Issue 5 May 2012 |
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Perspectives |
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Politics |
Kashmir: In Search of a Peace Process?
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| Unless India sends appropriate interlocutors to Kashmir, the gesture is futile |
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Published : 1 November 2010 |
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MUKHTAR KHAN / AP PHOTO |
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| Seen here on the far left beside Manmohan Singh and Omar Abdullah, Kashmir Governor NN
Vohra was once an interlocuter on Kashmir, but failed to take the peace process anywhere.
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N 13 OCTOBER 2010, the Government of India
named a panel of three interlocutors to start a
fresh peace dialogue in Kashmir. The chosen
ones were Radha Kumar, an academic and peace
practitioner who teaches at Jamia Millia Islamia and has
been involved with the think tank Delhi Policy Group; M
Ansari, a senior bureaucrat who has worked as
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the Information Commissioner; and the former editor of the Times of
India, Dilip Padgaonkar, who also flirted with public policy
by running a short-lived foreign policy magazine.
Each one has been a successful professional in his or her
chosen field, but when we place them against the canvas
of the seemingly intractable and highly sensitive Kashmir
conflict, they are featherweights. Expectedly, their appointments
were met with angry reactions from both pro-independence
and pro-India parties in Kashmir.
Defiant Hurriyat leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani described
the Union government’s pronouncement as a dilly-dallying
tactic. Geelani further asserted that unless the Government
of India accepted his already spelt-out key demands—recognising Kashmir as a dispute, demilitarisation of Kashmir
and the release of prisoners—his faction of Hurriyat would
not engage in any talks. Moderate Kashmiri separatists such
as Mirwaiz Umar Farooq described the appointment of
these interlocutors as a “mere waste of time” and called on
the Indian government to accept his proposals, which more
or less mirror Geelani’s preconditions for peace talks with
India. Even the pro-India People’s Democratic Party’s Mehbooba
Mufti criticised the choice of interlocuters as reflective
of the central government’s failure to understand the
magnitude of the problems in Kashmir. Mufti had hoped to
see some political faces on the panel.
The criticism that the appointment of the Kashmir interlocutors
has evoked isn’t based only on the unimaginative
and weak nature of the current initiative, but also stems
from a history of peace initiatives botched by Delhi’s everchanging
interlocutors. Almost a decade has passed since
April 2001, when the central government appointed former
Union Minister for Defence and Planning Commission
member KC Pant as its interlocutor for peace talks with
Kashmiri separatists. Pant’s mission was grounded even before
it could take off. Though one of the reasons for Pant’s
failure was the Hurriyat Conference’s refusal to engage
with the Indian government without the involvement of Pakistan,
he failed largely because his mandate was limited to
mere interaction with people from various political shades
and then submitting a report.
In July 2003, two years after Pant’s foray into peacemaking
had become a vague memory, the BJP government appointed
the lawyer turned senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley to
engage with the Kashmir Government and various political parties in Kashmir. Jaitley’s brief
was to discuss the question of
possible autonomy to Kashmir or
to what the BJP-led government
referred to as the ‘devolution of
powers’ in the context of a larger,
pan-Indian debate on federalism.
The BJP’s espousal of federalism
as a possible solution to the Kashmir
conflict remained limited to a
rhetorical exercise.
Implicit in the BJP’s advocacy
of a ‘uniform federalism’ was the
idea that Kashmir had to be treated
at par with all Indian states and could not to be ‘pampered’
by restoring its lost special status. The application of
the principle of asymmetrical federalism vis a vis Kashmir,
or restoration of Kashmir’s status as an ‘associated state’
which existed from its limited accession with India in 1947
until the Delhi Agreement of 1952, was not to be entertained.
It was anathema to the BJP, a party which has had difficulties in negotiating multiculturalism, and which like the ruling Congress party, has promoted a centralised Indian state in relation to Kashmir.
In February 2003, the Indian government appointed
former Home Secretary and current Jammu & Kashmir
Governor NN Vohra as its pointman on Kashmir, who often
preferred to speak to the Kashmiri separatists through
the press rather than engage them directly. Vohra seemed
to be interested in bloating the list of stakeholders when he
engaged with groups in Kashmir which were at best fringe
separatist groups, parties existent on paper only, or Kashmiri
parties who already conformed to India’s stated position
on the Kashmir conflict.
The Vohra initiative culminated in a dialogue between the
‘like-minded.’ Lacking a clear and strong mandate on the
contentious issue of Kashmir, the Vohra peace parleys did
not gather any moss. However, Vohra’s efforts did manage
to initiate talks between the moderate faction of the Hurriyat
Conference and the then Indian Deputy Prime Minister,
LK Advani. The talks did not bear any fruit as the BJP-led
government was not willing to give any concessions to
the moderate Hurriyat, which only undermined the group’s
credibility in Kashmir.
Similarly, the use of Indian civil society actors in back channel and official—but not publically declared—interlocutors such as former RAW Chief AS Dulat, then PMO man and India’s National Security Advisor RK Mishra, and veteran lawyer and BJP Member of Parliament Ram Jethmalani, did not make any positive contribution to the peace dialogue on Kashmir.
A common thread that runs through these failed peace
endeavours is the absence of any serious mandate given to
negotiators and the lack of continuity. The present peace
moves are bound to fail again unless the Indian government
addresses some key roadblocks.
Firstly, the Government of India needs to talk simultaneously
to both Pakistan and the separatist groups in Kashmir,
or run parallel and sustained peace negotiations with the
two parties.
Secondly, the team of negotiators should mainly involve
political heavyweights from major Indian political parties;
parties that enjoy widespread acceptability and respect not
only in the Indian parliament but a fair degree of acceptability
in Kashmir as well. The negotiators could be assisted by
noted experts on the Kashmir conflict.
Thirdly, the negotiators should be given a clear and strong
mandate to speak on behalf of the Indian parliament and
deal with the multiple layers of the Kashmir conflict.
Last but not least, the ‘musical chairs’ policy of changing
interlocutors needs to be done away with and the dialogue
process needs to be institutionalised by appointing a robust
parliamentary peace panel for a period of at least ten years,
which could be representative of major shades of Indian political
opinion on Kashmir and usher in a substantive peace
process. Only then can the peoples of Kashmir, India and
Pakistan hope for peace on the subcontinent.
The web edition of this article has some changes from the print version.
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Readers' Comments |
Total Comments
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Tanveer Ahmed
31 January 2011
08:36 PM
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Some great suggestions particularly with reference to involving Indian parliamentarians in dialogue. What I don't agree with though is the idea of India talking to Pakistan about Kashmir. Pakistan is facing heavy odds to look after a small vicinity of Rawalpindi, let alone play some positive role in the resolution of problems that people in the Kashmir Valley face. Sorry to be blunt but let's get real.
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