Farewell to Army

If military was mandated to restore law and order in Kashmir it is time that New Delhi started a decent withdrawal from J&K because 60 years are enough to achieve that objective, observes Riyaz Masroor
I believe that the (Jammu and Kashmir) State has been forcibly occupied by the Indian Military against the will of the people. This is brutal aggression and, therefore extremely intolerable and highly dangerous. At present only Muslims appear to be aggrieved at the highhandedness of the Indian government. But in the long run this state of affairs, if it unfortunately continues, will harm the Hindus, probably more than Muslims.
A truer son of the soil late Pandit Prem Nath Bazaz made this compelling assertion way back in 1951 (Azad Kashmir: A Democratic Socialist Conception pp 14).
By then Security Council of UNO had admitted and subsequently passed many a resolution confining the Indian Army’s mandate in Kashmir to the restoration of “law and order”. Also, the first Premier of free India Jawaharlal Lal Nehru whom Professor Stanley Wolpert blames for “errors in diplomatic judgment” because of his obsession with Kashmir, had on many occasions clarified that the Army would leave J&K once the “law and order” was restored.
After over six decades, while enjoying a roaring growth rate closer to 9 percent, although threatened by the rising inflation, India is yet to announce that it has accomplished the mission of restoring “law and order” in Jammu and Kashmir. From an offensive that began with 100 Air Force planes and few thousand soldiers in October 1947, India’s current troop strength in Kashmir has reached over half a million. Defense strategists in New Delhi may argue that the country faced a radical National Security challenge post 1989 but the fact remains what Indian Army was doing here for 42 years.
This backdrop would help a greater deal to understand the nuances of the latest catchword among politicians – Demilitarization. Without going into the definition of demilitarization in the contemporary politico-military context of Kashmir conflict, the attempt here is to find out who needs J&K’s demilitarization the most; the violence-hit people of this landlocked region or New Delhi? Casual answer may be both yet the circumstances suggest that India needs it much more than Kashmiris who are suffering due to a painful sense of being trapped in a “war zone”.
When the Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh tried to dispel the notion that the Indian Army was “not an army of occupation” and that the reduction of troops in J&K would take place only if “terrorist acts ceased” (Greater Kashmir March 3, 2006) he in fact reflected Nehru who had written the same thing to diplomats especially British Prime Minister Atlee sixty years ago. Both the assertions differ in terminology. Nehru in the said correspondence (Shameful Flight: The last years of British Empire in India by Professor Stanley Wolpert) had said that the army would leave only when “law and order” was restored and Dr Singh believes it would happen only when “terrorist acts” ceased.
The resistance that started in 1947 against Indian rule was subdued in a matter of months, but Nehru could not keep his promise of calling back the troops after the “order” was restored. And sixty years after, especially when the armed movement appears waning, New Delhi is still shying away from initiating a withdrawal even as the violence levels, by repeated official admissions, have almost reached the zero.
Since the Congress is confronting a political attrition due to steep rise of Mayawati and BJP, it finds itself in a prickly dilemma about Kashmir problem, which most believe is largely its own making. At a time when the Muslim vote is fast swinging to BJP and BSP, the Congress can posthumously keep Nehru’s promise of withdrawing military from Kahsmir because the bare minimum standard of withdrawal has been almost achieved.
There were no newspaper commentaries in Indian press when Nehru died without justifying the military hold over J&K even as the “law and order” was restored in his own lifetime. But 2008 is not 1964. Can the sharper teenage population of India be fed on TV soups for ever? They are moving out, meeting people and hearing a different story of Kahsmir from others, although they should have heard it at home. Indian Journalist Goutam Nowlakha is becoming part of an International Tribunal on Kahsmir and leading Supreme Court lawyer Mihir Desai is openly supporting demilitarization. An enlightened woman from Bengal, Angana Chatterji, who teaches in US, is unequivocally pointing to the “war crimes” perpetrated in Kashmir by the actors of the conflict. It seems that the entire media induced perception about Kahsmir in India’s conscious populace is changing.
If it is true that Kashmir’s 20-year armed movement has been neutralized it’s pretty difficult to predict winners or losers in this defeat. What if the present lot of Indian leadership including Gujral, Advani Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh also fail to keep the promise of withdrawing troops after restoring “order”? What if the India’s emancipated young intellectuals return from foreign universities and hold Dr Manmohan Singh or his successors witness to an uncomfortable fact: One of the world’s best army could not restore “order” in J&K for 60 years.
Mihir Desai, an upright lawyer from India (not Pakistan) questioned the presence of over five lakh armed forces in Kashmir when he spoke at the launch of a Peoples Tribunal on Human Rights in Srinagar on April 5, 2008. Pointing to occasional reinforcements in India’s disturbed states, Mihir said, “In Chattishgarh (militancy infested state bordering Bihar) 2500 CRPF men are fighting five to six thousand Maoist and Naxal guerrillas. Officials in Kashmir put the number of militants in hundreds yet there are half a million troops present in the state. This means that the troops are here to subjugate the entire population.”
If New Delhi is right now ignoring the demands of troop withdrawal from J&K it can be viewed in two different frames. Either it is an open admission of failure to restore peace – Nehru died with the same burden of failure –or Mihir Desai’s assertion that Indian forces are actually to subjugate Kashmiri population is the real agenda, which is couched in “law and order” package. Isn’t it time to dispel the notions which could earn a bad name for the growing India?
Mihir’s point may or may not be debatable yet he has, in fact, raised an interesting question by doubting the mandate of Indian armed forces present in Kahsmir for past six decades.


(The article first appeared in Rising Kashmir)