Will Obamantra settle Kashmir?

Riyaz Masroor

Two important events in South Asia and the latest buzz between South Asia’s nuclear cousins – India and Pakistan – give out a glimmer of hope about some sort of settlement over Kashmir dispute. As for events, the defeat of world’s most organized insurgency in Sri Lanka and the weakening control of Taliban in parts of Pakistan have cleared the doubts, if any, that there could ever be a military solution to any ethno-political or religio-cultural conflict in post cold war world.
Then there are important statements. On 9 May 2009, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari told Jim Lehrer of American PBS TV that his country did not perceive India a threat. "Well, I am already on record. I have never considered India a threat. I have always considered India a neighbor, which we want to improve our relationship with. We have had some cold times and we have had some hard times with them. We have gone to war thrice, but democracies are always trying to improve relationships”. Exactly a fortnight later on 23 May , Chief of India’s formidable Air Force, Air Marshal Fali Homi Major, told Rahul Singh of Hindustan Times that China posed a more real and potent threat to India than Pakistan. “The way he (China) is growing, he definitely has the capability…we know very little about the actual capabilities of China, there combat edge or how professional their military is…they are certainly a greater threat.” This statement could be easily read as a more technical response to Zardari’s gesture. After all when India considers China a major threat in the neighborhood it points to the realization that Pakistan is no longer a threat. Though bit oblique, Indian assertion that Pakistan too is not a threat has paved a fertile ground for further build up on the path of peace and reconciliation.
The following week saw yet another exchange of peace gesture between India and Pakistan. On 21 May 2009, Pakistan’s foreign office spokesman Abdul Basit hoped that the new Congress-led government in India would resume the bilateral peace process with Pakistan “sooner rather than latter.” In his weekly media briefing Basit also appealed to the world community that it should play a “role” in strengthening the “strategic stability” in South Asia. Few days latter, on 25 May India’s newly appointed foreign minister S M Krishna began his stint by extending a hand of friendship to Pakistan. Stating that the neighbors cannot be replaced, Krishna linked reconciliation with Pakistan to the sustainability of India’s economic growth. The foreign minister, in his first media interaction, said the new government’s highest priority was to strengthen ties with the neighbors and further consolidate strategic partnerships with the U.S., Russia, China, Japan and the European Union. The Minister vowed to nurture close ties with its traditional partners with the aim of furthering India’s “non-aligned” foreign policy and strengthening its “strategic autonomy.”
The post-Bush America is encountering a different world with even North Korea, besides China and Russia, reasserting their antagonism toward the American hegemony. Since Kashmir is located at the strategic crisscross of big powers in Asia, a sharper US focus on the dispute is quite understood. We need not repeat how Kashmir was mentioned by the worlds’ biggies including Obama and David Miliband at a time when the people in Kashmir had left behind a bloody phase of Azadi movement and were voting in throes. The continuity of Obama’s Kashmir-is-the-key policy about South Asia peace is all the more palpable.
Of significant note is that Zardari made the statement about India not being a threat to Pakistan from the American soil. It is believed, says a Press Trust of India report, both Obama and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in their meetings with Zardari had impressed upon him that Pakistan should no longer consider India as a primary threat and rather concentrate its energies on fighting terrorism inside the country.
So, the American hand in Indo-Pak peace process is no longer “invisible” but the possibility of this “hand” delivering any results will entirely depend on how both India and Pakistan will play their cards. That the Pakistan has all along been advocating a third-party intervention in Kashmir is a proven fact, which was reiterated by the country’s foreign office spokesman Abdul Basit on May 21. If, on the U.S. insistence, Pakistan is more willing to resume the peace process, it is not so much surprising. What should be understood in a proper context is whether India has at long last grown comfortable with Washington’s mediation, which the Indian policy makers like to call as “facilitation”. A mild activity on Tract II has already began; advocates of people-to-people contact are again talking; a peace delegation from India that also involves some Kashmiris is about to leave for Pakistan and there is a gradual media build up that the peace process will take off soon.
Reading the subtext of whatever is happening on Track II is very difficult. However, the intonations suggest that both countries, with variable seriousness, appear to have been convinced that Kashmir’s non-territorial settlement was within the parameters of possibility. That is more or less closer to former Pakistani President and army chief General Parvez Musharraf’s four-point formula. The big question that will hover over the ensuing peace exercise in South Asia is whether Pakistan could afford giving up claim on Kashmir and if India would afford to stop linking the peace process with terrorism. Undue expectation from Obama administration is really unadvisable. But the emerging situation suggests that Obamantra should work in favor of South Asia peace.

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A Gatsby killed Romana

Riyaz Masroor
Romana’s murder highlights the core of our societal malaise. Let’s look at the issue beyond the clichéd generalizations such as “social waywardness” and “social evils”.
The fresh spurt in crime rate in Kashmir appears to have two interrelated prongs: the state and the people. As for the state in Kashmir, it lacks popular sanctity for which a host of reasons could be cited. On the other hand, people are suffering from financial insecurity, which is part genuine part self-imposed.
The state here tends to tackle the issue of legitimacy through slogans rather than performance. For example, the slogan of progress, prosperity and development has induced among the masses a wild competition for financial uplift.
After all what does it mean when government resorts to radical discourse about progress and development? It obviously means more money to contractors, more corruption, more inequity and more frustration within disadvantaged sections. This prop-culture hoists a nouveau-riche section of people over the masses that have always remained at the bottom of the development pyramid. These pampered social upstarts vie for positions in power and jockey for bigger share in the state wealth; they get licenses, they get permits, they get lands, shops and other incentives. The masses are made to live on the mercy of these social biggies who have access to and stakes in the state power. Such a system cannot generate moral values even if we keep crying in mosques.
Amidst this organic tie-up between the state and the selfish layers of our society, a son murdering his father to lavish family fortunes on a rave party or a lovesick youth from moneyed family knocking the cute and innocent Romana to death should not surprise us.
If we are content with this mad rush for money, we better not bother about “social waywardness”. Some of the largest pay premiums, says Adam Smith, go to highly qualified people who are willing to do morally questionable work.
Let’s confess that we have serious moral issues and let’s admit that invoking religious traditions won’t help. We need a creative response to the aforementioned prop culture, which is spawning newer social diseases.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, James Gatz believes that his humble lifestyle makes him a mismatch for his coveted Daisy. So he renames himself as Jay Gatsby and labors to achieve material success on the grandest scale possible. Fitzgerald never reveals how Gatsby amassed his fortune. But he leaves little doubt that Gatsby’s work was not just morally suspect but well outside the law. In fact, a Gatsby killed Romana and other Gatsbys feel offended!

The K in Sri Lanka

Riyaz Masroor
Before the armed uprising in Kashmir, many of the Srinagar homes used to hang on their modest walls the portraits of M A Jinnah, S M Abdullah, Yasir Arafat and Imam Khomeini. People would identify themselves with the rebels of the time because the state in Srinagar was never organically wedded to the people. After the militancy broke out in 1989 the youth initially tended to deify Osama bin Laden but his portrait was never the part of Valley’s mainstream home décor; if the militant defiance against the “American Empire” was to be displayed Hassan Nasrullah of Lebanon was the preferred choice.
These choices signify the inherently pacifist behavior of Kashmiris. They liked Jinnah for his liberal outlook and pluralistic ideals; they adored Yasir Arafat for his pragmatism; they revered Khomeini not because he confronted USA but for his model of nationalism that was non-racist – Khomeini’s La Sharaqiyah, La Garabiyah slogan was a bold attempt to undo the menace of East-West divide. Why people followed Sheikh Abdullah? Borrowing Shamim Ahmad Shamim’s observation would be apt: “We owe to Sheikh Abdullah both our sunrise as well as our sunset.”
Any anthropological study of Kashmiri behavior would conclude that Kashmiris might be acutely conscious of their cultural identity but they are not the type of Al-Qaida or Taliban. The 20-year separatist campaign that has been marked by a decade of active insurgency also points to how the popular aversion to violence and bloodbath facilitated the transition from violent to the nonviolent mode of resistance. JKLF Chief Muhammad Yasin Malik chose to leave the path of violence in 1994 – barely four years after the militant uprising. His decision did not evoke a large-scale welcome but his shift was silently endorsed by the majority. Many used to argue that India coaxed Pakistan into a proxy military confrontation in Kashmir so that the nationalist resolve of Kashmiris could be crushed. It was, however, not because of these tales that the Kashmiri started rethinking over the means of his struggle but because the violence as a means of social resistance was genetically unpalatable for Kashmiri people. Unlike Arabs Kashmiris don’t slaughter the sacrificial lamb of their own; they hire the services of a professional butcher.
Then why Kashmiris resorted to gun in 1989? The almost worn out answer to this question is that for forty two years they had exhausted all democratic options including the participation in polls. But that is half of the actual answer. Untold part of this answer is that India through military means and political subterfuge had created enough reason for Pakistan to meddle militarily in Kashmiri region, which has never attained complete political cohesion with Indian mainstream. Now that the insurgencies are waning in South Asia – from Swat to Sri Lanka – the Srinagar is calling for serious attention from New Delhi.
Cold war has taught us that armed separatist movements that espouse the cause of religion, ethnicity or communism in Asia have spared big powers the hazard of direct wars; they fought proxy wars against each other in Vietnam, Afghanistan and now in Pakistan.
As for India it grew in size and status for past decade just because its neighborhood was mired in these insurgencies. When smaller powers falling in the neighborhood of a bigger power, remain restive the bigger power has the natural space for maneuvering. We saw Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan in the history’s worst phase during past twenty years. But now we see Nepal being ruled by Maoist rebels who are sympathetic to their ideological cousins active within India; we see Pakistan army chasing away Taliban and we see LTTE, India’s longtime ‘strategic asset’, having been routed from the island nation, mainly with the help of China and Pakistan.
China’s presence in Sri Lanka is perceived as the beginning of India’s encirclement on the Indian Ocean. China has already set up Hambanthota port in Lanka and is now eyeing on Trincomalee port. Russia too has of late grown ambitious about Sri Lanka’s strategic sea-lanes. China is reported to have invested $1 billion in Sri Lanka for a naval base, and has supported the Lankan Army in its war against the Tamil tigers.
Having China, the country that won the 1962 war, on its southern shore, India has reason to be worried. The Tigers, if victorious against Sri Lanka state, would have supported India in her foreign policy ambitions, are down and out. In such a scenario the fear that China may attack India from South does not seem out of place. After all Tamil Nadu is still pro LTTE and the politics in South India has the same texture. In the event of any future war between China and India, or Pakistan and India, which way Sri Lanka will go, is anybody’s guess.
A Times of India blogpost on 20 May 2008 by a Bangalore reader said, “Chinese have port facilities around India: Hambantota (Sri Lanka), Chittagong (Bangla Desh) and Karachi (Pakistan). We are being hemmed in nicely.” But India has a nice option to avert any future war: Kashmir. And the bottom line is that no reason be left in Kashmir that would facilitate China’s overt or covert intrusion. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah is right. Kashmir solution is the key to permanent peace in India. Let the decision makers in Delhi remember that when Pakistan meddled in Kashmir in 1989 its growth rate was barely three percent and the USSR was intact; now Pakistan economy is being padded up by US coffers and the China is spreading influence in all fours. Let’s not leave a fertile ground for another proxy war.

riyaz.masroor@yahoo.com