The Kashmir Conundrum

It’s time to think out of the box. New Delhi must start talking to the Hurriyat, says HARINDER BAWEJA. A ground report from Srinagar

JAMMU HAS been sorted, but how do we handle Kashmir?’ is the mostasked question in the corridors of power in both New Delhi and Srinagar. The frightening truth is that few policy makers occupying the high chairs in both cities have any ideas on how to deal with a situation they have never once encountered in the two decades that they have been “administering” Kashmir.

Their worst nightmare unfolded on the streets of Kashmir when a sea of protestors went wherever the Hurriyat Confernce leadership asked them to come. One day to Idgah, to Pampore the next. To the United Nations’ office. To the Jama Masjid on Friday. They came armed, not with AK 47s but with stones. They carried black flags to protest the economic blockade of the landlocked Valley and the administrators didn’t know what to do with the thousands of women, men and children, for not one of them was armed. How do you silence the roar of a peaceful rebellion?

The men in uniform — extensions of those occupying the high chairs — did what they know best: they opened fire. Not in the air, not on their legs, but straight into their chests. They did not use water cannons. They did not arm themselves with rubber bullets. They simply pulled the trigger. The counter-insurgency weapons with which the security forces have been trying to quell the popular uprising were pressed into action once again.

After killing 40 people, including Hurriyat leader Sheikh Abdul Aziz, the crowds still spilled out of Srinagar’s bylanes, and the Centre didn’t know what to do. When the Kashmiris protested the state government’s order transferring 800 kanals of land to the Amarnath Yatra Shrine Board, it forced a reluctant Ghulam Nabi Azad — the Congress Chief Minister — to rescind the order, ignoring the possibility of the violent reaction from Jammu.

Firefight — that’s the one word that lies at the centre of New Delhi’s response, and it has moved from one kneejerk reaction to another. When for the first time it had both regions on the boil — Jammu fighting Kashmir and Kashmir pointing a finger at Jammu — Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked his Home Minister, Shivraj Patil, to lead an all-party meeting to both places. Patil returned having made a gaffe at each place. In Jammu, he agreed to hold the meeting without Kashmir’s mainstream leaders Farooq Abudllah and Mehbooba Mufti because the Amarnath Yatra Sangharsh Samiti representatives refused to attend otherwise. In Srinagar, senior officials were astounded when, in an attempt to answer the question of opening the Muzzafarabad trade route for the apple growers whose fruit was rotting, he said the CRPF would buy it and sell it to school children in Kashmir.

Patil returned so unsuccessful, he was subsequently kept out of New Delhi’s attempts at brokering some sort of a tentative piece. Manmohan Singh roped in his troubleshooter, Minister for External Affairs Pranab Mukherji, into his core team. Manmohan Singh, in fact, did what previous PMs, including Atal Bihari Vajpayee, did in the past — run the Kashmir policy from the Prime Minister’s Office. And when the PM called the Kashmir leadership to run the peace formula it was offering the Sangharsh Samiti, which had shut down Jammu for a full two months, Farooq, Omar Abdullah, Azad and Saifuadin Soz were surprised to find that the home minister was not even present in that all-important meeting. Pranab Mukherji, not Shivraj Patil, was seated next to the PM.

SO, IN a manner of speaking, New Delhi is content that Jammu has been sorted out. But what about the regional divide? And what about the crowds on the street who were marching past heavily barricaded bunkers, unafraid of what the men in uniform have demonstrated themselves to be capable of? The PM flew in his National Security Advisor (NSA) and Director, Intelligence Bureau, to make an assessment of Ground Zero.

The direction provided by NSA MK Narayanan did not necessitate a visit to Ground Zero. What followed his visit was the darkest the Valley has ever seen. Clamp down. Block the streets. Black out news channels. Disrespect media curfew passes. Polish your guns. Arrest the Hurriyat leaders. Impose stringent curfew. In other words, convert the entire Valley into one large prison. Suppress the slogan for azadi.

All this was done one day before the march to Srinagar’s Lal Chowk on August 25. New Delhi feared that thousands would march to the historic square and pass a resolution declaring independence. In other words, New Delhi thought it best to iron fist them, lest they declare a plebiscite. For an entire week, the Valley stayed cut off from the rest of the country; the rest of the world. Television screens ran blank. Newspaper offices stayed shut, as did schools and colleges. Journalists who ventured out were beaten. Not trusting its own abilities to prevent crowds from coming out in protest, the administration cut off parts of Srinagar from each other with rolls and rolls of concertina wire, provoking many to say, “Yes, Delhi is right when they say Kashmir is India’s integral part. It’s the territory they are bothered about; its people be damned.’’

And it was in the midst of this blackout that Srinagar and Delhi offered its peace formula to Jammu. And it was at this time — when the sullen silence of the overprotected street was mistaken for peace — that Governor NN Vohra decided to reach out to the Hurriyat leadership it had imprisoned in one of its own picnic huts not far from the Raj Bhawan. The governor’s emissaries got the response they ought to have expected — we are not interested in the land problem. Talk to us about the Kashmir dispute, is what both SAS Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said.

Talk to us — it’s in those words that the key to the future lies if New Delhi really wants to understand Kashmir. The Hurriyat Conference split and Geelani, the hardcore separatist leader, broke away. But the faction led by the Mirwaiz risked not just the ire of Pakistan but of the gunwielding militants when it agreed to be part of Manmohan Singh’s dialogue in 2004. But after a few rounds — the last one was in early 2007 — the dialogue went into cold storage. Why? The Mirwaiz provides the answer, “The Centre thought the Kashmiris are tired of violence. Tulip gardens were doing brisk business and Delhi painted a rosy picture in its own head.”

HE IS not off the mark. Delhi has in the last two decades looked at Kashmir in only two ways — militarily and economically. Mirwaiz Omar Farooq spoke to TEHELKA a day after he was released alongwith Geelani — again because Srinagar didn’t want an ailing Geelani in their custody and because the month of Ramzan began on September 2 — and reiterated that a dialogue aimed at a political settlement was the only way forward. “The peaceful marches have frightened Delhi. They only know how to address violence through violence but you can’t call people terrorists.” He has drawn power and significance from the words of John F Kennedy: “When you make a peaceful revolution impossible, you are making a violent revolution inevitable.”

The Hurriyat is now drafting the final contours of how to continue the peaceful revolution. The plan — of holding silent sit-ins in different districts on different days will once again have New Delhi on edge. Will they clamp down for the nth time? Will the concertina wire be rolled out again? Or will they push through the elections — due in two months?

The mainstream parties in the Valley led by Omar Abullah and Mehbooba Mufti are not confident of facing the electorate, which is now in the ‘azadi’ mode. Omar was candid enough to confess that he has never addressed a crowd even a quarter the size of what the Hurriyat is able to draw. Representatives of Mehbooba’s PDP are being attacked or plain shunned, and neither party’s cadre is confident of canvassing in an election where they are bound to be stoned. So, what are the choices before Delhi? To still push ahead with an election where the Hurriyat’s boycott call will have more takers than it has ever had or bring the dialogue process out of the deep freeze? It should go for the latter if it really wants to understand Kashmir. •