Why Do We Fear The Separatists?

The Indi­an Oppo­si­tion and the news media were up in arms last month after Sar­taj Aziz, the advi­sor to Pak­istan Prime Min­is­ter Nawaz Sharif met with the Kash­miri sep­a­ratists. It did not mat­ter what the meet­ing was about, but it tugged at the polit­i­cal nerves of many par­ties in the back­drop of cross bor­der vio­la­tions, the death of many Indi­an sol­diers along the LoC, and most impor­tant­ly the gen­er­al fact that sep­a­ratists were meet­ing a senior Pak­istani offi­cial on Indi­an soil, no less than the Indi­an cap­i­tal. The out­rage spilled over to the social media with terms like ‘betray­al of India’ and ‘India’s capit­u­la­tion to Pak­istan’ became the key terms to sig­ni­fy the event.

Hur­riy­at meet­ing offi­cials from Pak­istan is not new. They have been doing it for decades under Con­gress as well as BJP regimes. I believe the reg­u­lar out­rage over the sep­a­ratists is noth­ing more than polit­i­cal in nature, an attempt by polit­i­cal par­ties to gain trac­tion by tug­ging at sour India-Pak­istan rela­tions. It’s the same rea­son why these cas­es are built up in the media because it’s inter­est­ing tele­vi­sion, where ‘experts’ from Pak­istan and India get pit­ted against each oth­er in numer­ous tele­vi­sion stu­dios for a shout­ing match over the same old India vs. Pak­istan nar­ra­tive.

This issue sel­dom gets a ratio­nal point of view. From a legal stand­point, the Hur­riy­at has every right to move around Indi­an ter­ri­to­ry and meet who­ev­er they want. They are not a banned orga­ni­za­tion and have every right to meet Pak­istani offi­cials in India. On the oth­er hand, the Hur­riy­at is only crit­i­cized for the ide­ol­o­gy they rep­re­sent and nev­er cri­tiqued for the cos­met­ic nature of their clout. The call for the inde­pen­dence of Kash­mir is a polit­i­cal one and not prac­ti­cal pri­mar­i­ly because of the dire social and eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of ces­sa­tion. In my opin­ion, if the dream of an inde­pen­dent Kash­mir is real­ized, the nation will be imme­di­ate­ly invad­ed by the Pak­istan army. The uni­fi­ca­tion of Kash­mir with Pak­istan was and will remain a crown­ing polit­i­cal achieve­ment for any Pak­istani gov­ern­ment. Pak­istan has tried it before and the sen­ti­ment favour­ing Kashmir’s uni­fi­ca­tion with Pak­istan is very much still alive. Con­sid­er­ing how the Hur­riy­at has for years pan­dered to the Pak­istani lead­er­ship, its lead­ers may be in favour of Pak­istani con­trol; sim­i­lar to their lack of objec­tion to Pakistan’s tight con­trol of Pak­istan Occu­pied Kash­mir also known as Azad Kash­mir. The inde­pen­dence of Kash­mir will be a fleet­ing real­i­ty, fol­lowed by an imme­di­ate sub­mis­sion to Pak­istan by those who claim to rep­re­sent the region’s sen­ti­ments.

Let’s con­sid­er anoth­er sce­nario, if the state of Kash­mir remains inde­pen­dent of India and Pak­istan con­trol. The region has very lit­tle capac­i­ty to float an inde­pen­dent econ­o­my. For decades, Kashmir’s spe­cial sta­tus, which has pre­vent­ed Indi­an com­pa­nies from set­ting up shop there, has endowed the region with major sub­si­dies for schools, health­care and infra­struc­ture. With tourism being the only major rev­enue stream in the region so far, the imme­di­ate fall­out of inde­pen­dence will be a nation state engulfed in eco­nom­ic tur­moil caus­ing a mass exo­dus of eco­nom­ic refugees to India and Pak­istan. The sour taste of ces­sa­tion will have major social ram­i­fi­ca­tions. It will boost the already preva­lent sense of alien­ation asso­ci­at­ed with the peo­ple of Kash­mir, where eco­nom­ic refugees will be per­se­cut­ed and shunned by peo­ple both in India and Pak­istan despite the stance of the gov­ern­ments.

The Indi­an state of Jam­mu and Kash­mir has had a Kash­miri Mus­lim chief min­is­ter for decades. Arti­cle 370 of the Con­sti­tu­tion gives the region eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal auton­o­my and the most pow­er­ful Kash­miri par­ty, the Nation­al Con­fer­ence, which has ruled the region for decades, is allied with the gov­ern­ment in the Cen­tre. Even though there is a major devel­op­ment deficit in the state, the ques­tion­able pol­i­tics of the Kash­miri par­ties are respon­si­ble for that, and only the peo­ple of J&K can address that prob­lem. The cit­i­zens of J&K have nev­er refrained from exer­cis­ing their man­date as Indi­an cit­i­zens despite the calls of the sep­a­ratists to boy­cott the elec­tions. Peo­ple have come out in whop­ping num­bers to vote with a 62% vot­er turnout in the 2008 Assem­bly elec­tions, a boost from the 44% aver­age turnout in the 2002 Assem­bly elec­tions.

Pak­istan and India do not have clean records with Kash­mir. There have been gross human rights vio­la­tions on both sides. On the Indi­an side, the armed forces in Kash­mir have jailed and tor­tured hun­dreds of Kash­miri civil­ians in its crack­down on mil­i­tants in the state, with no appar­ent action tak­en against per­pe­tra­tors by the mil­i­tary jus­tice sys­tem. On 21st August 2011, India’s State Human Rights Com­mis­sion admit­ted to 2156 uniden­ti­fied bod­ies from 38 grave sites in Kash­mir.

Kash­miri civil­ians have alleged the pro­lif­er­a­tion of such unmarked graves where vic­tims of state spon­sored tor­ture and mur­der have been dumped for decades. From the Pak­istan side, a Human Rights Watch report titled ‘With Friends Like These…’ draft­ed post research in Pak­istan Occu­pied Kash­mir high­lights the stran­gle­hold of the Pak­istani state on the socio-polit­i­cal free­doms of the region. The report states that the gov­ern­ment has placed tight con­trols on the free­dom of speech, ban­ning pub­li­ca­tions favour­ing the inde­pen­dence of Kash­mir. It high­lights that under PoK’s 1974 Con­sti­tu­tion, elec­tion can­di­dates are pre-screened to ensure that only those who sup­port Kashmir’s union with Pak­istan can con­test the elec­tions, while any­one who wants to serve the admin­is­tra­tion has to sign a pledge of loy­al­ty to Pak­istan.

A 2012 report by the Pak­istan based Cen­tre for Peace, Devel­op­ment and Reforms dubbed the Azad Kash­mir gov­ern­ment ‘an inef­fec­tive and impo­tent body with no exec­u­tive pow­ers’. It added that the Azad Kash­mir Inter­im Con­sti­tu­tion Act of 1974 gave the Prime Min­is­ter of Pak­istan the author­i­ty to appoint and dis­miss the chief elec­tion com­mis­sion­er, audi­tor gen­er­al, and the judges of Supreme Court and high court of the region. Retired Jus­tice Basharat Ahmed Sheikh, one of the drafters of the report, called the polit­i­cal arrange­ment a ‘vio­la­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion of Pak­istan’ because under arti­cle 257 of the Pak­istani con­sti­tu­tion, Kash­miris have the right to deter­mine what sort of a rela­tion­ship they want with Pak­istan. He high­light­ed the salient point that the Prime Min­is­ter of Pak­istan is not elect­ed by the peo­ple or the elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Azad Kash­mir and is not even answer­able to them.

This case is not black and white. The pros­per­i­ty of the peo­ple of Kash­mir is con­tin­gent on choos­ing a less­er of two evils, and I believe the region has a bet­ter shot at social and eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty with India as com­pared to Pak­istan. India has a stronger econ­o­my to sup­port Jam­mu and Kash­mir and cel­e­brates socio-polit­i­cal free­doms root­ed deep across the coun­try. The state has enjoyed local lead­er­ship for decades where Kash­miri par­ties have con­sol­i­dat­ed their posi­tion in steer­ing the state. In my opin­ion, the issues of cor­rup­tion, social dis­par­i­ty and lack of devel­op­ment should be posed to the Kash­miri lead­er­ship by the Kash­miri peo­ple. The peo­ple of the region have the man­date to choose their polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic future and oth­er Indi­an polit­i­cal par­ties must offer new polit­i­cal alter­na­tives to the region’s pop­u­la­tion. It will be fool­ish for the sep­a­ratists to mis­take the dis­af­fec­tion of the Kash­miri peo­ple with the state gov­ern­ment with a hatred of the Indi­an state. As they ped­dle their ide­ol­o­gy, his­to­ry is a wit­ness that there are no tak­ers in the region. The peo­ple have time and again rein­forced Indi­an democ­ra­cy. Sep­a­ratists pos­ing with ter­ror­ists and Pak­istani offi­cials should not raise India’s blood pres­sure, as that is the only extent to which they can show their defi­ance to the Indi­an state, which has tol­er­at­ed their ide­ol­o­gy in respect to its Con­sti­tu­tion and ethos. Let them bray and pro­voke. The peo­ple of Jam­mu and Kash­mir know bet­ter.