Cricket is cricket, but Kashmir is
Kashmir By Sultan Shahin
NEW
DELHI - Almost at the same time Pakistan President
General Pervez Musharraf asked India to take the
question of Kashmir seriously and make some telling
progress on the issue by August if it wanted the peace
process to continue, there have been revelations in the
Indian media about the proposals that India's first
prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had sent to Pakistan's
then-dictator, Field Marshal Ayub Khan. This took place
exactly 40 years ago this month through Kashmir's
tallest-ever leader, Sheikh Abdullah. The charismatic
Kashmiri had preferred secular democratic India to the
Islamic nation of Pakistan. As the sheikh was
deliberating with Ayub, Nehru died, thus ending the
process that had then kindled great expectations. Nehru
and Ayub were slated to meet in Delhi in July 1964 to
further discuss the issue. However, Nehru's May 27 death
left the Kashmir question unanswered.
These
revelations have triggered debate in the Indian media,
particularly as some see a parallel in the Nehru-Ayub
dialogue with the present Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee-Musharraf dialogue. Though a bitter critic
then, Vajpayee now fancies being likened to Nehru.
Though not so ill as Nehru at that time, who had already
suffered a stroke, Septuagenarian Vajpayee, too, is past
his prime and must be looking for a legacy to leave
behind.
Musharraf has supported Vajpayee's
re-election efforts in a variety of ways, primarily
because Pakistan sees in him the only possible hope for
a settlement of the tricky Kashmir question in the
foreseeable future. According to political scientist
Ramachandra Guha, who started this debate in a two-part
article in the Hindustan Times, India today has an
"aging and ailing prime minister whose desire for peace
is not shared by his own party", while Pakistan has a
similarly whisky-drinking general "who is not trusted by
jihadis".
A prominent Kashmiri separatist
leader, Abdul Ghani Bhatt, too, has expressed similar
hopes recently about a settlement of the Kashmir
question. "Atal Bihari Vajpayee has the vision and
Musharraf has the realism." Bhatt has been quoted as
saying: "If both come together, a lasting solution can
be found. It is very much in the realm of possibility
since both are talking about going beyond the stated
positions [on Kashmir]."
The options the sheikh
had hammered out with C Rajagopalachari, fondly called
Rajaji, an elder statesman of the country, apparently at
the behest of Nehru, were: a condominium over Kashmir
between India and Pakistan, with defense and foreign
affairs being the joint responsibility of the two
countries; acceptance of the Line of Control (LoC) with
both India and Pakistan giving more autonomy to the
parts of the state under their control; a full-fledged
confederation of India, Kashmir and Pakistan.
There is no doubt, says Inder Malhotra, a former
editor of The Times of India who had accompanied the
sheikh to Pakistan, that Rajaji encouraged Abdullah to
promote the confederation idea and that the sheikh did
press it on Ayub. But, far from being willing to discuss
it, Pakistan's first military ruler rejected it
summarily and not very politely. Malhotra reminisces:
"This was my impression and information at that time and
voluminous evidence available since then has only
confirmed my belief. It so happened that, along with
several other colleagues, I was constantly by Abdullah's
side during the relevant period. Indeed, right from
April 8, 1964, when he was released after his prolonged
and deplorable imprisonment to the moment we reached
Muzaffarabad almost exactly at the time of Nehru's
death. The news of the great man's illness had caught up
with the sheikh's caravan at Murree."
That
India's deputy prime minister and the strongman of the
ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Lal Krishan Advani
Advani has repeatedly called in the recent past for an
India-Pakistan confederation acquires new meaning in
this context. Ayub called this an idea "which, if
pursued, would lead to our enslavement". It would be
interesting to see if Musharraf reacts differently or if
India is able to convince him that a confederation
doesn't mean enslavement of Pakistan.
The 1964
options, however, are also attracting strong opposition
in India from commentators who are denouncing it as a
call to surrender. Most political thinkers and analysts
in India cannot countenance anything but the status quo
or the conversion of the LoC to an international border.
What Indian people think has, however, never been
ascertained, though from all appearances, they, too,
would prefer the status quo.
Former Jammu and
Kashmir chief minister Dr Farooq Abdullah said in
Srinagar on Tuesday that it was at the initiative of his
late father Sheikh Abdullah that the process of
normalization of relations between India and Pakistan
began way back in 1964. "The process was initiated by
Sheikh Sahib and supported by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru
which resulted in the Abdullah-Ayub Khan meeting," he
said while addressing an election rally in Poonch.
Farooq disclosed that it was decided in the
Sheikh-Ayub meeting that the solution of the Kashmir
imbroglio must be based on the following three premises:
1) It should be acceptable to the people of the
state of Jammu and Kashmir. 2) It should protect the
interests of Muslims in India and Hindus in
Pakistan. 3) It should be a solution which is a
win-win situation for all and no party to the dispute is
a loser or a gainer.
One cannot help being
reminded that Musharraf repeatedly invoked at least two
of these premises - the first and third - in his recent
statements. Apparently the premises of the 1964
solutions are not entirely dead, even in Pakistan.
Guha has been studying documents from the Nehru
era as part of his research. Having made his disclosures
on the basis of Rajaji's papers, he writes: "Nehru's
papers are closed to scholars, but a letter by his
foreign secretary gives a clue to his own thinking at
the time. The PM had asked legal experts to explore the
implications of a confederation 'as a possible solution
to our present troubles'. Such an arrangement would not
imply an 'annulment' of partition. India and Pakistan
would remain separate, sovereign states. Kashmir would
be part of the confederation, with its exact status to
be determined by dialogue. There might be a customs
union of the three units, some form of financial
integration, and special provisions for the protection
of minorities."
While noting similarities
between the efforts made 1964 and the present, Guha
finds a fundamental difference in the two situations:
"The one difference is the absence of a Sheikh Abdullah.
Back in 1964, he could be reliably seen as the 'sole
spokesman' of the Valley of Kashmir, whereas there are
now multiple claimants to that title: the established
political parties, the factions and fractions of the
Hurriyat Conference, and the various militant groups."
Personalities apart, however, he feels, there
are some fundamental similarities between the events of
April-May 1964 and the peace talks of our own time.
Then, as now, for instance, any lasting solution must
satisfy Sheikh Abdullah's three criteria: it must
strengthen - not weaken - the position of minorities in
the sub-continent; it must not lead to a sense of defeat
in either India or Pakistan; it must be consistent with
the desires of the Kashmiri people themselves.
The most striking similarity, in his view,
however, pertains to the likely costs of failure. For in
truth, every effort to forge a lasting solution to
Kashmir constitutes a "last chance". The final word on
the Nehru-Abdullah peace bid of 40 years ago must rest
with C Rajagopalachari, the scholar-politician once
called the "wisest man in India". In words that ring as
true in 2004 as they did in 1964, Guha quotes Rajaji as
having written of the need to "try and think
fundamentally in the present crisis".
"Are we to
yield to the fanatical emotions of our anti-Pakistan
groups?" asked Rajaji. He continued: "Is there any hope
for India or for Pakistan, if we go on hating each
other, suspecting each other, borrowing and building up
armaments against each other, building our two houses,
both of us on the sands of continued foreign aid against
a future Kurukshetra? [Kurukshetra is the land where the
famous mythological world war was fought in the Indian
epic Mahabharata.] We shall surely ruin ourselves
forever if we go on doing this ... We shall be making
all hopes of prosperity in the future a mere mirage if
we continue this arms race based on an ancient grudge
and the fears and suspicions flowing from it."
The revival of the 1964 solutions in this debate
has, however, angered several analysts. Some of them
have found time from their busy schedules covering the
ongoing general election campaign to vent this anger.
The most vociferous is Chandan Mitra, member of
parliament and the editor of the daily newspaper
Pioneer, considered close to the BJP: "Thanks to cricket
and the periodic mass migration of Page 3 Persons
[P3Ps], Pakistan is quite the flavor of the season here
in India. We have heard and read gushing accounts of the
magnanimous deeds of the 'friendly neighborhood
Pakistani', of how shopkeepers refused to charge our
P3Ps, how cricket spectators burst into bhangras
[song] each time Sachin [Tendulkar] lofted Shoaib
[Akhtar] for a mighty six. 'They are just like us,'
commented many starry-eyed celebrities fresh from
Lahore, flaunting this as an astonishingly original
thesis on the racial similarity of South Asian people.
"All this is not unexpected. The Indian
intelligentsia and the bulk of our media comprise
ostriches with the memory of an ant. So, not only has
all been forgotten and forgiven but also there is hardly
any concern about what lies in store in the months
ahead. Indians are notorious for living for the moment.
But the 'just like us' Pakistanis aren't; they are long
on memory and firm on their objectives. Even as India
jubilates to triumphs on the cricket field and gets
bowled over by ostensible Pakistani generosity, there
are enough signs that the ruling classes in Islamabad
are getting restless. Meanwhile, stirrings of a renewed
intellectual campaign to bamboozle India into submission
over Kashmir are already discernible, unless I am
reading too much into my friend Ramachandra Guha's
two-part treatise in the Hindustan Times last week."
While admiring Guha's scholarship, with whom he
studied at Delhi's St Stephen's College, and expressing
"profound regard for his intellectual honesty", Mitra,
however, finds the appearance of his article and
Musharraf's comments "a remarkable coincidence". He
comments: "... those who regard President Musharraf as
malleable putty in the hands of US are mistaken. He
recognizes that unlike India, opinion in Pakistan is not
overtly enamored of peace if that comes without a
sizeable slice of Kashmir. Ershad Mahmud of the
Institute of Policy Studies was quoted in the same
Reuters report about the general setting an August
deadline, as saying: 'There is enthusiasm among
Pakistanis [about the peace process] but it is
superficial. It will be short-lived unless we get some
concrete gesture on Kashmir'."
Commenting on the
1964 proposals themselves, Mitra comments: "Of these
hare-brained schemes, the only one that makes some sense
is option two [turning the LoC into a border]. But
options one and three are absolutely preposterous, there
can be no doubt about the thrust of India's negotiating
position, if indeed these proposals were actively
discussed between Sheikh Abdullah and Ayub Khan, as Ram
Guha tends to suggest.
"Besides who needs a
solution that entails a 'condominium' or something as
outrageous as a 'full-fledged confederation' - both of
which would place Kashmir firmly on the road to physical
separation from India? What worries me is that fresh
from the excitement of visits to Lahore and India's
innocuous victories in cricket, our chattering classes
may pick up the threads of the 1964 'solution' as
revealed by Ram Guha. So, I can only hope that when our
negotiators resume their dialogue with Pakistan, they
will be guided by the mantra, 'Cricket is cricket but
Kashmir is Kashmir; and never the twain shall meet'."
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