[Reader-list] Kesavan on Kashmir

Fri Aug 29 13:29:08 IST 2008

Dear Rahul,

Thank you for your poser. And I hope that all readers will agree with  
me when I say that it is precisely the kind of question that one  
hopes to see more of on this list. I will try and get a handle on  
this, but, as my grasp on technical matters in philosophy is poor, I  
hope others who are more competent will join this discussion. Let me  
first of all state that the word 'Azadi' or 'Freedom' which is used a  
lot in discussions around Kashmir does not mean the same thing for  
all those who use it. For some it means the freedom to oppress others  
in an Islamist state, for some it means the freedom to oppress  
oneself in a strong secular state (regardless of whether it calls  
itself India or Kashmir). Even the CRPF bunkers in Srinagar often  
have the following written on them 'Hum Kashmir Ki Azadi ki Hifazat  
ke Khatir Yahan Hain', (we are here to protect the freedom of  
Kashmir). So, technically, even the CRPF, which has been busy killing  
unarmed protestors asking for 'Azadi' is doing so in the name of  
'Azadi'.  For me, personally, it means the freedom not to be  
oppressed, as far as is possible, by any state. We need to to keep  
this spectrum or meanings and values  in mind when we debate the  
choices apparently offered by Kesavan in his article, which was so  
kindly forwarded by Sonia Jabbar, and commented on by Kshmendra Kaul  
and Rahul Asthana.

I enjoyed reading Mukul Kesavan's article, because it helped me think  
quite a few things through, even though I do not necessarily come to  
the same conclusions (or non-conclusions, and i have no problem with  
non-conclusions, they are often more useful than limiting conclusions).

After spelling out the case against India holding on to Kashmir he  
says -

>> But there is a case against self-determination which needs to be  
>> made, if only to clarify the consequence of endorsing
>> self-determination.

This is the kind of debate and discussion that we need. One that  
weighs its options not based of inflexible pre-conceived positions,  
but through a careful sifting of argument and reasoning.

As I am not a liberal, I cannot speak for liberals. But I appreciate  
the principled stand that many liberals take in the defence of civil  
liberty. Other liberals, I have noticed, tend to cling to the state,  
(as a sort of lesser evil, I deliberately use the term 'lesser evil'  
here because Kesavan uses it himself, to characterize what he thinks  
are the motives governing the choices of those Indian commentators  
who have spoken in favour of 'Azadi' for Kashmir. I do not agree with  
this binary of 'lesser and greater evils' but, we can speak of that,  
later). Mukul Kesavan, i think is trying to walk the very thin wire  
between these two positions. To be fair, he has not explicitly told  
us where his options lie, he has merely tried to tell us what he  
thinks the options are. But in doing so he has given a reasonably  
good idea of where he would place his bets - with a flawed,  
compromised secular democratic ideal of India (which includes  
Kashmir) as a 'lesser evil' (to use, again his own language) compared  
to an independent Islamist statelet in Kashmir, or a Kashmir that  
accedes to Pakistan.

However, characteristically, his options only take the form of either  
this kind of state, or that kind of state. Either secular India, or  
Islamist Kashmir, or an Islamist Kashmir within an Islamist Pakistan.  
I think the limitation of this kind of thinking is that it ties the  
options available to the people of Kashmir only in terms of what  
Mukul Kesavan thinks operates currently on the ground. Why should we  
have to agree that these indeed exhaust all possibilities. Self  
proclaimed 'pragmatists' may think they do, but I am of the opinion  
that it is the task of writers and intellectuals, and of all people  
working with ideas and images and concepts, to begin working in areas  
that so called 'pragmatists' cannot enter because of their own self  
defined limits of what they think is or is not possible. The idea of  
universal adult suffrage, (which is today considered the staple basis  
of republican statehood) was once considered a laughably utopian  
idea. But once you accept the necessity of a particular form of  
political expression, then, you can begin to think about the most  
practical means to achieve it in the shortest time. The trouble is,  
as long as commentators think that the solutions to Kashmir, (or  
Ossetia, or Chechnya, or whatever) lie only in a cloning, or  
division, or consolidation, or integration of post-Westphalian  
states, (and the gamut of proposals ranging from an independent  
secular Kashmir, to an independent Islamist Kashmir, to an  
Independent secular Jammu and Kashmir, to a Kashmir that accedes to  
Pakistan, to a Kashmir that is held by India all fall along this  
'state' centric spectrum) they are refusing to engage with the  
possibility that it is precisely the 'form' of the nation-state that  
is the wall on which a seemingly intractable reality like Kashmir  
bangs its head, time and again. They refuse, in other words, to think  
of any other 'form' by which peoples can live together in a given  
territory. The spectre of the sovereign refuses to let go of them.  
They may disagree violently over which state they wish to commit to,  
but they are, in the end, all loyal to the idea of the sovereign.

In that sense, all these options, to me are, actually - deontological  
and in some cases tend towards a kind of virtue ethics. I say this  
because they argue not in terms of the consequences of the state  
form, but in terms of our some kind of presupposed fidelity to one  
form or the other of the state itself.

Elsewhere in his text, Kesavan also tries to make a weak teleological  
or consequentialist argument, when he raises the spectre of what  
happenned in Yugoslavia, or Sri Lanka as a caveat or warning to those  
who argue for 'Azadi' for Kashmir. Here, I think he is on very  
slippery ground. For every example of what goes wrong when nation  
states disintegrate, there can be offered counter examples of what  
continues to go wrong when nation states that ought not to be so  
gargantuan in the first place continue to exist by force. The USSR's  
prolonged existence as the inheritor of Czarist Russia's 'prison  
house of nations' (barring a brief post 'Oktober 1917' interregnum  
when the 'right to self determination' actually permitted the  
separation of Finland, Poland, the Baltic Republics and even some  
Central Asian territories) is an object lesson in the continued  
suffering caused by the perpetuation by force of the Soviet/Russian  
Imeperium. Kesavan invokes the Chechens, but not to mention that  
Stalin's decision to 'wipe Chechnya off the Map' and to deport all  
Chechens (and parts of other ethnicities) to forms of forced internal  
exile, (in the name of the integrity of the Soviet Union under his  
dictatorship) led to many hundreds of thousands of deaths, just as  
many, if not more than what occurred consequent to the break-up of  
Yugoslavia.

Kesavan goes on to give us another reason for opposing the  
Kashmiri's  right to self determination. He says -

>> Alternately, he might oppose self-determination because he thinks  
>> the Indian republic is a flawed but valuable experiment in  
>> democratic pluralism, that the Indian national movement and the  
>> nation-state it created, tried, in an
>> unprecedented way, to build a national identity on the idea of  
>> diversity, not homogeneity

This is frankly, very poor reasoning. Once again, weak  
consequentialism. It is arguing on the basis of one set of perceived  
consequences against another set of imagined consequences. We do not  
know yet, what an 'Azad' Kashmir is, or can be. As I said at the very  
outset, it means very different things to very different people. In  
the absence of a sure knowledge of what an entity can be if it comes  
into existence, we cannot use our speculation of what we think it  
might be, to argue against the desire to change what exists, when its  
existence becomes unbearable.

Finally, again, it presumes that the democratic will of the Kashmiri  
people is not really of consequence. Which is a kind of difficult  
argument for a liberal to make. It is somewhat reminiscent of those  
liberals in Britain, like John Stuart Mill, who believed that a  
commitment to democracy at home, did not necessarily translate into a  
commitment to democracy in the 'colonies'. This is the well known  
'rule of colonial difference'.

Is Kesavan then offering, as his second option, a lame-liberalism,  
all too reminiscent of the  liberals who wanted to maintain the  
British Empire as a cricket, tea and sandwiches kind of utopia? Where  
the natives could serve the tea and sandwiches, and someday, hope to  
play cricket? Substitute the word British for Indian, and you will  
know exactly what I mean. The tea, sandwiches and cricket can stay  
the same.

regards

Shuddha

On 29-Aug-08, at 5:15 AM, Rahul Asthana wrote:

> I am tempted to toss a poser on the list.What kind of ethical  
> framework is,or should be, more in congruence with the liberal line  
> of thinking -teleological or deontological?
> http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/phil/blfaq_phileth_sys.htm
> P.S. I am fully well aware of the open ended nature of the  
> question,but I think,trying to derive some kind of formalism from  
> Kesavan's advice to liberals may churn up some interesting ideas.
>
>
> --- On Thu, 8/28/08, Kshmendra Kaul <kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> From: Kshmendra Kaul <kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Kesavan on Kashmir
>> To: "Sarai" <reader-list at sarai.net>, "S. Jabbar"  
>> <sonia.jabbar at gmail.com>
>> Date: Thursday, August 28, 2008, 7:18 PM
>> Most certainly (in my opinion) a fairly and sensibly laid
>> out set of arguments on this issue.
>>
>> Kshmendra
>>
>> --- On Thu, 8/28/08, S. Jabbar
>> <sonia.jabbar at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> From: S. Jabbar <sonia.jabbar at gmail.com>
>> Subject: [Reader-list] Kesavan on Kashmir
>> To: "Sarai" <reader-list at sarai.net>
>> Date: Thursday, August 28, 2008, 7:00 PM
>>
>>  From the Telegraph, Calcutta
>>
>> THE TROUBLE WITH EDEN
>> - Kashmir offers a choice between two compromised ideals
>> Mukul Kesavan
>>
>>

Shuddhabrata Sengupta