[Reader-list] Kashmir yesterday and today (by Gautam Adhikari)

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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/Kashmir-yesterday-and-today/articleshow/6816200.cms
 
Kashmir yesterday and today
Gautam Adhikari, Oct 27, 2010, 12.00am IST
 








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WASHINGTON: Arundhati Roy is right. And she is wrong. She said the state of Jammu & Kashmir was "historically" not a part of India. But nor was India, as we know it. 

The geopolitical entity we now call the Republic of India simply did not exist till the midnight hour of August 14/15, 1947. So, all its constituent parts technically did not constitute a whole we could legitimately call India until that hour. There was a British Indian empire, there was a civilisation that we might call Indic and which encompassed a huge swathe of South Asia, but formally there was no nation of India. 

Historically, Kashmir was very much a part of that wider civilisation. Roy needs to read up that bit of Indian history. The kingdom of Kashmir was also a part, loosely, of British India, as were several other princely states. The states opted to join one of the two independent nations after that midnight hour in 1947. Jammu & Kashmir formally opted for India when Maharaja Hari Singh, under attack from Pakistani army irregulars, signed India's Instrument of Accession Act on October 26, 1947. 

So if Kashmir is not a legitimate part of India, and we should accordingly give it up to Pakistan, then much of India including, say, Baroda or Mysore, is illegitimate. We hope that is not what Roy implied when she said Kashmir was not an integral part of India. Fortunately, she has the right to say what she wants, even when she knows less than she ought to about a subject, because India's democratic Constitution allows her that freedom. She must not be prosecuted for sedition or for being naive. 

Nor should Dileep Padgaonkar, now heading a committee entrusted with the job of exploring possible solutions for the Kashmir problem, be harassed for suggesting that Pakistan would have to be part of any move to resolve this dispute. Kashmir would not be a problem for India if Pakistan did not question the legitimacy of the state's accession to the Indian Union. To insist that the status of Kashmir is not a 'dispute' between India and Pakistan is nothing but silly, ultra-nationalist posturing. 

In fact, the dispute is exclusively between the two nations over who should possess the state. It is not about 'independence' for the Kashmiri people. That is not to say that a section of Kashmiris in the Valley would not like independence; the contest between India and Pakistan, however, is about settling a Partition-era dispute. 

As India prepares to receive President Barack Obama, several administration officials in this town have clarified publicly that the US does not see a role for itself mediating the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan unless it is invited to do so by both sides. That amounts to telling Pakistan, which has been asking for American intervention, that the US will not intervene if India doesn't want it. 

The Indian position is that all differences between the two countries, including over Kashmir, should be reconciled bilaterally. That was what the two nations had signed up to in 1972 after negotiating the Shimla Agreement, which remains legally binding. 

The problem is one of perception, internationally as well as, it seems from the pronouncements of Roy and friends, with a section of Indian opinion. Pakistan has successfully sold a lemon to the world that it is fighting for Kashmir's independence. It adds to the deceit by qualifying the portion of Kashmir it has taken over as 'Azad' or independent Kashmir. Which, of course, is nonsense. Pakistan's north-west frontier areas enjoy a greater degree of effective independence from Islamabad. 

The fact is that neither India nor Pakistan is ready to offer independence to any part of Jammu & Kashmir, certainly not under those oft-cited UN resolutions asking for a plebiscite in J&K to assess how much popular support each country enjoys in the state. No plebiscite has taken place but several credible opinion polls in recent years have offered a glimpse of public opinion in Kashmir. One by the respected Chatham House of London showed barely 2 per cent support among people in the Valley for joining Pakistan. A majority in the Valley wanted independence but that's not on offer from either Pakistan or India. That is to say nothing of China, which occupies 20 per cent of the state's territory, and no one in the world dares ask it to vacate. 

Independence, if it is to be at all considered, becomes a complicated issue when we try to visualise it. Will it be independence just for the Muslim majority Valley? Or will it be also for Jammu, with a predominantly Hindu population, and Buddhist Ladakh, neither of which is particularly anxious to break with India? And who will protect that independence from the likely possibility that Pakistani army irregulars will pounce to merge it with the part it now controls and call it all Azad Kashmir? 

Some will argue that an international force can be created, perhaps under UN auspices, and stationed in a truncated Kashmir to guarantee its independence. Yes, of course, like an international force is today guaranteeing protection for Afghanistan from marauding bands of ISI-directed Taliban and al-Qaida jihadis operating out of shelters in Pakistan, right? 

Come on, get real. 

The writer is a FICCI-EWC fellow at East West Centre, Washington DC.