By Aparna Pande
This article appeared in Indolink on April 21, 2009
The recent victory of the Sri Lankan army over the insurgent LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) brings to mind the age-old adage: ‘The House Always Wins!’
The Sri Lankan government led by President Rajpaksa has given the Tigers 24 hours to surrender. In a recent interview President Rajapaksha stated: “It’s all now all over for the Tigers.” The Sri Lankan civil war has been ongoing for almost three decades.
Drawing on the Sri Lankan example there are many Indian strategists who believe that just as the Sri Lankan government has won, so too will India in Kashmir. Therefore there is no need for India to change its policies either towards the separatist Kashmiri political parties or Pakistan.
The ‘House’ does win in most cases but at what cost? Over 80,000 people have been killed and there are more than 200,000 refugees in Sri Lanka itself, aside from the thousands in neighboring countries like India. Around 33,000 people have been killed in the violent insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir from 1990s onwards and thousands live in make-shift refugee camps in and around New Delhi.
Also is a government as unconcerned about its people as the ‘casino management’ is about the players? Doesn’t every government have a certain responsibility and isn’t part of governance, ‘losing’ to your people and ‘giving in’ to their demands?
The official Pakistani view is that Kashmir is the ‘unfinished business of Partition’; it is the missing ‘K’ in the word Pakistan. The basis of Pakistan is the ‘two nation’ theory and the existence of a ‘Muslim majority’ region in India negates this theory. Thus Pakistan insists that in accordance with the United Nations resolutions a plebiscite needs to be held in ‘Indian-controlled’ Kashmir to ascertain the ‘will of the people of Kashmir.’
The official Indian view has been that Jammu and Kashmir ‘lawfully acceded’ to India when the Maharaja of Kashmir signed the Instrument of Accession to India in 1947. Kashmir provides basis for India’s secular status, a Hindu majority country with a Muslim majority region. In reply to Pakistan’s demands for the plebiscite India maintains that the fact that elections have been held in Kashmir since 1952 is proof that the ‘will of the people of Jammu and Kashmir’ has been ascertained and there is no need for a UN plebiscite.
Then again Pakistan believes that the ‘illegal Indian occupation’ of Kashmir and the violation of human rights by Indian security forces has led to a popular uprising. India claims that Pakistani military and intelligence agencies are providing covert aid to terrorists in Kashmir.
Finally Pakistan claims that the popular uprising in Kashmir has led to a ‘freedom struggle’ which is supported by independent people and groups in Pakistan over which the government has no control. Yet the government does point out that it will always provide ‘moral, diplomatic and other support to the Kashmiri movement.’
Ever since 2002 there have been increasing attempts by India and Pakistan to try to resolve the Kashmir issue. The reasons are not hard to find. Indian claims to regional power or global power status are useless if it remains embroiled in a conflict that led President Clinton to refer to South Asia as “the most dangerous place on the earth.” India is also facing constant pressure from the United States to resolve its outstanding conflict with Pakistan in order for Pakistan to concentrate on its ‘western border.’
Pakistan too faces a lot of domestic and international pressure. Domestically the ‘Islamist tiger’ has slowly crept into the heart of Pakistan and the jihadis are no longer limited to the border regions. Both the Musharraf-administration and the civilian-led government have seen resolving the Kashmir dispute as a way to gain public support and legitimacy.
Pakistan’s military sees itself as the guardian of Pakistan’s ‘ideological and territorial frontiers’; Thus the military has been the decision-maker with respect to Pakistan’s defense and foreign policies, including the Kashmir policy. Hence, convincing the Pakistani military that the resolution of the Kashmir conflict will not lead to too drastic a reduction in the defense expenditure is a difficult task. What will be more difficult will be changing the Pakistani strategic vision which sees India as an existential threat.
Though Confidence Building Measures and talks were started between India and Pakistan in 2004 the Indian government has always been reluctant to offer any kind of legitimacy to a military-led government in Pakistan. Now, however, Pakistan has a civilian government which realizes that covert war against both its neighbors (India and Afghanistan) is not a viable policy and therefore seeks close bilateral relations.
India has to understand that it cannot pretend that there is no dispute in Kashmir and has to take the plunge by offering both dialogue on the outstanding issues (like border disputes and Kashmir) and build close cultural, economic and social ties with Pakistan.
India also needs to reassure the Pakistani leadership and especially the military that India understands the threat Pakistan is facing from the jihadi menace and India will not take advantage by causing any problems on Pakistan’s eastern frontier. Though India and Afghanistan have always had very good ties from the 1950s, India needs to calm any Pakistani fears that this Indo-Afghan cooperation has an anti-Pakistan flavor.
Irrespective of which coalition comes to power in India in mid-May the Indian government needs to restart the peace process with Pakistan. The Mumbai attacks were a horrendous event, the loss of lives was terrible but blaming the civilian Pakistani government is not going to solve the problem.
An erroneous belief among Indian hawks that Pakistan is a failing state and will soon break up has led them to demand that the Indian government not have any dialogue with Pakistan. A similar belief in the power of the Indian state to put down any insurgents in Kashmir has led India to become more belligerent in its demands from Pakistan
What these hawks forget is that the civilian government in Pakistan has done much more than any previous Pakistani government to show its bona fide credentials on being anti-jihadi. Not only has the government acknowledged that many of the attackers were Pakistani but it has arrested leading members of the banned Kashmiri jihadi outfits. Indian insistence that Pakistan ‘needs to do more’ are unfair: the weak civilian government in Pakistan needs to be supported and helped instead of being pushed into a corner.
The Kashmir dispute has become part of the identity of both countries and it will be difficult to resolve the conflict. India is the status quo power and so has no real incentive to offer anything to Pakistan. However, unless India offers something to Pakistan as a ‘face-saving’ measure nothing will change.
In 1972 at the Simla Summit India had the upper hand as the victor in the 1971 war. However, instead of following a hard-line policy Indira Gandhi was very accommodative to the Pakistani view. Many criticized Indira for not imposing a settlement on Pakistan but her allowing the new civilian government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to return with ‘its head held high’ was a deliberate policy. Unfortunately for various reasons Bhutto was never able to make the changes in India-Pakistan relations that he had hoped for.
Almost three decades later India has a unique opportunity once again. If India offers not just a resumption of talks to Pakistan but also talks on Kashmir it will be seen as the bigger brother. Recently a separatist leader, Sajjad Lone, son of slain leader Abdul Ghani Lone, decided to enter electoral politics. Though the majority of the separatist leaders have not entered politics this is a good sign.
Just as the Sri Lankan government has managed to ‘out-wait’ the Tigers, I suppose even India can clamp down on the Kashmiri insurgency. However, is India like the ‘casino management’ who is only interested in keeping its profits and doesn’t care as long as it wins; Or is India a country built on the Gandhian-Nehruvian ideals of secularism, democracy and humanity?
India and Indians would do well to remember the following words of one of India’s foremost freedom fighters and leaders, C. Rajagopalachari:
“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? We shall surely ruin ourselves for ever 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.”