Politics Journal: Whatever Happened to Kashmir?

A non-violent agitator takes on the government with a sustained campaign. The nation takes to the streets, the government is flustered, opens a dialog and then largely capitulates to the campaigner’s demands.

That sums up Anna Hazare’s months-long push to get the government to agree to a strong Lokpal, or ombudsman, bill, which now is about to come before Parliament, even though the government and “Team Anna” still have major differences.

In summer of 2010, stone-pelting youths
 took the Srinagar’s streets, chanting
slogans demanding freedom.

But such a story line is only a distant hope for Yasin Malik, the leader of the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front.

“The Indian state is so strong and powerful. I have taken the path of non-violent protest for so many years now. But nobody is interested in talking to me,” he told India Real Time at a conference organized by the Delhi-based think-tank, the Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation and a Pakistani think-tank, the Jinnah Institute.

In the tumultuous summer in 2010, stone-pelting youths took the Srinagar’s streets with the chant “Hamein kya chahiye” – “what is it that we want?” – and the answer “Azaadi!” – freedom!

But this year, an eerie calm has pervaded the streets as domestic tourists travelled to Kashmir in record numbers. The situation was deemed sufficiently calm that Chief Minister Omar Abdullah sought to address the very sensitive and complex long-pending issue of the removal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act from the state.

To many, it has been viewed as a sign of a peaceful new era. But to some in Kashmir, including Mr. Malik, it is more a sign that Kashmir has not been “solved” but has simply slipped down the priority list of the Indian government’s major problems, replaced by the likes of Mr. Hazare. He also sees a similarly dismissive attitude in Pakistan as it tries to improve relations with India.

“Both India and Pakistan have frozen Kashmir,” Mr. Malik said, speaking to IRT on the margins of a conference.

He may not be far wrong. In recent years, Kashmir has lost its position in India’s centre-stage in more ways than one. Prior to the Mumbai attacks of 2008, the Kashmir dispute as well as terrorism were always on top of any India-Pakistan agenda, but after Mumbai, the need for Pakistan to end terrorism directed at India has become dominant.

Domestically too, the Congress party-led United Progressive Alliance’s perceived weakness and its myriad scandals have not only dented the UPA’s image but allowed people like Anna Hazare to fill the credibility vacuum.

In Pakistan too, as relations with the U.S. and with Afghanistan plunge downward, Kashmir-specific attention seems to have dipped. Political parties make perfunctory reference to resolving Kashmir before embarking on any activity with India, as was evident when Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (N) party recently made noises about Kashmir on the question of Pakistan giving most favored nation status to India.

But the party quickly fell in line, because it favors improved relations with India. It was lost on no one that improved trade with India has several takers inside Pakistan, across the political spectrum, and that these lobbies did not want it held hostage to the Kashmir issue.

In his conversation with IRT, Yasin Malik refused to talk about the nature of a possible compromise between India, Pakistan and the people of Kashmir, only insisting that the beginning of a real dialogue between honorable interlocutors will lead to a solution that will be acceptable to both sides.

Meanwhile, Mirwaiz Omer Farooq of the Hurriyat Conference, addressing a seminar in Kashmir a couple of weeks ago, bemoaned how even western countries, whether the European Union, the U.S. or U.K., preferred to now focus on economic issues rather than human rights violations.

With Mr. Hazare dominating newspaper and television space for the best part of the last six months, Kashmiri separatist leaders say they are bitter about the Indian state’s virtual refusal in opening a dialogue with them.  The federal government appointed three interlocutors to talk to all shades of Kashmiri opinion in an effort to  gauge the depth of the  problem, but all separatist groups spurned the  initiative. That report is expected to come out in the next few weeks.

Instead, Kashmir has been preoccupied with a much less significant debate on whether to open bars and cinemas in the valley – hardly the stuff that the future will be decided over.

For the record, the issue has drawn much ire from the separatist leadership, but several Kashmiris — both Muslim and Hindu – have responded by pointing out that several bars and cinemas had existed before Pakistan-sponsored militancy began in 1989.

“Gujarat has banned the sale of alcohol since 1948, in deference to being the birth place of Mahatma Gandhi, but it has very high levels of consumption. We should end this hypocrisy,” said a Kashmiri analyst. But he added: “The question is not whether Kashmiris should be allowed to publicly drink or not drink, but what should be the relationship between Kashmiris and the rest of India. For that to happen, an honorable conversation on the future of Kashmir must begin as soon as possible.”

It might be tempting to say that if Kashmir is peaceful and the biggest thing the valley’s residents are worried about is whether they can get a beer, then that is real progress for one of the world’s most troubled regions.

Mr. Malik begs to differ.

He says this year’s calm in the Kashmir valley is a deceptive one, and that the simmering discontent beneath is bound to break out sooner than later.

“I have to face the anger of my boys who keep asking me, ‘Why should we stay quiet?’ ‘Why should we not use force?’” he said.

“I want to tell the Indian government: ‘Do you want these boys to become the Taliban?’ ‘Do you want the state to become radicalized?’ If not, you have to address our concerns. You have to talk to us about the nature of Kashmir’s relationship with India.”

Politics Journal: Where Were Congress Young Guns in the Hazare Agitation?

In a party that thrives on speaking only when spoken to by the high command — Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, political secretary Ahmed Patel and a handful of other senior leaders — the depth of feeling that has emerged in the Congress party’s rank-and-file against the handling of the Anna Hazare agitation is striking.

On Tuesday, Praveen Aron, Congress member of Parliament from Bareilly, complained in a letter to Congress Secretary General Rahul Gandhi about the “inappropriate” handling of the agitation, which he characterized as one with a “techno-legal approach and not political far-sightedness.”

This was an apparent reference to Home Minister P. Chidambaram, and Kapil Sibal, minister for Human Resource Development and Telecommunications. Both men are lawyers and well-known technocrats, who had led the early days of the government’s response to Mr. Hazare’s anticorruption fast.

Mr. Aron told India Real Time that “a lot of people within the party support my move” though he declined to name the targets of his attack. “They are a few lawyers,” he added somewhat darkly.

There was no response from the Congress party to Mr. Aron — itself a telling indication that the criticism has been well-received in high places. In the shadow play that the party revels in, comments as well as their absence are cues to what the party high command thinks, noted one party insider.

Mr. Aron had earlier, at the height of the agitation, on his own behalf sent Team Anna’s bill on creating a Lokpal, or anticorruption ombudsman, to Parliament’s drafting committee to debate. But aside from him and a handful of others, most of the Congress party’s younger MPs failed to steer or lift the national debate on corruption as it unfolded in Parliament, on the streets, and on television over the last two weeks.

Now, much is made of the Congress party’s young MPs, not only because several are highly articulate and have studied in universities abroad, but because they are widely expected to be in the vanguard that carries the party and Rahul Gandhi into the next elections.

Only a handful publicly responded to their constituents’ criticisms of Congress’s handling of the matter. They include Sandeep Dixit, Congress MP from east Delhi and son of Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit; Priya Dutt, MP from Mumbai North-Central; Sanjay Nirupam, MP from Mumbai North and Mr. Aron.

Many of the young MPs, if they reacted at all, preferred to privately lobby Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the government’s chief interlocutor and finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee.

Several, including Sachin Pilot from Ajmer, R.P.N. Singh from Kushinagar, Milind Deora from Mumbai South and Jyotiraditya Scindia from Guna, spoke up after Mr. Gandhi’s own speech in Parliament two days before Mr. Hazare’s hunger strike ended – the only speech put out on the Congress party website – thereby reaffirming the perception that they were unwilling to get out of Rahul Gandhi’s shadow, at least not yet.


“If people feel that we responded only after Rahul Gandhi spoke, well that is partially true,” said one young MP. “But it’s not as if we didn’t feel strongly about the matter. As parliamentarians, we believe in the sanctity of the Parliament, but as people’s representatives, at the end of the day, it is about serving the people’s desires.”

To be sure, Mr. Aron also hedged his bets not only by addressing his letter to the party’s heir-apparent, but also by pointing out that he sensed a “conspiracy to undermine the credibility” of Mr. Gandhi’s leadership as well as to question the integrity of the Prime Minister.

Another Congress official told IRT that the party rank-and-file have, only half-jokingly, nicknamed Mr. Sibal and Mr. Chidambaram “IPC” and “CrPC” respectively, because of the perception that they were much quicker to invoke the Indian Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code than they were to respond to political challenges with political arguments.

Mr. Chidambaram and Mr. Sibal declined comment.

A third party official pointed out that a “third lawyer” — law minister Salman Khurshid –also had faced criticism but “saved himself by the skin of his teeth” by responding to overtures by Sandeep Dixit and Mrs. Dixit’s political secretary, Pavan Khera, who had already opened a backchannel to Team Anna through their connections with the NGO community.

According to one Congress official familiar with the negotiating strategy, Messrs. Dixit and Khera did not seek the party’s advice or permission nor were they seconded by the party to break the ice with the Hazare camp.

Mr. Dixit brought his friend and fellow parliamentarian Mr. Khurshid into the talks on Aug. 22 – six days after Mr. Hazare had been arrested, sent to Tihar jail and then ordered released. Mr. Khurshid then asked Mr. Mukherjee to join the discussion. Sheila Dixit had, meanwhile, spoken to the Prime Minister to inform him about the ongoing conversation, according to this official.

“Mr Khurshid held several rounds of talks with Team Anna, then requested Pranab Mukherjee to come in,” this official said. Mr. Khurshid couldn’t be reached for comment.

As the momentum around Mr. Hazare’s hunger strike grew, especially in urban centers like Delhi and Mumbai, this group began a regular dialogue with Team Anna, this official said.

With someone as experienced and powerful as Mr. Mukherjee now on board — and with Mr. Patel, the political secretary, attending a party core committee meeting with Prime Minister Singh — Mr. Singh was persuaded to abandon the hard line that had been pursued and instead launch political negotiations with Hazare’s camp, according to this official.

He added: “What was frightening was that the Congress party, if it is the Titanic, was not going to sink because it clashed into an immovable object, but that it simply seemed unable to turn and maneuver itself out of a dangerous situation.”

“Once Pranab Mukherjee became part of the negotiations we realized that compromise was possible,” said Bibhav Kumar, the Team Anna member with responsibility for the media. “We can proudly say that there are no winners or no losers, only that this compromise is a big win for democracy. But if parliament had not bowed, there could have been a collision with civil society,” he added.