‘Alienation of people
AS more and more reports about crackdown on journalists and civil society members in Kashmir come to light, India’s former Minister of External Affairs, Yashwant Sinha, says that such coercion has pushed the people of Kashmir to an unprecedented alienation that could erupt violently despite the temporary calm. Excerpts from an interview he gave Frontline:
The Narendra Modi government’s policy on Kashmir relies chiefly on the use of force to stifle dissent, whereas the Atal Bihari Vajpayee model recognised the primacy of dialogue and negotiation. As a former Cabinet Minister in the Vajpayee government, why do you suppose Vajpayee’s was a workable model?
Vajpayee once famously said in Kashmir that his policy will rely on “insaniyat, Kashmiriyat and jamhuriyat” [humanitarianism, Kashmir’s inclusive culture and democracy], when he was asked whether a resolution of the issue of Jammu and Kashmir would be within the framework of the Indian Constitution. His policy had both an internal dimension and an external one. The internal dimension was to reach out to the people of Jammu and Kashmir and engage with all stakeholders. He even got Lal Krishna Advani to talk to the Hurriyat leaders, though what direction it would have taken remains unknown as we were voted out of power around that time.
The external facet of his policy focussed on dialogue with Pakistan. A very important document came out of Vajpayee’s travel to Islamabad for the SAARC [South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation] summit in January 2004. He and the then Pakistan President, General [Pervez]musharraf, issued a joint statement, in which Pakistan assured that it will not allow its territory to be used for terrorism and violence against India. Following this, India agreed for a composite dialogue process. If Vajpayee had returned to power in 2004, there would have been very significant developments on the Pakistan front and vis-a-vis Jammu and Kashmir.
A decade later, when Modi came to power in 2014, it was expected that he would at least follow the rudiments of the Vajpayee policy. Indeed, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) decided to form a coalition Government in Jammu and Kashmir with Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, they agreed on an agenda of governance that included dialogue with all stakeholders as well as with Pakistan, on the lines of the Vajpayee model. The BJP at the time did not see dialogue as any form of compromise with national security issues, and joined hands with votaries of dialogue, first with Mufti Mohammed Sayeed and then with Mehbooba Mufti, although the latter has now suddenly and inexplicably become an anti-national in its eyes.
In the later years the Modi government deviated from the Vajpayee model completely and opted for a coercive and direct control of the erstwhile State. A highly placed person in the Government of India, whom I met after the first visit of the Concerned Citizens’ Group to Jammu and Kashmir in October 2016, was riled at the very mention of dialogue and stated in no uncertain terms that “the doctrine of the state [Modi government] is to establish peace, if necessary by force; we will teach them [Kashmiris] a lesson and we will make sure that they fall in line”. The government is following that policy of force of arms.
Why do you think the government treads a hardline path, having shown acceptance of Vajpayee’s inclusive model?
Unfortunately, the narrative of Jammu and Kashmir became the centrepiece of our domestic policy and the thought within the government is that the more they suppress the people of Kashmir, the easier it will be for them to sell the idea of a strong leadership in the rest of the country. It is guided by electoral politics, their core Hindutva ideology, and the need to project a macho
image of the Prime Minister, which have enabled them to control the discourse in elections.
How has Kashmir changed in the Modi years? The Modi government claims victory over militancy in Kashmir.
Alienation in Kashmir is at an all-time high as a direct consequence of the Modi government’s discriminatory policies and its use of coercion to deny people any platform to vent their grievances. During one of my visits to Kashmir in 2016, which was soon after the law and order breakdown in Haryana, people everywhere pointed out to me that when violent protests erupt anywhere else in India, the state refrains from using force, but its handling of Kashmir is so evidently different. They asked me how the state could deny them equal treatment and also claim them to be an integral part [of India]. The Modi government is fuelling more alienation as it carries on its discriminatory policies, the most recent and glaring example of which is the delimitation.
But street protests and stone pelting have disappeared. There is a sizeable footfall of tourists.
The policy of using force against an unarmed civilian population always succeeds in bringing a semblance of peace on a temporary basis. At this point of time, although the government of India is patting itself