The hard part

The central and state governments should work out a time-bound programme for development of these major projects to boost economic growth. Skill development for the youth must be an important focus area as well. Rehman points out that “the Kashmiri youth feel defeated, that they have been denied opportunities. There are 20 lakh students in school and we must begin a process of engagement with them that weans them away from the prism of security”. It is important to engage the young in Kashmir because they are really a conflict generation—they have grown up seeing guns and death. Their image of India is one of contradictions—of the dominance of the army, the recent rise of the BJP and the accompanying noise over gaurakshaks and Bharat Mata ki jai, and also that of an increasingly prosperous middle-class Indian. While there has been some effort to train them in the rest of the country by offering central government scholarships, it’s clearly not enough. General Dua talks of the army, with its vast network, providing training and recreation for the rural populace. The army has already set up 60 such centres, called Chinar Navjeevan Clubs. But the state will clearly have to spend a lot more in training the youth in vocations that suit the state, including, as Drabu says, “MBAs in horticulture”. The most difficult task is working towards some sort of political resolution. Ever since Independence, Kashmir has defined India’s relations with Pakistan and the two countries have already fought three wars over it—four, if the 1971 Bangladesh conflict is included. Pakistan rejected the accession of Kashmir to India in 1947, saying it was a Muslim majority state that rightfully belonged to it, and went on to illegally occupy parts of the state that it holds to this date. Apart from demanding a plebiscite to determine the status of Kashmir, Islamabad has never let up in attacking Delhi at every international forum. After Pakistan acquired atomic weapons in the late 1980s, it shifted gears by initiating an asymmetric war against India by wilfully aiding and abetting militancy and terror strikes. It gambled on the fact that India would be loath to retaliate strongly as any escalation may lead to a nuclear conflagration. The current turmoil, too, has a strong Pakistan hand in it and, true to form, it has tried to internationalise the issue.

Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that several political parties in India, particularly the ruling BJP, have always demanded the revocation of Article 370, which gives J&K special status in the Indian Constitution as part of the Instrument of Accession that India signed in 1947 with the then maharaja of Kashmir, Hari Singh. The special status allows J&K to have its own constitution and control over most administrative functions, barring communications, foreign affairs, defence and currency. The state assembly has the right to accept or reject any parliamentary legislation. The BJP objects to Article 370, arguing that J&K is now an integral part of India and that any special treatment to it on constitutional grounds needs to be abolished.

So what is the way out? Article 370 is regarded as inviolable as the papacy. The National Conference’s maximalist approach is to revert to Kashmir’s pre-1953 status—barring key areas such as defence, foreign affairs and communications, the state should have sovereign right for all other powers. The PDP calls for “self-rule”, which in autonomy terms, is somewhat similar to what the NC asks for but involves PoK. The Hurriyat, meanwhile, remains divided between acceding to Pakistan and azadi.

Mainstream parties are aware that accession to Pakistan or azadi is ruled out. So the key question remains, how much autonomy can the Indian state yield? Drabu argues that the current atmosphere of cooperative federalism in India could facilitate a viable solution. After all, with the Centre abolishing the Planning Commission, devolving financial allocation to the states and passing the GST Bill, a fair degree of autonomy has already been achieved. He says, “What we could work towards is for empowered federalism—a model Article 370 that would suit everybody and then J&K wouldn’t be the exception.”

Now that an all-party dialogue has started, it is important that these issues are thrashed out. Just as important is implementing the various recommendations made by half-a-dozen committees set up in the past. The Rangarajan Committee’s recommendation in 2007, to transfer two power projects to the state, is yet to be implemented. Various working groups were set up by the UPA government to go into issues such as relations between the Centre and J&K, improving relations across the LoC, good governance and confidence-building measures across all segments of society. But most of the recommendations are languishing in government files.

Platitudes such as ‘Kashimiriyat, jamhooriyat and insaniyat’ or the more recent ones like ‘ekta and mamata’ are just that. Unless the work of interlocutors is taken seriously, all efforts to engage with people and address key issues will be seen as mere posturing by the Indian state. Instead, they will only add credence to Pakistan’s narrative that India is using brute power and money to keep Kashmir within its fold. Bismarck once said, “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” What would you say to a nation that doesn’t learn from its own mistakes, or that of others?

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