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VIEWPOINT: FIFTH COLUMN
Part Of The Problem
The political solution to the stalemate in Kashmir lies
in Delhi, not Islamabad
By Tavleen Singh
 A
Newsweek poll recently revealed that 83 per cent of Pakistanis are on
the Taliban side and only 3 per cent support America in its war in Afghanistan.
The opposite is true in India. Except among Muslims of a radical bent
and a small group of left-liberal intellectuals there is general consensus
that after September 11 the Americans had no choice but to bomb Afghanistan
(although what there is left to bomb remains a mystery) and that we should
have done the same to Pakistan a long time ago. The average Indian sees
the American war on terrorism as an extension of our own war against what
we call Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in Kashmir.
 The
Indian Government has gone to great lengths to remind America that it
is now fighting a war that we in India have been fighting for 20 years.
We are so excited about becoming America's loudest cheerleaders in its
global war against terrorism that we have chosen to forget that our problem
in Kashmir did not begin with Pakistan-sponsored terrorism but with stupid
mistakes made by our own ill-advised governments. This is worrying because
in our enthusiasm to link events in Kashmir to global terrorism we seem
also on the verge of forgetting that there are two aspects to the Kashmir
problem and the solution to one of them lies in Delhi, not Islamabad.
Even if by some miracle America succeeds in
persuading Pakistan to stop funding terrorism in Kashmir we are still
stuck with the fact that the average Kashmiri hates India. And he has
valid reasons. However much Hindu fanatics and rabid nationalists might
like to believe that the Kashmiri (read: Muslim) is basically a traitor
and that is the real problem, the truth is we denied the Kashmiris basic
democratic rights, toppled legitimate governments and treated genuine
leaders as criminals. Did Sheikh Abdullah need to spend 18 years of his
life in Indian jails? Was he really a traitor? And, if Farooq Abdullah
is today considered a nationalist why was Indira Gandhi so easily able
to brand him a secessionist not so very long ago?
These are questions that no government in Delhi
has ever dared to answer. So there has been no attempt to change a Kashmir
policy that was unwise if not completely erroneous in the first place.
The Vajpayee Government is even more to blame than others because it would
have been so easy for it to disassociate itself from the mistakes of the
past. Its attempts at finding a political solution in Kashmir have been
feeble at best, farcical at worst.
First, we had that cease-fire-it was not really
a cease-fire but got portrayed as a major policy shift. Then Vajpayee
went on to appoint that old has-been, K.C. Pant, as his main interlocutor
with those among Kashmir's militant leaders who were ready to talk. Pant's
only contribution was to pose for TV cameras with other old has-beens
and then suddenly even this pretend dialogue died quietly without anyone
noticing. He was the wrong man for the job but if the prime minister has
discovered this he gives us no indication. And now, all we talk about
is terrorism. Yes, terrorism is a problem, and any prime minister who
attempted to talk to the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) or the Jaish-e-Mohammed
(JeM) could rightly be locked up for lunacy if not treason, but are there
no Kashmiris we can talk to? Is this not a good time for us to start finding
them? Is nobody in Delhi aware that if we can solve the domestic aspect
of the Kashmir problem we would be taken much more seriously by the international
community when we talked about being victims of terrorism?
We forget that there was no Kashmir problem
for most of the 1970s and 1980s. After Mrs Gandhi made peace with Sheikh
Abdullah in 1975 and brought him back as chief minister, Kashmir was a
place of summer tourism and an outdoor set for Hindi movies right up to
the late 1980s. It was so much at peace that political leaders in Delhi
had no qualms about pursuing dangerously divisive policies and then, when
the violence started, no policies at all except military ones.
Pakistan renewed its role in Kashmir only after
the violence started. We need to remember this. We responded by charging
it with terrorism and abandoning all serious attempts at finding a political
solution. Not surprisingly, the international community finds it hard
to put terrorism in Kashmir in the same category as what happened in New
York and Washington on September 11. Our tirade against terrorism will
only be taken seriously if we make a genuine attempt at finding a political
solution in Kashmir because, whether we like to admit it or not, there
is a political problem that has so far not been addressed. If the Vajpayee
Government makes a serious effort now to find a political solution and
Pakistan continues to fund evil groups like the JeM and the LeT, it will
be easier for the world to see who the good guys are in Kashmir and who
the baddies. More importantly we might still save the Kashmir Valley from
Talibanisation.
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