The J&K 'peace process': Chasing the chimera

By K.P.S. Gill & Ajai Sahni

Any permanent peace can only be created out of a process and perspective that is firmly rooted in the realities on the ground. The belief that good sense, good intentions and good men can, or will, eventually prevail over these lines in the face of the evidence of history.

An unrealistic pursuit of peace can only defer violence, and often magnifies it. The notion of 'peace at all costs' of self-destructive, and negotiations, and on unrealistic or divergent assessments of the realities on the ground, inevitably result in greater, escalation though they may produce a temporary and deceptive lull.

It is difficult to comprehend what precisely forces each incumbent regime in India to embrace the political realism of appeasement', despite its manifest failures and the mounting evidence of chaos and violence that it yields. It is clear, however, that the present regime is yet to display the vision or the will to escape this disastrous propensity.

On the face of it, the present 'peace initiative' in Kashmir does not appear to be 'reality based' in any meaningful sense, or to have concrete strategic foundations. It is, by and large, in the nature of a 'fishing expedition': in the absence of a consistent or coherent policy to force a breakthrough in J&K--and such a policy is entirely achievable-a random element has been introduced to destabilize established equations in the hope that it may set in motion a positive chain that could, in the uncertain future, produce desired results. This is not a plan; it is gamble. And it is destined to fail for many reasons.

The character of this initiative has, moreover, been substantially defined by factors extraneous to the conflict such as specific pressure for peace initiatives from the US.

The claim that the 'ceasefire' has resulted in a radical transformation of world opinion towards India and support for its policies on Kashmir, moreover, takes inordinate advantage of the ambiguities inherent in the situation. A positive trend in favour of the Indian position has been continuous since Pakistan's Kargil blunder, and is more a consequence of what is happening in that country--and in the votex of anarchy to its west, in Afghanistan--than of the sagacity or efficacy of India's policies in J&K. Pakistan has, indeed, repeatedly shot itself in the foot over the past two years, and this is the actual cause of the tide of world opinion turning against it.

Under the circumstances, the claim that India's 'ceasefire' declaration in Kashmir has resulted in radical transformation in international perceptions on the conflict in J&K and on Pakistan's role, has limited objective merit. There is, of course, no set of criteria or indices that can help to quantify such international impact. But there is, equally, no extraordinary evidence that the outcome would be significantly different had India followed a consistent and coherent counter-terrorism agenda in J&K, ensuring that the civilian population did not suffer inordinately, even as the state applied all necessary force to defeat the terrorists.

There are two major difficulties with a dialogue with any of these entities. The first of these relates to the impact on legitimate democratic groupings and activities in the State. Indeed, the release of the Hurriyat leaders from custody, and the first moves to initiate talks with them were specifically perceived as steps by the Centre to marginalize Farooq Abdullah's ruling National Conference, and the Chief Minister's 'fightback' through the 'autonomy demand' in June 2000 was essentially an effort to restore some balanced and reassert his political significance.

There is something absurd in accepting an organisation that has no democratic credentials and whose members are unashamed Pakistani proxies, as the 'sole representative' of the people of Kashmir in a negotiating process, and divesting the State's elected political leadership of its locus standi in the political process. The Hurriyat, moreover, explicitly derives its influence and legitimacy from the power of the terrorists' gun, though it may not openly engage in terrorist activities. To bring such an agency to the centrestage of the negotiations, and hence of the political process, is a repudiation of the fundamental principles of democracy, and a deep injury on the democratic forces in the state which have, for decades now, been the target of the militants' wrath. The second critical difficulty is the fundamental question of the principle involved in negotiating with terrorists and their front organisations, and in the effort to accommodate and appease the terrorist warlords operating out of Pakistan.

As Yossef Bodansky expresses it: A government committed to the safety and well being of its citizenry and an organisation intentionally using the indiscriminate injuring of the same citizenry as a negotiations tactics do not speak the same language...Even if they seem to agree on certain procedures and accommodation, the difference between their respective positions is irreconcilable. There can be no common denominators or common denominators or common grounds between terrorism and democracy.

This fundamental opposition is compounded by the 'demonstration effect' of successful terrorism. The leaders of terrorist groups must be dealt with as terrorist and criminals. To appease them is to reward terror. And if terrorism is rewarded in one theatre of conflict, it will be replicated in others. This impacts not only on Kashmir, but on the entire country, and indeed, on the world at large. This has been said before, but it bears repetition: a victory for terrorism anywhere in the world is a victory for terrorism everywhere. Terrorism in the world today is founded on the successes of terrorism in the late sixties and early seventies, when some terrorist leaders were transformed into world statesmen in West Asia.

The message communicated was: if you resort to those methods, you can become a world leader, you can carve out your own little nation, address the United Nations General Assembly, find a place, in history. Because some terrorist leaders in West Asia and Ireland have been given a place in the history of the world, every criminal ganglord thinks he can also become a world leader by murdering a few hundred or a few thousand people.

The world needs to consistently tell the ambitious and impatient groupings in various theatres of conflict that they must resolve their problems by peaceful and democratic means, and that if they resort to terrorism, irrespective of the validity or legitimacy of their cause, the world will stand against them, and will defeat them. On each occasion when a legitimate, democratically elected regime seeks to negotiate with terrorists or with their front organisations, it undermines the basic edifice and viability of the democratic order, not only in its own region, but across the world.

Pakistan has repeatedly insisted that Kashmir was the core issue between the two countries, and the greatest of the flawed premises of India's strategic perspective appears to be an implicit, uncritical and de facto acceptance of this claim and its concomitant agenda. Pakistan has been extraordinarily successful in projecting and marketing this notion, not only to the Indian establishment, but also to the world at large. It is this success that constitutes the source of the extraordinary pressures, both international and internal, on India to seek solutions through negotiations within the State and with Pakistan. It is the belief that since the 'core issue' is Kashmir, it can be dealt with locally, and can be 'resolved' through the various petty plots to cut up the State on communal lines that are current today-along the LoC, or along the Chenab, or by clubbing together Muslim majority districts, etc. and that, through this device, 'peace' can be purchased in perpetuity.

But the fact is that the core issue is not Kashmir. It never was. It is the fundamentalist ideology, and the 'two nation theory' that excludes the ways of life coexisting within a single political order. The core issue, consequently, goes to the very heart and basis of India's existence, as it does of irreducible conflict between democratic liberalism and a polity based on an exclusionary religious democratic liberalism and a polity based on an exclusionary religious absolutism. Those who think it can be resolved through negotiated territorial concessions with the aggressor deceive themselves no less than the Chamberlains and the Daladiers who sought to bribe Hittler into peace with similar concessions. Even to conceive of a 'settlement' on Kashmir on the basis of a communal trifurcation would be a monumental blunder, at par with the Partition of India that destroyed and disrupted millions of lives, but solved nothing.

While the dangers of the 'demonisation' of Islam have been widely noted, both by neutral scholars and by the apologists for extremist Islam, there is a neglect of an even more vicious process of the demonisation of all other Faiths and nations among the people of Islam, and even of Muslims who do not conform to the perverse vision of the 'fundamentalists'. There is a profound ideology of hatred that is being fervently propagated through the institutions of Islam, particularly the madrassas or religious schools and seminaries that are proliferating rapidly across South Asia, and it is winning many ardent converts.

This is, as already stated, still a small minority among South Asia's Muslims; but it is a vocal, armed, well supported, extremely violent and growing minority. The majority, by contrast, has tended to passivity and conciliation, and there is little present evidence of the courage of conviction or the will for any moderate Islamic resistance to the rampage of extremist Islam.

What we see is a strategy of encirclement and penetration that seeks indiscriminate destabilization throughout the South Asian region, and its visible source is in Pakistan, though its financial flows originate in West Asia. Within the paradigm of Kashmir as the 'core issue', it may be tempting, under the circumstances to explore the possibility of a permanent settlement with Pakistan, by which it makes firm commitments on the cessation of all such subversive activities throughout the region in exchange for territorial concessions. Once again, this would be a course of action based upon a complete failure of comprehension, both of the nature of the absolutist ideology of extremist Islam, and of the complex nature of the relationship between the Pakistan state and the terrorist groupings that currently act on its apparent bidding.

Enormous faith has been placed on the 'international community' by India in its hope that Pakistan will eventually yield to cumulative diplomatic pressure or to the economic burden of sanctions. But Pakistan can yield neither to economic imperatives, nor to international pressures, nor, indeed, can it stop at any limited concessions that it may secure through negotiations with India for it is no longer in control of the forces of extremism that it has created and nurtured. It may, however, eventually yield to chaos. And while this may not be desirable even from the Indian point of view, preventing such an eventuality cannot be the overriding concern for an Indian government.

Despite its economic strength, its political resilience, and its military might, despite the courage and sacrifices of its combined Security Forces, India, today, projects an image of utter fragility and vulnerability to the world as a result of the vacillation and weakness of its political leadership and its bureaucracy. The rhetoric of being a 'world leader', a 'great power' has dominated recent political oratory, but India's governments have not learned how to act even as governments of a principled democracy, leave alone a 'great power'. Can those who advocate negotiations with terrorists and their front organisations over Kashmir, even conceive of the US government initiating similar 'negotiations to arrive at a settlement on the 'issue' of the US military presence in Saudi Arabia?

The meaning of democracy has been distorted beyond measure in India. The idea that everybody-including terrorists and mass murderers-must be 'accommodated' in the political process and kept happy within a democracy appears to be the thrust of the politics of 'consensus' that has been the unique product of a succession of corrupt and craven regimes. But one cannot strengthen the case for democracy by handing over his country. It is an extraordinarily, difficult form of governance, and demands exceptional disciplined adherence to the rule of law, both on the part of the people and of governments. Freedom, in such a system, is not, as some would have us believe, a 'birth right'; it is something that has to be fought for and defended, something that nations earn and preserve through blood and sacrifice.

It is necessary now, if India is to survive, to abandon the whore's ethic of consensus and appeasement, to take on the burden of responsible and principled governance and to accept the inescapable fact that terrorism and the ideologies that inspire it will have to be defeated and that nothing is going to change unless it is demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt that violence will not profit those who seek to use terror as an instrument of policy.

(Source: PTI)

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