India, Pakistan, Kashmir and Arms Race
by Dr Syed Ghulam Nabi Fa
‘The Christian Science Monitor’ in its column on April 25, 2012 said it all by emphasizing that “Ritual Aggression: India and Pakistan’s missile tests, following peace talks.”
We know that both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers. Both have now tested intercontinental ballistic missiles. Both are adamant against inking the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Both feature domestic constituencies that universally celebrate their muscular nuclear postures; no political party or serious private association champions nuclear controls or disarmament. India and Pakistan have warred three times since their respective births in 1947, and two occasioned on the disputed territory of Kashmir. In the best of times, India and Pakistan are no more friendlier than the Montagues and Capulets on the streets of Verona.
Two not mutually exclusive approaches are available to the United States to turn back the nuclear clock in South Asia; a region that former President Clinton has lamented is the most dangerous place on the planet. The first emphasizes restraints on nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles; the second gives primacy to eliminating the probable cause of nuclear exchanges. The US has chosen the first, and given but lip service to the second.
All experience teaches that neither India nor Pakistan will accept non-trivial limits on their nuclear arsenals in the foreseeable future. India’s intransigent position for more than 44 years is no nuclear constraints unless every nation abandons its nuclear forces and stockpiles, including the big five nuclear powers under the NPT: the United States, Russia, China, Great Britain, and France. India has now tested intercontinental ballistic missiles that could deliver nuclear warheads to the Beijing and Shanghai. Pakistan reciprocated with just few days. The United States did not say anything that gives cause for Indian military anxieties. India’s nuclear and missile fixation pivots on her national ambitions and self-perception as the hegemonistic power in South Asia she routinely meddles in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives, and annexed Goa in 1961 and the Kingdom of Sikkim in 1975 by force of arms. Thus, nothing but an overwhelming nuclear disarmament incentive could cause India to entertain the idea. At present, such an incentive is chimerical.
According to the United Nations, Kashmir is a disputed territory. When the Kashmir question got erupted at the UN in 1948, the world powers took the stand that the future of Kashmir must be ascertained through plebiscite conducted by the United Nations. India’s plebiscite obligation has been defied with both insolence and impunity for more than half a century, which substantially explains the chronic convulsions and ubiquitous indigenous Kashmiri resistance to India’s illegal military occupation. Contrary to popular myth, cleverly peddled by India, the resistance in Kashmir is indigenous & popular; and infiltrators or terrorist “Afghan Arabs” are marginal to the Kashmir conflict.
The nuclear clock in South Asia thus can be turned back only by addressing the source of the proliferation, i.e., Kashmir. If the 65-year-old Kashmir conflict is settled with fairness and justice to all parties, then the possession of nuclear weapons by India and Pakistan will be dramatically less worrisome. Britain and France, for instance, do not fret that the other is a nuclear power. And the United States and Russia are engaged in serious nuclear arms reductions, but it came only after the end of the Cold War. In sum, Kashmir is the key to spiking the nuclear arms race in South Asia.
I do not mean to suggest, however, that tackling Kashmir will not be difficult. But here are my thoughts about a new and promising approach.
First, recognize that Kashmir is primarily about the 17 million Kashmiri people, their human rights and right to self-determination under international law and still binding United Nations Security Council resolutions. It is not a border quarrel between India and Pakistan, nor a fight between Hindus and Muslims, nor a struggle between secularism and theocracy.
Second, third party intervention and mediation is indispensable. India and Pakistan have negotiated for 65 years without result. All the flowery declarations from Tashkent, Simla, Lahore and other summits have proven sound and fury signifying nothing. To persist in the same course after 65 years of dismal failure conjures up many adjectives, but none are flattering to the cerebral faculty.
Third, the US should urge the Secretary General of the United Nations to appoint a special envoy on Kashmir. More importantly, the United States should insist on the inclusion of genuine representatives of the Kashmiri people at the negotiating table. It is their political destiny and human rights which are at stake, and no solution that fails to command their consent will endure. That same reasoning explains the United States support for Sinn Fein representatives in the Northern Ireland talks, PLO representatives in talks with Israel, East Timor voices in negotiations with Indonesia, KLA leaders in negotiations with Yugoslavia, and Muslim, Croat, and Serb politicians in discussions over Bosnia.
Fourth, the US should mount a campaign of moral suasion against India’s illegal occupation of Kashmir. At present, its moral voice has been as silent as the Sphinx. Moral suasion generally works slowly, but is not Pollyannaish. It accelerated South Africa’s dismantling of apartheid and the end of the international slave trade. It promises no miracle in South Asia, but is nevertheless superior to all other peace and non-proliferation alternatives.
Finally, all tactics aiming at progress over Kashmir must be exercised with supreme prudence, without which, as the inimitable Sam Johnson sermonized, knowledge is useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible.
Filed under: Indo Pak Relations, Kashmir Tagged: | Human Rights, India, Indian Muslims, Indo Pak Relations, Kashmir, Pakistan
Interlocutor’s Report, Back to Square One
by Dr. Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai
The report of the group of interlocutors for Jammu & Kashmir entitled, “A New Compact With The People of Jammu & Kashmir” was finally released on May 23, 2012, after months of waiting. Prepared by Mr. Dileep Padgoankar, Mr. M. M. Ansari and Professor Radha Kumar, it’s unfortunately a mess and unquestionably a diversion from the primary interests of the people, if not an outright diversionary tactic by the members of the group. In fact, that is what some members of the leadership of the resistance have charged. The report was rejected out of hand by Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Muhammad Yasin Malik and Shabir Ahmed Shah, as well as other factions including the Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar Association. None feels that it represents the will of the people and most believe that the government is simply buying time to avoid the inevitable, a real political solution to the quagmire that Kashmir has become.
The interlocutors have suggested that the solution rests within the constitution of India and treats it as a problem internal to the affairs of India, cementing further the view that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India, which obviously is a non-solution. All the constitutions of the world are subject to amendment, and the Indian constitution is no exception. If India gives anything to Kashmiris within the framework of the Indian constitution, how do you guarantee that she will not take it away tomorrow? This move will not even need a debate within the Parliament of India.
The team also recommends that Article 370 should be made special within the Indian constitution. And it is quite clear that the members of the team know well that this option has been rejected by the people of Kashmir many times in the past. And they also know that Kashmiris have had autonomy within this Article, which has been abrogated due to the passage of time. The people have revolted against the status quo and status quo cannot be an answer. Therefore, talking about Article 370 is an insult to the intelligence of the Kashmiri people.
The interlocutors have read the situation in Kashmir through the old grimy lenses of policy makers in New Delhi and did not bother to recognize that it is the obduracy and stubbornness of India that fails to accept the fact that Kashmir is not a law and order issue, nor is it a center-state question; it is primarily an issue of the 17 million people of Jammu & Kashmir which under all international agreements is not an integral part of any member state of the United Nations, including India and Pakistan. If that historical fact is ignored, there cannot be any lasting solution to this tragic situation.
The report details its deliberations with over 700 delegations. However, a glaring omission is any mention that the interlocutors met with any member of the leadership of the Kashmiri resistance. It was none other than the former Prime Minster, Atel Behari Vajpayee, Deputy Prime Minister, L. K. Advani and current Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh who expressed desire time and again to meet with the leadership of the Kashmiri resistance to find the final settlement of the Jammu & Kashmir problem. The group was appointed in fact as a direct consequence of massive street demonstrations and uprisings which began in 2007 and extended through the hot summer of 2010, in which Aazadi was the clarion call. What happened? Did they not see the blood on the streets?
Did they not read the newspapers? Did they not watch television?
Were they in a deep slumber during these long years?
India may make a deal with any so-called leader of Kashmir, but deal making does not by itself establish legitimacy. This deal making must be acceptable to the common man on the street. He is the one who is the real stakeholder, and the legitimacy of any deal rests with his acceptance. History tells us that even the so-called ‘Lion of Kashmir,’ Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, who had agreements with the founding Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru and the Iron Lady, Indira Gandhi, could not sell them to his people. Therefore, it is imperative that India understands that no solution to the Kashmir problem will last if it does not have the consent of the people and their leadership, which is represented by the Kashmiri resistance, which has demonstrated time and again the ability to garner the support of the masses.
However distinguished, the partiality and bias of the members of the group of interlocutors becomes clear when the report states that it takes into account the official documents related to political and constitutional developments since Jammu and Kashmir’s accession to the Indian Union. Paradoxically, the report does not mention that the accession was subject to a referendum of the people of Kashmir. It does not mention that it was in 1948 and 1949 that India and Pakistan agreed at the United Nations Security Council to give the people of Kashmir the right of self-determination to decide the fate of their land. It does not mention the 18 UN resolutions since in support of self-determination.
Obviously, a committee buzzing around the state in a Mahindra Scorpio, with pencil and paper in hand does not constitute a referendum. The provisions of the UN resolutions were negotiated with both India and Pakistan before they was endorsed by the Security Council. This thus constitutes an international binding upon both India and Pakistan to fulfill their pledges.
The report says that the political settlement proposed takes into full account the deep sense of victimhood prevalent in the Kashmir Valley. It surely deserves to be addressed with great sensitivity.
That recommendation certainly would have called for consulting with the resistance movement. Although its leadership refused to meet with the group from the outset, they did so understanding that the group did not have a mandate to find a solution according to long standing international agreements. The report that was released in fact exonerated them, because it did not mention even a syllable of these agreements.
The report further states “our interactions revealed a widespread desire of people to lead a life of dignity and honour.” The interlocutors, however, failed to understand that that kind of “dignity and honour” desired is the right to determine the course of one’s own country and not to live under the very large fist of 700,000 occupation troops.
The report nowhere says that the dominant desire of the people of Kashmir as confirmed by the survey conducted by British-based Chatham House is “Aazadi,” or independence or freedom from occupation. The survey says that 90 to 95 % of the people of the Valley demanded Aazadi. The word Aazadi wasn’t even mentioned in the report.
The report says that a political settlement in Jammu and Kashmir must be achieved only through dialogue between all stakeholders, including those who are not part of the mainstream. Who did they have in mind? Chief Minister Omar Abdullah or Dr. Farooq Abdullah? Any discussion regarding Kashmir’s future requires not only the appearance of good will and intent bur real efforts to include those who represent the disenfranchised. This commitment to democracy and pluralism must be above board.
In addition, the report says that Jammu and Kashmir should continue to function as a single entity within the Indian Union. Mr. Padgoankar should listen to a member of his fraternity, Mr. Vir Sanghvi who wrote in Hindustan Times on August 16, 2008, “Why are we still hanging on to Kashmir if the Kashmiris don’t want to have anything to do with us? “
Finally, I would like to remind Mr. Padgoankar, the chairman of the group, of the New York Declaration. He was a member of the draft committee, which was adopted on February 25, 2005, which says, “The Conference hopes that the leadership of both India and Pakistan recognize that there can be no settlement, negotiated or otherwise, without the active and full participation of the people of Jammu and Kashmir living on both sides of the ceasefire line as well as those belonging to the Jammu and Kashmir diaspora.”
Obviously the report fell far short of such a goal. The wishes and aspirations of the people are Aazadi, which were completely ignored in the report. The chairman wittingly or unwittingly does not want to acknowledge the true sentiments of the people, which obviously he knows are for freedom from occupation. His approach seems to have been merely bureaucratic.
Simply put, the wishes and aspirations of the people were ignored, so we are back to square one.