The Bharatiya Janata Party’s national leadership has officially confirmed that it’s in talks with the People’s Democratic Party to form a coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir. This proposal is endorsed by a surprisingly large number of self-avowed well-wishers of the Kashmiri people, as well as cynical “realists” who believe that such a coalition of extremes, between India’s unitarian-nationalists and the Kashmir Valley’s “soft-separatists”, is J&K’s best chance of having a stable government which paves the way for its greater integration into India. The parties’ respective core-bases, Jammu and the Valley, they argue, “complement” each other. Arithmetically too, the two — with respectively 25 and 28 seats — would command a solid majority in the 87-seat Assembly.
Tag - Kashmir
Why the PDP should not ally with the BJP in Jammu and Kashmir
By allying with the BJP, Mufti risks becoming Kashmir’s version of the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas, powerless against Israel’s occupation, yet legitimising it and dependent on it. The PDP will almost certainly suffer a rout soon. But it will have helped Modi to strut about the world for having fully coopted J&K’s Muslims in an “inclusive” arrangement, and whitewashed his own terrible record in Gujarat and beyond. What a coup that would be for the RSS-BJP!
The Kashmir Interlocutors’ Panel: Doomed before it starts?
'When the Cabinet Committee on Security announced "a new political initiative" on Jammu and Kashmir on September 25, it was expected that high-level interlocutors would soon begin a dialogue with the state's parties and civil society.
Collapse by design in Kashmir?
The Kashmiri people have seen so many botched attempts at dialogue and mediation to resolve the thorny dispute of which they are the victims that the collapse of such (usually half-hearted) efforts doesn’t strike them as remarkable. Nor does the mindlessness of the “packages” of poorly formulated financial and development measures which every government at the Centre periodically throws at them.
Kashmir’s dialogue of the deaf - As The State Flounders Amidst Crisis
Even before the all-party delegation comprising 39 political leaders visited the curfew-bound Kashmir Valley, it was clear that it would accomplish very little barring gaining some acquaintance with people’s perceptions of the ground situation. There was wide divergence among its member-parties on the basic approach to be adopted towards Kashmir. Logically, an all-party delegation can be productive only if it conveys a strong, broad political consensus. But the Centre manifestly failed to evolve a consensus. Instead, it substituted the all-party delegation for it.
Ruling Kashmir by trampling rights
The visit of the all-party delegation to Jammu and Kashmir wasn’t, and couldn’t have been, a spectacular success. It didn’t have a mandate based on a broad policy consensus. It was preceded by little sounding out of different strands of opinion in the curfew-bound Valley. It was led by one of the architects of India’s recent Kashmir policy which has left the Valley bleeding, under prolonged curfew, and with a death-toll exceeding 100.
Kashmir: defusing the crisis
The protest wave that gripped the Kashmir Valley has abated with the calling in of the army. But public anger against the killing of 15 young Kashmiris, including a 9-year-old boy, isn’t likely to vanish soon. The restoration of order has claimed a high price: the army had to be called into Kashmir for crowd control for the first time since the azaadi movement erupted in 1989.
Dialogue Missing as Kashmir Erupts
[antiwar.com, September 04, 2008 |http://original.antiwar.com/bidwai/2008/09/03/dialogue-missing-as-kashmir-erupts/|en]
by Praful Bidwai
NEW DELHI – Even as the Jammu region of the strife-torn Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir is settling down to normality and peace, a two-month-old turmoil in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley shows no signs of abating.
The Kashmir unrest, which unseated the elected government of the state in July, now threatens to become a serious problem for India yet again, with international ramifications, in particular implications for India’s already fraught relations with Pakistan.
Following independence in 1947 and the partition of India, on the basis of religion, Jammu and Kashmir became disputed between Pakistan and India, and three wars have been fought between the two countries for the territory’s complete possession. India’s Jammu and Kashmir state is referred to by Pakistan as "Indian-occupied Kashmir," while India refers to Azad Kashmir and the Northern Areas collectively as "Pakistan-occupied Kashmir."
India’s Jammu and Kashmir state consists of two distinct regions; Hindu-dominated Jammu and the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley. A third region, Ladakh, is largely Buddhist. Srinagar in the Kashmir Valley serves as the summer capital, and Jammu is the winter capital.
Trouble began with rival Hindu and Muslim militants protesting for and against the transfer of 100 acres of land for camping arrangements to host a Hindu pilgrimage to a shrine in a cave in the Kashmir Valley, called the Amarnath Shrine, where an ice stalactite that forms for up to two months in a year is worshipped by devout Hindus.
Political organizations in the Kashmir Valley saw the transfer as a means of placating the Hindus and as an intrusion into their autonomous cultural space.
Their protests led the state government to cancel the transfer. The Hindu-majority Jammu region reacted to this with an emotionally charged violent agitation and a blockade of goods entering the Valley along the Jammu-Srinagar highway, the only functional road connecting mainland India to the Kashmir Valley.
This blockade added to the ferocity of the protests in the Valley and put Kashmiri separatists in their forefront. Some groups that favor merger of the Kashmir Valley with Pakistan waved the green flag of the neighboring country.
The government of Jammu and Kashmir finally reached a settlement on Sunday with the Sri Amarnath Yatra Sangharsh Samiti (SAYSS), a coalition of different groups spearheading the agitation in Jammu, many of which are close to the pro-Hindu, nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Sunday’s settlement allows for temporary arrangements to be made for makeshift tents and other facilities during the pilgrimage, without a change in the ownership and status of or title to the land.
Following the agreement, the agitation in Jammu was formally withdrawn. But that has had very little impact on the Kashmir Valley, where the government re-imposed a curfew after thousands of people took to the streets in its northern towns.
While many Kashmiri parties have not yet reacted to the agreement, the People’s Democratic Party, which ran a coalition government with the Congress Party in Jammu and Kashmir for nearly six years, condemned it as a "unilateralist" and "authoritarian" move, made without consulting the Valley’s politicians.
Some other political leaders from the Valley termed the settlement "irrelevant" to resolving the larger Kashmir question of autonomy and freedom in keeping with the sentiments of the people.
"The ease with which the settlement was reached, without substantially changing the status quo, and with only minor concessions being offered to the SAYSS, shows that the agitation was politically motivated in the first place," says Kamal Mitra Chenoy, a political scientist at Jawaharlal Nehru University here, who has been involved with reconciliation and peace efforts in Jammu and Kashmir for many years.
"The BJP was fishing in the troubled waters in Kashmir with an eye on the legislative assembly elections, which are due by the end of the year but are likely to be postponed," said Chenoy. "The organizations it controls in Jammu used deplorably rough methods to enforce a traffic blockade of the Valley, including attacking truck drivers with rocks and acid bulbs. Its methods drew an adverse reaction from the rest of India, which is one reason why it withdrew the agitation. But it has succeeded in polarizing Jammu and Kashmir along regional and communal lines."
One indication of this is the growing alienation of the Valley’s people from India and the pro-separatist mood now prevalent there. The Kashmir situation was repeatedly mishandled by New Delhi through its appointee, Jammu and Kashmir Governor N.N. Vohra, and his administration.
The administration first failed to anticipate the protests, then cracked down heavily on them. Many Kashmiris complain that the government handled the Jammu agitation with kid gloves, but used excessive force in the Valley to suppress even peaceful protests: "rubber bullets in Jammu, and live bullets in the Valley."
The government relented in the Valley during much of August, as it proceeded to break the blockade in Jammu. However, since Aug. 24, it has resorted to a crackdown, arrests of prominent leaders, and repeated curfew.
"This has resulted in heightening the alienation of ordinary Kashmiris from the Indian state," says Yusuf Tarigami, a Jammu and Kashmir lawmaker from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and a widely respected political leader. "Mercifully, that alienation is not as severe as in the early 1990s, and may yet prove transient."
Tarigami cites a number of differences between the post-1989 climate and the present situation. Then, a number of militant groups, including the largely indigenous Hizbul Mujahedin, were hyperactive in demanding "freedom" and Kashmir’s separation from India.
These militant groups managed and subdued the relatively moderate political leadership of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. Pakistan armed and financed the militant groups and lent them logistical support. Savage repression unleashed by Indian security forces only helped them build a support base in the Valley.
Today, militant groups are no longer able to recruit cadres. Until the anti-land transfer protests broke out, the Kashmir Valley was relatively peaceful and the extremists were isolated. Issues of governance and day-to-day survival became dominant. Tourism experienced a boom.
The Hurriyat was even on the verge of deciding not to issue a call to boycott the assembly elections, as it usually does.
"Above all, Kashmir has not been a live political issue in Pakistan since the peace process with India made progress," says Karachi-based social activist and political analyst Karamat Ali. "It hasn’t figured in the domestic political debate at all since the February elections and later developments, including Pervez Musharraf’s resignation as president."
This offers a chance for India to begin a serious dialogue with the different separatist political currents in Kashmir and put the issue of autonomy up-front on the table.
But the Indian establishment appears divided on the issue. Hardliners such as National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan play down the serious nature of Kashmiri alienation and popular discontent with the domineering presence of Indian security forces in the Valley. Narayanan told a television channel, two days ago that he expected the Kashmir situation to become normal in 10 days’ time.
However, another section of the government has advised Governor Vohra to explore the possibility of a dialogue with separatist leaders, and Vohra has been contacting them since Sunday.
"Eventually," says Chenoy, "a viable solution to the Kashmir problem will have to be found in the kind of suggestions for regional and interregional autonomy made 10 years ago by an official committee chaired by Balraj Puri, and through a strengthening of the special status for Kashmir guaranteed by a particular section Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. This must be accompanied by a thinning out of the presence of Indian security forces in the Valley, and devolution of power to local and regional bodies."
Jammu and Kashmir is the only state in India that enjoys special autonomy under Article 370, according to which, laws enacted by Indian parliament, except those concerning defense, communication, and foreign policy, are inapplicable unless ratified by the state legislature.
But Chenoy emphasizes that "in the short run, there is no substitute for a dialogue. That alone can build the necessary confidence and goodwill, which India so badly needs."
(Inter Press Service)