By Sanjoy Patnaik
Both Narendra Modi and Imran Khan should exhibit resolve and make no hasty jump to fix the Kashmir imbroglio,writes Sanjoy Patnaik.
Since Independence, Kashmir decides how India and Pakistan would behave in an international forum or on the cricket ground anywhere in the globe. Kashmir has been the prime source of armed conflicts and tension between the two countries whether it is 1948, 1965, 1984, 1999 or 2019. Though India has been largely able to withstand the Pakistani provocations with some decisive victories, Pakistan’s India narrative has continued to revolve round their longstanding desire of snatching Kashmir from India, something that they continue to perceive as a Partition trick by India.
Immediately after Independence, Pakistan was smart to understand that a conventional war against India may not be viable considering the small army that they inherited from British India. Therefore, continued proxy war around the Line of Control through tribes militia, mujhaheeds and trained terrorists became their most trusted and time tested strategy. They were largely successful in burning Kashmir that was not entirely with India since the days of Shiekh Abdullah. In all these years, if Pakistan justified a larger chunk of its national budget on creating a bigger army to bring back Kashmir, India’s position and strategy has been to react to what happens in the valley with aid and army
Historically yours
The historical construct over Kashmir has been Pakistan’s blind acceptance of the ‘two nation theory’ and India’s strong position disallowing the narrative that Kashmir should have gone to Pakistan during Partition on grounds of religion. Post-independence, the ruling elites of Karachi, Sindh and Lahore who considered themselves as the true sons-of-the soil of Pakistan suspected that the new political leadership that mostly migrated from India including Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan could take a soft stand on Kashmir, a suspicion that later on was supported by the Pak army. This internal discontentment forced the political leadership to prove their loyalty to their newly formed country by taking impulsive stands that didn’t turn out to be beneficial in the long run including the tribes militia infiltration of 1947-48. This historical and philosophical formation largely created a justification to fuel the continuing non-military conflict in Kashmir.
During the 50s, when there was international pressure on India to hold a plebiscite in Kashmir for self-determination that it successfully crushed, Pakistanis were left with the only option of arms conflict for which they were to create a narrative that could be internally and globally acceptable. They had no ordinary skills to perceive and anticipate non-existent threats and build a retaliatory narrative around that. One can draw a parallel between the creativity of Ayub Khan in the 1950s with that of Imran Khan of 2019 in crafting threats to legitimise civil-military actions. When Ayub Khan became the Commander-in-Chief, he blamed ‘brahmin chauvinism’ of India and tried to justify why Pakistan should have a large army to protect itself from Hindu India. More than 6 decades down the line, Imran and the top civil-military leadership in Pakistan continue to follow the same narrative. If military leadership hallucinates a nuclear attack by India, Imran declares that Pakistan will not be the first to use nuclear weapons against India. What could have been sensible on the part of Indian leadership and travelled some distance in the direction of cessation of hostilities was to assure Pakistan that India doesn’t have those grand designs.
By making Kashmir a matter of national pride, the two countries have reached a stage of no return. The two may not be technically in a state of war, the mood is no different. Withdrawing diplomatic relations, closing trade ties, disallowing airspace are definitive actions in the direction of creating a real troubled relationship, if not exactly war.
So, where are we after 70 years?
By making Kashmir a matter of national pride, the two countries have reached a stage of no return. The two may not be technically in a state of war, the mood is no different. Withdrawing diplomatic relations, closing trade ties, disallowing airspace are definitive actions in the direction of creating a real troubled relationship, if not exactly war. Though internationally India’s claim of Kashmir being an internal matter where no third party has a role is gaining grounds, Pakistan has not been weak in internationalising the issue with claims of massive human rights violations in the valley. The virtual war continues, while millions are spent every day to prove one’s point.
Contrary to India’s official claims, Kashmir is still burning and far from being normal and Pakistan ceases this opportunity as ever to facilitate infiltration. While no Kashmiri life is lost after 5th August, such a situation may not continue when large scale infiltration takes place. At a time when the situation is so volatile and could actually lead to a catastrophe at the slightest altercation, the response of respective leaderships to such crisis has been largely childish. If the Pakistani provocations are at its peak with Imran Khan coming close to the LoC and threatening to travel the globe as an ‘Ambassador of Kashmir’, Indian Army Chief assures the country that it is ready for actions in PoK. How does these jingoistic rhetorics help resolve the conflict? What is the need for these irresponsible and irrelevant statements? How does a Kashmir matters to a US or a UK or to the global citizen? Are the people both sides so innocent to believe that Imran will actually travel the globe with the Kashmiri flag or the Army Chief would jump into the PoK tomorrow? Don’t they know these are mere self-protective measures or anticipatory bails availed by leaders both sides to explain later on if questioned, ‘what did you do to counter cross border provocation?’ If Imran parrots a Bajwa or a Ghafoor, Modi speaks what RSS wants him to. Therefore, the danger is not a war; it is rather the self-destructive approach to resolve a conflict.
Post 370, both the countries have exhibited strange similarity in the manner in which political and military narratives are being created. In both sides of the Radcliffe line, there are; a) false narratives around non-existent threats, b) denials and lies around ground realities, c) posing the neighbouring country as the only enemy, and d) ensuring a highly filtered and controlled media. In both the countries public opinions are polarised. Internal criticisms and resentments are crushed in the name of solidarity with Kashmir or threat to national security. In the recent past, both Indian National Congress and the BJP are squarely responsible to fuel a dangerous narrative that has to a large extent polarised public opinion in India; if you publicly exhibit love for your country then you could be communal, and if you resent and raise voice against democratic and human rights violations, you are an anti-national. We are the largest democracy in the world, mind you.
Can we find solutions to Kashmir outside of it?
In 1996, Chinese President Jiang Zemin told Pakistan, ‘if certain issues cannot be resolved for the time being, they may be shelved temporarily so that they will not affect the normal state-to-state relations’. This is the broad framework that Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif agreed in 1999 to resolve the conflict by temporarily maintaining status quo and allowing normal relations to grow between two sides of Kashmir. But neither side agreed and the Kargil fiasco derailed the resolution process. Its time, Pakistanis needs to make serious amendments to this strange historical attitude that if Kashmir is dismembered from India, all their problems will be solved and the lost glory will be restored. Similarly, India needs to relook at her strategies realising that India and Kashmir since long have been a divorced couple staying under the same roof.
When the sub-continent is facing the worst ever economic crisis, can it afford spending millions on Kashmir? Is it not wise to temporarily shift focus from Kashmir, exhibit resolve and make no hasty jump to fix the Kashmir imbroglio? It is time to do away with personal ego and one up man ship to ensure generational and far reaching dividends. This is the time to emerge as a hero to embrace temporary defeat for a long term victory. History will stand privy to succeeding generations as to who emerged as the hero, who was the fearless statesman who stood to save the sub-continent – Imran Khan or Narendra Modi, or maybe both.
(The Author is a Filmmaker and Film Analyst, and Development Professional)