Kargil has quite naturally dominated the Indian media’s attention ever since intruders from Pakistan were discovered on its glaciated peaks. Every aspect of the situation has been analysed form every possible angle by experts from every discipline. But I have yet not come across any mention of the impact of the event on the minds of the Muslims in Ladakh, in Kashmir and Jammu, on Buddhist–Muslim relations in Kargil, and Muslim–Hindu relations in the other two regions which have important implications for the future of the state.

While writing in the present context, many experts have re–examined the lessons of earlier experiences of Indo–Pak wars, from diplomatic, strategic and other angles, viz., terms of cease fire agreements, territories gained or lost. But again, no one has made any mention of the relationship between external involvement and the local mood of the people, and the impact of war on them.

The present tilt of international opinion against Pakistan is being variously explained as the achievement of able diplomacy of the BJP government, realisation on the part of America of the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, which has become powerful in Pakistan, or the importance that India has acquired as a market and an investment avenue.

These explanations may be true to some extent. But the fact that is being completely ignored is that international opinion is also influenced by the merit of a case. The package is important but not more than the material it covers. Every nation watches its national interest but that concern must also include its influence and image among the rest of the nations.

That India did not get much international support against Pakistan during the decade–long insurgency in Kashmir was due to the fact that, inter alia, people of the Valley, rightly or wrongly, supported it. Kashmiri youth used to cross the LoC and get arms and training and return as militants for the cause of ‘Azadi’. The ruthless manner in which the insurgency was sought to be suppressed in the initial phase invited universal ondemnation.

In contrast, today it is essentially an operation of the Pakistan army with the support of specially recruited and specially indoctrinated Mujahids in an area where there is no freedom movement. Of course, India’s restraint in dealing with the situation has also paid diplomatic dividends. 

But why did Pakistan change its position as a champion of the rights of Kashmiris to that of an aggressor? The BJP blames the Congress Party for defeating its government, which tempted Pakistan to exploit the consequent political instability in the country. The Congress blames the naivete and gullibility of the Prime Minister who was mesmerised into complacency due to the euphoria created by his bus diplomacy.
More objective experts offer a number of strategic theories for the gamble that Pakistan played in Kargil, viz., it wanted to do a Siachen on India, or to open an alternative route of infiltration to the Kashmir valley.

In short, all debate on Kargil that dominates the national agenda is based on the presumption that the entire conflict between India and Pakistan over Jammu and Kashmir is based on the title over real estate. This approach errs in ignoring the fact that Pakistan’s behaviour is influenced by the political mood of the people and that it has political motives also. In other words, it means a ref usal to accept the vital fact thatpeople of the state also matter. 

If the way the situation was developing or drifting within the state in the recent period was watched  carefully, any observer could not have missed the writing on its political wall regarding what has happened in Kargil.
A further confirmation would have been available if turmoil across the LoC, too, had been noticed. For understanding Kargil, an understanding of the wider ethno-cultural milieu of which it is a part is necessary. But that requires much more rigorous homework which is beyond our tribe of Kashmir experts.

Let me recount some of the evidence that gave an indication of the shape of things to come. Pakistan was under a compulsion to convert the Kashmiri movement for Azadi into a Muslim movement for Pakistan.
For, Kashmiri nationalism was a double–edged weapon. India used it against Pakistan from 1947 to 1953 and from 1975 to the mid–eighties. The ideological gap between the Kashmir movement and Pakistan could be a political threat to the latter. Thus Pakistan wriggled out of its commitment to the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, the pioneer of militancy in Kashmir, for Azadi. Pakistan gradually reduced and then withdrew all support to it. Instead, it sponsored pro–Pakistan and Islamic fundamentalist groups of militants. The leadership of its  verground political wing, under the banner of All Parties Hurriyat Conference, too, shifted accordingly.

Meanwhile the J and K chief minister, Farooq Abdullah, shifted his allegiance from the Left–supported United Front to the BJP and issued a certificate of patriotism to the RSS. The effective political choice for the people of Kashmir was thus confined to a pro–RSS face of India and a pro-Pakistan Jamaat–led Hurriyat Conference. But to close their options, Jammu and Ladakh needed to be communalised. Hence the Muslim pockets within them became a target of the militants.

Their task was facilitated by the communal polarisation of Jammu between the National Conference and BJP, and of Ladakh between the former and the Ladakh Buddhist Association. The voting in the parliamentary election of 1998 was a neat reflection of this polarisation. It suited the National Conference rulers if the perennial regional discontent in Jammu and Ladakh was divided along communal lines.
Thus as a reaction to some voices for separate statehood of Jammu and Union Territory status for Ladakh, the National Conference started a campaign for separation of Muslim majority parts from their respective regions. In April 1999, the state government formally proposed re–demarcation of these regions on communal basis, of course for public discussion.

By this time, fresh initiatives came from America–based think tanks for the solution of the Kashmir problem on the basis of traditional official American thinking that the problem must be resolved “accordingly to the wishes of the people, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists”. This simplistic thinking completely ignores the ethnic identities and their aspirations. 

Reflecting the same thinking, the US–based and influential Kashmir Study Group recommended that “the state be reconstituted through an internationally supervised ascertainment of the wishes of the people on either side of the Line of Control”. This portion be constituted “as a sovereign entity (but without an international personality)”. Two Indian representatives who had participated in the meeting which made
this recommendation later clarified that it meant the reconstituted state should be within Indian sovereignty. But obviously they did not object to reconstitution.

Pakistan came nearer to this position when its foreign minister proposed a district–wise plebiscite to determine the future of the state; thus limiting its claim to, besides the Kashmir Valley, to the Muslim majority districts of Rajouri, Poonch and Doda in Jammu region and the district of Kargil in Ladakh. After extending militant activity to the former area, Kargil appeared to be its natural target. It may merely have been more encouraged by internal developments and external proposals on the subject.

The Pakistan government had not properly taken into account the lack of response of the Muslims of Kargil, the formidable military challenge of the Indian armed forces and hostile international reaction to its action. But India’s decisive victory would depend on how far it can meet the political fall–out of Kargil. Can it help Kargil to feel a secure and proud part of a secular Ladakhi identity, which requires restoration of traditional friendly and cordial relations between Buddhists and Muslims? Can a part of the solidarity and sympathy that the whole nation is expressing for valiant soldiers and their families be extended to the patriotic people of Kargil and about 30,000 homeless, famished refugees?

Again, how would India meet the international pressure, which would turn on it after Kargil crisis is over, to solve the Kashmir problem with some semblance of popular satisfaction? Can India satisfy the urge for identity, democracy and good administration of the people of Kashmir and help them to have friendly relations with peoples of the other two regions of the state?

There are some lessons of Kargil for the nation as a whole, too. While it has generated sentiments of patriotism, sacrifice and fellow feeling, a few reactions exceed legitimate limits of patriotism and, in fact, undermine its moral and psychological basis. The government ban on PTV is, for instance, a reflection on the patriotism of an average citizen which is supposed to be so fragile that it cannot stand a hostile propaganda. If Pakistan can continue its confrontation with India in Kargil, and if India has fought earlier four wars without a ban on the foreign media, why should the present government presume that Indians have become less mature now.

What makes the ban silly is the fact that it is totally unimple-mentable in Kashmir and on the entire Indo–Pak border. Moreover, PTV’s non–news programmes, particularly its plays, are very popular in many parts of India. Why should even the entertainment offered by PTV be banned? Another display of misplaced patriotism is the plea by veteran cricketer Kapil Dev to snap all sports relations with Pakistan. It is true that Indo–Pak matches often arouse jingoist sentiments in both countries and, on this ground, a case could be made to suspend them till tempers cool down. But to argue a sort of sport boycott of Pakistan for its action in Kargil is a case of over–reaction. Does Kapil suspect that every sportsman and sportswoman or sports lover in Pakistan is involved in sponsoring intrusion in Kargil and is an enemy of India? In the past persons belonging to the fields of sports, culture, literature and music have in the worst of times, been messengers of peace and friendship
between the two neighbours. We have to draw a distinction between the people of Pakistan and their rulers. Among the former there has always been an India- friendly constituency which, in our own interest, we
should not let down.

There are some voices demanding of some eminent Muslims that they prove their patriotism, or advocating a ‘final solution’ to the centuries–old aggression upon India from Mohammad Bin Kasim to Mian Nawaz
(Bal Thackerey and the RSS weekly, Panchajanya, respectively. These are too absurd to be discussed; but if such views gather more support, that would pose a greater threat to the existence of a united and civil
India than the military, political, ideological and diplomatic threat ever posed by Pakistan.

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 1999, Year 6  No. 51, Cover Story 1

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For Pakistan, responsible for this provocation, the commitment to support Kashmiri ‘freedom fighters’ in their revolt against Indian repression, runs deep — it stems from the Pakistani establishment’s ideological resolve to complete the ‘unfinished agenda of Partition’ despite the fact that the very basis of the two–nation theory has been seriously challenged within Pakistan itself and what we have today is a thoroughly dismembered state. But Kashmir still manages to recapture much of this lost sentiment. 

TheQaid–e–Azam, Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s derision for the Kashmiri people (he had dubbed the Quit Kashmir movement of the Muslim–majority Kashmiris against Maharaja Hari Singh as a movement of goondas!) is conveniently forgotten. What is being pursued with single–minded devotion is not just a territorial proxy war but also an attempt to impose the highly regimental Wahabi Islam on a valley renowned for its Rishism (Sufism). Schools and madrasas run by the local Jamaat–e–Islami have been systematically used in a continuing attempt to transform the local struggle for Kashmiriyat to visions of life under Nizam–e–Mustafa (The Order of the Prophet).

For India, too, the discourse in the past week has cynically charted familiar territory. The emphatic assertions about the territorial sovereignty and integrity of the Indian nation resound with a hollow arrogance, echoing through the perceptible absence of any Kashmiri voice in the present discourse. The government’s, the mainstream print media’s and television channels’ black out of the voices of the young leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, Yasin Mallik and senior Kashmiri leader, Shabbir Shah from available public spaces is predictable, given the surge of patriotic fervour that such conflicts engender. But also absent are the views of a Balraj Puri, a senior citizen of Jammu and an ardent advocate of sanity and dialogue, or a Saifuddin Soz, senior MP representing the National Conference. The absence of a wide spectrum of other local opinion from the region, and in that category I would include representatives of ousted Kashmiri Pandits, is a sorry comment on the dearth of democratic space available here.

Why would India be at all committed, morally or otherwise, to promises made to the Kashmiri people in 1947, 1950, 1953 and 1975 when it cannot trust the state with even the bare trappings of democratic governance? The only free and fair elections to that state were in 1977, results of which aroused a Valley–wide euphoria. This legally elected government was, yet again, cynically dismissed by the Centre. Going back even further, even the ‘Lion of Kashmir’, Sheikh Abdullah, was humiliated by his most trusted friend and India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Despite a personal commitment to the region, even Nehru could not overcome his suspicions about the Kashmiri Muslims’ allegiance to India.

How much of the suspicions that have only hardened over the last 50 years have to do with the fact that the avowedly secular Indian state, under both Congress and non–Congress governments, barely trusts the people of a sensitively located region basically because they are overwhelmingly Muslim?

A failure to confront this history has been reflected in the past and continuing conduct of both the government and our troops deployed in the Valley. What comes to mind is more than just the enormity of the human loss, tragedies that have gone un–mourned by the rest of India. The cynical disregard for both the local people and their beliefs can be particularly observed from the Indian state’s apparent equanimity despite the systematic destruction, since 1989, of over 16 revered local shrines dedicated to Rishis, symbolic of inherently Kashmiri, Sufi Islam.

The Amarnath yatra has become for all Indians — not just the pilgrims who dare to make it there — an annual test of our military control over the Valley. Television images of Hindu pilgrims braving the militants’ fire in defence of their faith are both soothing and reassuring. But when Charar–e–Sharif, a glorious, all–wood shrine en route to Yusmarg in the Valley was gutted, the Indian government did not even order an official enquiry. Folklore in the Valley, however, still revolves around the relationship between Sheikh Noor Adam and a Shaivite priestess, Rishi Laleshwari, though the bitterness against an unfeeling government simmers. 

Another 14th century shrine, Khanqah at Tral, 39 kilometers south of Srinagar, very dear to the local people apart from being a symbol of the Valley’s composite culture, was similarly gutted by a mysterious fire on December 18, 1997. The list of betrayals appears endless. There has been not even superficial effort at healing bitter wounds.
Whenever Pakistan’s foreign minister steps on Indian soil, the ‘dialogue’ will chart familiar territory. Both the Pakistanis and their Indian counterparts appear united in one resolve —  keeping the talks at a bilateral level, excluding any representative from the region, despite their lip–service to tripartite talks in the last two years. This will remain an in futility until the voices from the Valley as also Jammu and Ladhakh are heard over the gunfire.    

Archived from Communalism Combat, June 1999, Year 6  No. 54, Cover Story 4

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