Victimhood porn: Kashmir panel report compounds Nehru’s folly

In chess, it is said that when you are in a position to win against your opponent, it’s advisable to sit on your hands – so as to avoid making a wrong move that fritters away your tactical advantage. Far too many defeats have been snatched from the jaws of victory by overenthusiastic but precipitate action in anticipation of imminent triumph. That bit of advice would perhaps have well served the three-member Group of Interlocutors for Jammu and Kashmir, appointed by the Union Home Ministry in October 2010, which recently submitted its final report on ‘A New Compact with the People of Jammu and Kashmir’. Their report – an expansive 179-page document ( available here) – and the recommendations contained therein would, if implemented faithfully, effectively end up compounding India’s failed policies in the troubled State – and fritter away the gains that have been made in more recent times in securing peace in Kashmir against formidable odds and Pakistani-sponsored terror. At its core, the committee, made up of Dileep Padgaonkar, Radha Kumar and MM Ansari, channels (and endorses) the view that for the State’s “distinctive status” as enshrined in Article 370 of the Constitution must be upheld – and that any “erosion” of that status must be reversed. [caption id=“attachment_323525” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The people of the State have themselves moved on from the sense of ‘victimhood’ – and are embracing opportunities elsewhere. It’s a wonder that the interlocutors, for all their well-intended sentiment, are stuck in the long-ago past. Danish Ishmail/Reuters”]  [/caption] More specifically, the report recommends that the word ‘Temporary’ be deleted from the heading of Article 370 and elsewhere in the Constitution. This would have the effect of rendering permanent a provision that Jawaharhal Nehru negotiated with Sheikh Abdullah (the then ‘Prime Minister of J&K’). Nehru himself envisaged that Article 370 – and the “special status” for Kashmir — would over time be eroded, but he failed to foresee how an entrenchment of this sort could be hard to give up on. Equally controversially, the report calls for the establishment of a Constitutional Committee to review all the Central Acts and Articles of the Indian Constitution that have been extended to the State since 1952. This is a regressive, backward-looking recommendation that looks to turn the clock back in unrealistic fashion. Kashmir’s problems, of course, owe much to Pakistani mischief over the decades. But in equal measure, it is the emphasis of a ‘separate’ identity for Kashmir that stands in the way of the political and cultural assimilation of the State into the rest of India even all these decades after its accession into the Union. Although the committee’s recommendations to enhance the State’s socio-economic status do have much merit, its recommendations for a “political settlement” and a “New Compact” draw rather more from a misplaced sense of “victimhood”. “The political settlement we propose takes into full account the deep sense of victimhood prevalent in the Kashmir Valley,” the report notes.” It surely deserves to be addressed with great sensitivity.” Part of this problem arises from the fact that the committee was set up in October 2010, at a time when the situation in Kashmir was highly inflamed. Some 100 young people had been killed in clashes with the police following a summer of protests. Public anger in the State was then at its heights, and that sense of “victimhood” was widely prevalent. So on the first of their many visits to the State, the interlocutors perhaps experienced first-hand this widespread resentment. Yet, as they themselves acknowledge, the security situation in the State has improved vastly since then. That’s true of India’s policy over a larger time-frame, as well. It started off on the wrong note when, right after independence, India, under Nehru, was ensnared in Pakistan’s trap of “internationalising” the Kashmir dispute, and invited UN intervention to hold a plebiscite to determine the State’s political future. It subsequently had to beat back Pakistan in three wars – and bore the brunt of Pakistan’s venomous support for jihadi terrorism in Kashmir and elsewhere in India. And although India – and particularly Kashmiris – have paid an enormous price over these 60-plus years of Pakistani mischief, and although Indian policy in the troubled State may have fuelled a sense of alienation, recent times have witnessed a dramatic change in the situation on the ground in Kashmir in a way that works to the advantage of India, and particularly the bruised people of Kashmir. Media accounts of Kashmir being “happy” may overstate the case somewhat, but a curious confluence of geopolitical and geoeconomic circumstances has enhanced the prospects for peace in the State. Indicatively, the death toll from terrorism (and counter-terrorism) in the Valley has come down sharply in recent years. And although conditions for the return of Kashmiri Pandits to the State, from where they had been hounded out, aren’t propitious just yet, the abatement of violence gives hope that that dream may be realised some day. For one, Pakistan’s policy of breeding jihadi snakes and letting them loose in the Kashmiri garden has backfired on itself. Although India-hating jihadi terrorists continue to secure sanctuary on Pakistani soil, the heat that has been turned on Pakistan in the context of the global war on jihadi terror emanating from Pakistan has scorched it. Ironically, the jihadi terror groups that Pakistan had spawned to wage proxy war on India (and Afghanistan) have turned on their masters. This has contributed to a change in the popular sentiment in Kashmir. Secessionists who once pined for Kashmir to become a part of Pakistan – based on nothing more than a bigoted religious identity that overrode the refined Kashmiriyat identity of the people – have now lost their faith in their Pakistani patron. The azaadi dream, as Firstpost had noted ( here ), is dying a slow death. Today, if anything, former militants who had sneaked across the border into Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir to secure terrorism training in Pakistani camps, are now disillusioned by their azaadi dream, and want to return to Kashmir and reintegrate. The Pakistani economy is now tottering; in Kashmir, by contrast, relative peace in recent months has revived the tourism industry and enhance livelihood options. In other ways too, Kashmiris who travel to other parts of India are making good as traders or in the services industry. That’s precisely the kind of gradual integration with the rest of Indian economy and polity that would do Kashmir – and Kashmiris – a world of good. But it is precisely what the report of the three interlocutors looks to negate by emphasising the sense of ‘victimhood’ in the State — and turning the clock back by rendering permanent the sense of ‘otherness’ perpetuated by Article 370 and other such provisions. Kashmir’s prospects – and those of its people – will be vastly enhanced by greater and speedier economic and political integration with the rest of India. The people of the State have themselves moved on from the sense of ‘victimhood’ – and are embracing opportunities elsewhere. It’s a wonder that the interlocutors, for all their well-intended sentiment, are stuck in the long-ago past.