Having said that, we need to also spell out the corollary of
that point – that there is nothing the international community,
including the United Nations, can do to resolve the problem. Only India
and Pakistan can do so through direct negotiations.
So, Jammu &
Kashmir does constitute an important aspect of our relationship with
Pakistan. Though not officially articulated, the Indian solution to the
problem has been a partition of the state along the existing Line of
Control. Pakistan’s stand varies – there was a time when it said that
J&K ought to be part of Pakistan, then, it began to say that all
they wanted was the right of self-determination for the people of the
state. But their actions in the parts of the state they occupy indicates
that the goal remains the assimilation of the state into the Islamic
Republic of Pakistan.
Islamabad now knows that there is nothing it can do to wrest
the state from Indian hands by force. It has tried war twice, and
continues to fight a covert war for the past quarter century using
jihadi proxies and backing Kashmiri separatists.
Conflict
But getting Pakistan to end the conflict has been a
difficult task, because Kashmir means many things to them. At one level,
it is a cause that unites everyone in that country – the jihadis, the
army and the civilian elite. At another, it provides it a means to
maintain a hostile posture towards India, something necessary for its
current sense of national identity.
Remarkably, the two countries achieved a measure of
convergence towards a solution in the period 2004-08. Worked in a
back-channel, the idea was to work towards a special status of the
state, without altering the current boundaries as set by the 1972 Line
of Control. The idea was to encourage cross-LoC trade and eventually
human movement and provide for a measure of joint management in
governance.
The Indian perspective was that the state’s river waters are
already committed to Pakistan under the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960,
so, having Pakistan involved in watershed management would not be such
an affront to Indian sovereignty. Likewise, there could be areas like
tourism which the two sides could work out together. However, and
contrary to claims on the Pakistan side, there were no commitments made
on joint governance or political management. That is because a vast gulf
separates the basic outlook of the Indian and Pakistani political
systems.
The two sides did manage to open up the LoC to enable trade
and persons to move back and forth. But beyond that the project came
unstuck. The regime of Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani dictator under
whose regime the agreements were made to be imploded. The successor
government of Asif Ali Zardari lacked the clout with the army to push on
with the project.
It is important to understand the Indian strategic
perspective on the issue. The key agreements announced through the
January 4, 2004 joint statement between India and Pakistan, came on the
sidelines of the summit of the South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation (SAARC).
Concessions
It was at this SAARC meeting where the now eight-member
organisation decided that they would like to create a South Asian Free
Trade Area by 2014. A common free trade area would also see the opening
up of the region to the movement of people and a degree of coordination
on governance issues relating to areas of common concern like river
waters, watershed management, flood control and so on.
In the long term, greater economic integration would lead
to political integration as well. So, the Indian perspective on
resolving the Kashmir issue rested on its being embedded in the SAARC
process. India and Pakistan may find it difficult to make concessions,
but they could possibly do so in a multilateral framework of SAARC.
Ceasefire
Today, the process is going nowhere. The initiatives of the
2004-2007 period have come to a halt. A key element in these
developments was the ceasefire along the LoC called by Musharraf in
November 2003 and agreed to by Prime Minister Vajpayee. Today, as the
ceasefire frays, so does the process that once held so much promise.
There are the important issues relating to the state and
the union. When India became independent, it got the accession of most
of the princely states with the promise of controlling only defence,
foreign affairs, communications and currency. However, these states were
reorganised and the commitments on autonomy abandoned. In the case of
J&K, the problem has yet to be resolved. There is no doubt the
original intention was to have a flexible system which would lead to
J&K being like any other state of the union. However, domestic
politics and foreign policy issues have prevented this from happening.
Mail Today October 16, 2014
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