Kashmir crisis: Open a fresh chapter in Jammu and Kashmir
Sunanda K Datta-Ray
ABROGATE Article 370 of the Constitution, flood Kashmir with settlers from all over the country, let them erect shoddy little places of worship at every street corner and jabber away only in Hindi, and all will be well in India that is Bharat! If that were so, Burhan Wani, the Hizbul Mujahideen commander killed in a police encounter, would not be revered as a national hero.
No one can object to the repatriation of the Kashmiri pandits who were cruelly thrown out of their homes and have been living in exile ever since. But tying this up with revocation of Article 370 of the Constitution will only further exacerbate a situation that might never have come about if it had not been for a succession of control freaks in the higher echelons of New Delhi's policy-making machinery.
Quite apart from the Kashmir crisis, India needs a relaxed dispensation that guarantees self-government at all levels. Wider application of Article 370 might realise Dr B.R. Ambedkar's vision of a Constitution that is unitary or federal depending on the needs and circumstances at any particular moment. It is especially essential at a time when rigidity in Srinagar is matched by rigidity in New Delhi, and religion seems to be replacing politics in both Kashmir and those parts of the rest of India that are directly influenced by the Centre's political philosophy.
The increasing violence in the name of cow protection culminating in the latest incident when a Mumbai auto-rickshaw driver tried to create a communal event out of a passenger's leather bag speaks of the spirit of bigotry that darkens the land. It is bound to find a resonance in a region that was already on the warpath. Rightly or wrongly, Kashmiri Muslims are gripped by the fear of demographic change that would erase their ethnic, cultural and religious identity. When the principal of the Delhi Public School in Srinagar dismissed a teacher for wearing a full abaya that included a face veil provoked not only student protests but also angry articles accusing the DPS of attacking Islam.
In theory, India has two choices. It can opt for a uniform state that erases all cultural variations or it can seek to strengthen the unity in diversity that was Jawaharlal Nehru's pride.
The former was the brutal way in which Russia – tsarist, Bolshevist and Communist — suppressed the Cossacks. It is China's prescription for Tibet where indigenous Buddhist institutions are being stamped out and Han settlement encouraged. Narendra Modi accuses Pakistan of behaving exactly like that in Balochistan and “Azad Kashmir”. It is not conduct befitting a mature democracy that respects ethical values and its own solemn commitments. Neither India's nor Indira Gandhi's prestige was enhanced when the government unilaterally and arbitrarily repudiated its constitutional obligations to the princes.
Ideals apart, there is a powerful practical objection to this course: it is not in the Indian character to behave like Russia or China or even Pakistan. We would not otherwise have restricted entry and settlement in the north-eastern states. Migrants from other parts of India and even Bangladesh might exploit loopholes to set up shop in Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh or Mizoram, but the law of the land still protects their sanctity. Indians just cannot constitute a hard state. Commenting on Acharya Vinoba Bhave's Bhoodan movement, Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew told me that in China a reformist leader would have cut off the heads of landlords, seized their lands and given them to whomsoever he wanted. He would not have tramped the country like a pilgrim begging for gifts of land. Any attempt to impose a rigorous dispensation here would be opposed, contradicted and watered down by the very authorities behind the move. In the outcome, India would attract the opprobrium of being dictatorial without any of the benefits associated with strong-arm methods.
The related subject of diffusion of power offers a case in point. In November 1993 Kerala's industries minister, P.K. Kunhalikutty, visited Singapore and after talks with trade and economic officials, announced that Kerala would be the first Indian state to station an official in Singapore “to woo investors throughout the ASEAN region.” New Delhi scotched the plan, fearing that commercial representation abroad could nurture ambitions of a political nature. Addressing the third India-ASEAN business summit in New Delhi eleven years later, Manmohan Singh, by then prime minister, approvingly quoted Sinnappa Arasaratnam, author of Maritime India in the Seventeenth Century, to recall that India profited from the autonomy enjoyed by littoral states “with little interference from groups that would not have understood the needs and demands of the predominant activity of commerce.” He argued that “mutually beneficial business links” between India's coastal states and South-east Asia would lend meaning to the Look East policy and “eventually give shape to the idea of an Asian Century”.
Despite this assurance, no Indian state has taken up the lead Kerala was forced to abandon. A jealous Centre makes out that international interaction is the exclusive prerogative of sovereignty. That is not so. Several Australian and Canadian states have long pursued their individual commercial stars in foreign capitals. Western Australia opened an office in Bombay some years ago. At the end of 2008 Governor Qin Guangrong of China's Yunnan province visited Calcutta on an aggressive trade and tourism mission directed at West Bengal to invite bilateral relations between Kunming and Calcutta. Nothing happened. When the Constitution was amended in 1967 to make secession illegal, V.R. Nedunchezhiyan, who acted briefly as Tamil Nadu's chief minister, commented contemptuously that “New Delhi must be very lacking in self-confidence to need such a law!” The DMK, which did not then abandon its demand for independence, has since been won over by more civilised methods. So can the rest of India if only we have a regime at the centre that believes in democratic self-government at all levels instead of continually parodying top-down colonial rule.
Even tiny Britain admits constitutional variety. The Isle of Man, which has been ruled at various times by the kings of Norway and Scotland, flaunts its own parliament and flag. The Channel Islands acknowledge the Queen as head of state but are not in the United Kingdom. The states of the United States of America have their own flags. In India, Jammu and Kashmir alone flies its own flag. It's one of the state's few remaining privileges that some want to snatch away under the pretext that the answer to all problems lies in a deadly uniformity. Abrogate Article 370 of the Constitution, flood Kashmir with settlers from all over the country, let them erect shoddy little places of worship at every street corner and jabber away only in Hindi, and all will be well in India that is Bharat!
If that were so, Burhan Wani, the Hizbul Mujahideen commander killed on July 8 in a police encounter, would not be revered as a national hero. Kashmiris are believed to be less devoted today to mere separatist politicians like Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq than to leaders who are thought to symbolise their distinctive identity. A massive military crackdown has not affected this. Nor will the repeal of Article 370. As with the DMK, it's time to try some other approach.
