Author: Arvind Lavakare
Publication: Rediff
on Net
Date: June 6, 2000
Out, damned spot! Out,
I say!" That famous angst of Lady Macbeth's mind infested with King Duncan's
blood on her hands could well describe Bharat Mata's plight at the cancer
of Kashmir, our just cause for which was murdered by her darling son, named
Jawaharlal Nehru.
Nearly 53 years after
Jammu & Kashmir was legally acceded to us by that princely state's
maharaja, the Indian nation is yet far away from being cleansed of the
1947 rape of the Valley by marauders from Pakistan. Truly, is there in
Kashmir 'the smell of blood still'?
Kashmir, for us, has
been much like bleeding piles -- caused by bad early habits and recurring
despite balms or drugs or even surgery. If Kashmir still festers, it is
because of the politics of arrogance and politics of surrealism; it is
because of our total failure to realise that most of democratic politics,
which is not rooted in arrogance, is simple economics and dissemination
of authentic information to the public at large.
It is now a historical
fact that our Kashmir wound was self-inflicted by the arrogance of Nehru
and his dream of being hailed as the torchbearer of international peace
after the horrors of World War II. Just a few days more was all that the
Indian Army needed to drive out the last Pakistani raider from Kashmir.
But succumbing to the ego-massaging wiles of governor-general Lord Mountbatten
(and to the charms of Lady Edwina, perhaps), Nehru took the Kashmir issue
to the United Nations Security Council in the last days of 1947.
There is no easily available
record to show that the home minister had approved this momentous decision
by the country's prime minister, leave alone his Council of Ministers.
Again, there is no record to show whether Nehru subsequently agreed to
the UN's plan of a plebiscite in Kashmir after consulting his Cabinet.
Worst was Nehru's consent to the UN's diabolical proposal in March 1951
that any action of the proposed J&K Constituent Assembly to determine
the future shape and affiliation of the State would not obstruct the result
of the UN plebiscite from becoming operative [Resolution 91 (1951) submitted
by the United Kingdom and the United States and adopted by the Security
Council on March 30, 1951].
As it transpired, the
J&K Constituent Assembly, formed in October 1951, gave the State its
own Constitution (in November 1956) wherein it was declared, without subject
to any amendment in the future, that "The State of Jammu & Kashmir
is, and shall be, an integral part of the Union of India" (Section 3).
However, Nehru and his Congress made no effort to reverse the UN's evil
exercise that had shut out the decision of a Constituent Assembly democratically
elected on the basis of universal adult franchise.
What happened in those
disastrous years was verily a classic example of Nehru acting out the French
monarch's boast of L'etat, c'est moi (I am the State). And if, for various
reasons, the UN's plebiscite proposal finally didn't become a reality,
it was, in retrospect, sheer manna for India's case on Kashmir still being
alive.
Today's journalists of
ours who simply pounce on the government even for perceived wrong-doings
(including such trifles as transfer of bureaucrats) must ponder over Nehru's
gross abuse of power in those formative years of free India before they
write any more adulatory profiles of the man who is the original sinner
in the traumatic Kashmir chaos we have inherited.
Even after that god-sent
reprieve over the plebiscite, Nehru, his Congress party, the Opposition
and the press -- none of them quite understood that politics is essentially
economics except for those vote-bank parasites that prey on the sentiments
and naivete of the electorate.
While socialism and public
sector enterprises became the order of the day in the rest of India, Nehru
continued to believe that Kashmiriyat (whatever it means) was more important
than creation of wealth quickly and efficiently. Result: Sheikh Abdullah
and his successors continued to live off Delhi's largesse while lording
over J&K dependent on primitive agriculture, seasonal tourism, traditional
handicrafts, and with a Constitution that has prevented non-Kashmiris (and
Kashmiris married to non-Kashmiris) from owning immovable property in the
State, though it is a fundamental right in the Indian Constitution.
The situation was compounded
by the perverse perpetuation of 'the temporary' Article 370 of the Constitution
that precludes any Indian parliamentary law from being applied to J&K
unless first approved by the J&K Assembly. Results: (a) Entrepreneurs
from outside J&K could not set up businesses or factories there. (b)
The people of J&K lay cocooned in the belief that they had a unique
identity different from the millions in the rest of India as well as the
divine right to be forever treated preferentially without any responsibility
towards maintaining the unity, integrity and prosperity of the Indian nation.
Tragically, removal of
that legal, and major, impediment to J&K's economic growth has been
looked upon as a 'communal' act by all our fraudulent 'secular' politicians
who are still innocent babes when it comes to corporate enterprise. The
elite press has aided and abetted this ignorance because it wears jaundiced
glasses that sees the saffron ghost everywhere. It has only spread panic
among its readers.
Hence, all that we have
seen these 50 years as the solution to the Kashmir problem are the so-called
political solutions. Thus, the recent spurt of debates with subjects varying
from total autonomy to the State, or its division into separate districts/states
on geographical lines, self-determination on communal basis to separation
from Pak-occupied Kashmir with the Line of Control as the international
boundary, setting up of an independent entity governed by India, Pakistan,
etc. The only economic solution one hears of is a separate Kashmir package,
of more doles and more lollipops that will allow the J&K chief minister
to play more golf and misgovern even more.
If all such ideas and
discussions have left the commoner as a helpless spectator, the main culprit
has been every successive government in Delhi. All these governments, from
Nehru down to Vajpayee, have never told the nation the entire story of
Kashmir -- from its accession, the resolution on plebiscite to the State's
own Constitution, from Pakistan's evil designs to the State's hopeless
economy. They have never told us about the frustrated unemployed youths,
the socially backward women who merrily rear children that largely refuse
to continue in primary school.
The general ignorance
all round about Kashmir is typified by the fact that as late as May 31
this year, a Pakistani journalist asked Jaswant Singh the question that
lurks in the mind of many a by-line journalist of India as well. He asked
why India was not honouring the 1949 UN resolutions on J&K. Our external
affairs minister is reported to have shot back, saying under those resolutions
Pakistan had to vacate its troops from all parts of the State, including
Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Now, now, when did you last hear an Indian foreign
minister pronounce that truth?
The reason why such abysmal
ignorance about J&K prevails amongst Indians and Pakistanis, amongst
Hurriyat and Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front leaders, amongst foreign
governments and journalists everywhere, is that no government in Delhi
has till now realised how critical dissemination of information is to opinion
formation on political issues.
The most telling condemnation
of governmental failure on this aspect of Kashmir lies in the Kargil Review
Committee Report. In para 14.24 of the report, the committee records that
"there is no single, comprehensive official publication containing details
of the Kashmir question, UN resolutions and why they could not be implemented,
as well as of more recent developments in Kashmir, through the years of
proxy war, terrorism and ethnic cleansing together with Pakistan's involvement
in all of these". The committee then goes on to say that "the government
must review its information policy and develop structures and processes
to keep the public informed on vital national issues".
It is only when the entire,
true story of Kashmir (including Article 370 and the state's socio-economic
status) is professionally published (along with a crisp summary) in all
18 official languages of India for liberal distribution to (a) everyone
in the Indian media and (b) all 186 member countries of the UN General
Assembly -- it is only then that we will make the first real move towards
getting rid of 'that damned spot' from our national life.
Unless and until such
a publication is brought out, we will probably continue to be stuck with
Lady Macbeth's lament that 'all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten
this little hand' of Kashmir.
