Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 5, 2010
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/227122/UPA-is-moving-slyly-on-JK.html
The Government must end the doublespeak on
Jammu & Kashmir and inform the Indian people if there is a covert understanding,
under American aegis, to unravel the northern State bit by bit and surreptitiously
cede it to Pakistan. A leading national daily on Saturday reported a 'strong'
Indian reaction to Syed Mehdi Shah, newly elected 'first Chief Minister' of
Gilgit-Baltistan, calling it the "fifth province" of Pakistan.
An embarrassed External Affairs Ministry rushed
to declare: "The entire state of Jammu & Kashmir is an integral part
of India by virtue of its accession to India in 1947. Any action to alter
the status of any part of the territory under the illegal occupation of Pakistan
has no legal basis, and is completely unacceptable."
Doubts about New Delhi's true intentions,
however, arise because of the persistent mishandling of the State's integration
with India. First, Jawaharlal Nehru was manipulated by Louis Mountbatten into
taking the Pakistan invasion to the United Nations and preventing the Indian
Army from recovering the captured territories. The UN called for plebiscite
and then sent Sir Owen Dixon to 'suggest' de facto partition of the State,
with India keeping Hindu areas of Jammu and Buddhist Ladakh, while Pakistan
kept the captured Northern Areas and Occupied Kashmir, and further received
Muslim-dominant Doda, Poonch and Rajouri districts of Jammu! The proposed
plebiscite was confined to Kashmir Valley, and north of Chenab declared the
'new' international border. As there was no way that Nehru could sell this
proposal to his own Cabinet, it died a natural death.
Yet Nehru, like the Bourbons, forgot nothing
and learnt nothing. For reasons that defy cogent analysis, the Maharaja's
Accession was not treated as final, at par with the accession by other princes.
The Hindu king of a critical State was treated like a pariah, and a dangerous
concept of 'Muslim precedence' granted to this Muslim-majority region, laying
the foundations for the erosion of India's civilisational ethos in the critical
Himalayan frontier, and subsequently across the land. Special status was granted
to Sheikh Abdullah and his Muslim Conference, who drove the nascent Republic
crazy with their shifting stands on every negotiated issue. Article 370 is
the enduring legacy of that poor exercise in statesmanship.
After the UN fiasco, New Delhi stoically maintained
that the entire State of Jammu & Kashmir was an inalienable part of India.
But it was Mrs Indira Gandhi who substantially eroded Article 370 by extending
several critical Central laws to Jammu & Kashmir via an accord with Sheikh
Abdullah in 1975. Logically, we should have moved inexorably in the direction
of its ultimate demise, but separatists and militants were nurtured by vested
interests and the rest is history.
What still needs explanation is the BJP's
decision to downplay the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus from the Valley
in the winter of 1989, and later, the decision of Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee to call Gen Pervez Musharraf for a summit at Agra in 2001 to discuss
the Kashmir issue. Since then, a variety of ill-conceived unofficial and official
dialogues, including 'quiet talks' with separatists in quest of a 'unique
solution', have further compromised the Indian position on Kashmir, with myriad
State politicians flexing their muscles and demanding autonomy, pre-1953 status,
self-rule, even independence.
In these circumstances, it comes as no surprise
that Gilgit-Baltistan's first Chief Minister should claim that the recent
November elections in the region meant it was a separate province (of Pakistan)
and had "no connection to Kashmir". These elections were held on
the basis of the Pakistan Cabinet's Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and Self
Governance Order, 2009, which aimed to formally integrate the Northern Areas
into the Islamic Republic. The Northern Areas are strategically vital owing
to their proximity to Afghanistan and China. Pakistan occupied and isolated
them in 1947, treating Gilgit, Baltistan, Hunza and Nagar as a separate administrative
unit.
Now, Mr Mehdi Shah's statement suggests that
Islamabad is moving to formalise the status quo and turn Gilgit-Baltistan
into a province of Pakistan. New Delhi must realise this means Islamabad will
no longer support the fiction of 'self-determination' for the people of Jammu
& Kashmir; all 'diplomacy' will involve de facto or de jure surrender
of Indian territory.
It will be interesting to see how Kashmiri
leaders react to this development. Yasin Malik of the Jammu & Kashmir
Liberation Front had called the Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and Self Governance
Order, 2009 "an arrow that has been shot into the hearts of Kashmiris."
He lamented that Pakistan had reneged its promise to consult all stakeholders
before taking any decision. Even the Jamaat-e-Islami which favours Kashmir
merging with Pakistan, and Syed Salahuddin of the United Jehad Council had
opposed piece-meal solution of the Kashmir issue.
It is pertinent that only Mirwaiz Umar Farooq,
chairman, All Parties Hurriyat Conference, with whom Union Home Minister P
Chidambaram is engaged in 'quiet talks,' supported Pakistan's political-administrative
package for Gilgit-Baltistan, saying it met long-standing local aspirations.
Mirwaiz was in recent months allowed by the Centre to visit Washington, London,
and The Organisation of Islamic Conference, and appears to be in the loop
on the emerging Western-Pakistan synergy to dismember India from the north,
formally augment Pakistan for the Afghanistan war, while furthering western
strategic objectives in the region.
By succumbing to American pressure to treat
Jammu & Kashmir as an extra-national concern, by selecting an arbitrary
set of 'stake-holders', the UPA has seriously compromised the national interest,
national sovereignty, and national security. Interestingly, though both Mr
Vajpayee and Mr Manmohan Singh headed coalition regimes, the lead-partner
in both coalitions, the BJP and the Congress respectively, was responsible
for dilution of the national position on Kashmir. Both must now be called
to give an account of their conduct.
It is pertinent that Indian intelligence and
diplomatic sources would have known about the November election in Gilgit-Baltistan,
but Indian public opinion was kept carefully in the dark. Why, in six decades,
has Indian intelligence failed to build 'human resources' in a region badly
treated by Pakistan; to sponsor a party that could have come to power?
Were it not for Mr Mehdi Shah's political
taunt, New Delhi would have continued to preside over moves to balkanise India
via Jammu & Kashmir. Islamabad's next step will be to grant official Pakistani
citizenship to the people of Gilgit-Baltistan. Is South Block ready for that?