Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: October 31, 2010
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/293463/Let's-stop-pandering-to-bleeding-hearts.html
If some media reports are to be believed,
the Government has sent out a message to the three-member team of interlocutors
for Jammu & Kashmir to be more circumspect in their public pronouncements.
Maybe this sage advice will have some impact. But, unfortunately, first impressions
tend to be more enduring than others. The team whose composition invited scepticism
and even ridicule may find that the spate of controversies it generated during
its first trip to the Kashmir Valley has cost it the legitimacy it so desperately
craved for.
With a Parliament session due immediately
after the visit of US President Barack Obama, it may become necessary for
the UPA Government to discreetly wash its hands of the team - without, of
course, admitting any such thing. On paper, the three interlocutors will remain
occupied and it is entirely possible that three Ambassador cars, three peons
and a generous travel budget will also be kept aside for their use. Politically,
however, the appointment of the three-member panel looks like becoming another
still-born initiative. They may yet produce a report but few are likely to
treat it seriously.
To blame Dileep Padgaonkar or, for that matter,
Radha Kumar, for the mess is tempting. Both set themselves up as soft targets
by (perhaps unwittingly) conveying the impression that their job was to solve
a problem that has been festering for six decades. Padgaonkar didn't say anything
original by alluding to a Pakistan dimension of any lasting solution. However,
it was the tone of self-importance and the boast of "no red lines"
that contributed to the furore. Likewise, Kumar's purported comment about
amending the Constitution to accommodate azadi was seen to be politically
presumptuous.
It speaks volumes for the Government's non-application
of mind and its flawed judgement that a political initiative should have been
outsourced to a group of well-meaning free thinkers. The people of Jammu &
Kashmir can't be faulted for believing that the whole thing smacks of insincerity
and amateurishness.
It would not have mattered if the clumsy garrulousness
of the interlocutors had just been treated as an amusing aside and something
to keep the talk-show hosts of TV channels occupied. It could then have been
seen with about as much seriousness as the contrived SPG 'displeasure' over
Rahul Gandhi travelling in the second class bogey of a train. Unfortunately,
the indiscretions of the interlocutors conveyed one dispiriting message: That
there was something fundamentally illegitimate about the present status of
Jammu & Kashmir and India's collective handling of it.
Beginning with Sonia Gandhi's appeal to recognise
the "legitimate aspirations" of the stone-throwers and culminating
in Arundhati Roy's strident deification of secessionism, there are grounds
for believing that Liberal India is being overwhelmed by a streak of capitulation.
Padgaonkar has apparently asked students in
Srinagar to prepare a precise, time-driven roadmap for azadi which he hopes
to discuss at his next visit. For India's sake I hope that he is restrained
from negotiating the modalities of azadi with impressionable minds and giving
them the impression that what has hitherto been a slogan is actually a realisable
political project. Likewise, I am fearful of the constitutional changes Kumar
contemplates to accommodate azadi. The only one I can imagine is an amendment
notifying the non-applicability of the Constitution to Jammu & Kashmir.
Willy-nilly, Kumar has conveyed the message that the "legitimate aspirations"
of the State cannot be accommodated within the Constitution, as it exists
today.
These are worrying signs that become even
more worrisome if we explore the specifics of the 'autonomy' that is at present
enjoyed by Jammu & Kashmir. The meaning of Article 370, according special
status to Jammu & Kashmir, has a direct bearing on the distribution of
power between the Centre and the State.
For the rest of India, there is a Central
List, a State List and a Concurrent List that is tilted in favour of the Centre.
For J&K, there is a Central list that covers defence, foreign affairs,
currency and communications. After 1953, the Constitution also extended the
jurisdiction of the Election Commission and the Supreme Court to the State.
That is it. All other powers are enjoyed by
the State Government. And, in the case of J&K, there is no Concurrent
List. The State Government has the right to make its own laws, subject to
the ratification of the President.
What modifications to the Constitution are
the interlocutors seeking? The withdrawal of the Supreme Court and Election
Commission? A separate currency for Jammu & Kashmir? The complete withdrawal
of Indian forces from the Line of Control? Should India share sovereignty
over Jammu & Kashmir with Pakistan, as Mehbooba Mufti's PDP has often
argued?
Are these the constitutional changes the interlocutors
or, for that matter, the Congress president, think is desirable? Arundhati
Roy is at least honest: She wants India's azadi from Jammu & Kashmir and
vice-versa. The others are being wilfully disingenuous: The azadi imagined
by the 'Go-India-Go brigade' can't be accommodated within India as we know
it.
The Government must play with a straight bat.
After the visit of the all-party parliamentary delegation to Jammu & Kashmir,
it was agreed that the Government must clearly define what is not negotiable
(the accession of State to the Indian Union) and what needs to be urgently
addressed (overbearing policing and human rights violations). By attempting
to pander to bleeding hearts whose stake in India is negotiable and seasonal,
it has extended the crisis of liberalism into a crisis of the state.
