Kashmir: The doctrine of 'Big Stick' is unravelling. By Bharat Bhushan
For four and half
years, the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K)
was run by the doctrine of quelling all dissent and excluding talks with Pakistan to
resolve the Kashmir issue till it gave up the use of terrorism
against India. Suddenly the so-called “state doctrine” is unravelling.
Emanating from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), its central instrument was
using the big stick to deal with volatile public sentiment in Kashmir. A sudden rip in the
“state doctrine” is indicated by the unexpected visit of an international
peacenik from Norway to meet the separatist leaders in the state.
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Unless it was under
international pressure, it is difficult to explain why Delhi facilitated the
visit of former Norwegian Prime Minister, Kjell Magne Bondevik to Srinagar and
allowed him to meet with Kashmiri separatist leaders. Bondevik heads the Oslo Center which works in the field of conflict
resolution. After Srinagar, Bondevik also met with Kashmiri political leaders
in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. This should have normally
raised red-flags in Delhi which is opposed to “third party interference” in the
Kashmir situation. Silence from the Ministry of External Affairs and from the PMO,
suggests the government’s cooperation at best, or utter helplessness, at worst.
Bondevik claims that
his visit was facilitated by Art of Living founder, Sri Sri Ravishankar. The godman had tried to organise
a Kashmir initiative earlier called “Paigam-e-Mohabbat” in Srinagar. However
he had to beat a hasty retreat after people said that they had been tricked
into attending the event with promises of free cricket bats, sewing-machines
and loan write-offs!
The US-based Carter
Center is one of the international partners of Bondevik’s Oslo Centre.
Wikileaks revelations have shown that Norwegian negotiators mediating in the
Tamil conflict in Sri
Lanka worked in close cooperation with the Americans. The Carter Center is also interested in resolving
international conflicts. That may not be enough to conclude that Bondevik’s
Kashmir-initiative was at the behest of the Americans. However it is quite
possible that that the Americans are seeking Islamabad’s cooperation in getting
the Taliban to the US-sponsored negotiating table but as a
quid pro quo Pakistan wants Washington to provide relief in Kashmir.
Direct US mediation in Kashmir would be unacceptable to India, but Prime Minister Narendra
Modi could perhaps accept a ‘neutral’ visit by a Norwegian peacenik
especially if it were routed through a friendly godman.
Whatever Bondevik’s
motivations, he has effectively drawn the attention of the international
community to the ongoing conflict between the Indian state and the people of
Kashmir. The statements
of J&K Governor Satya
Pal Malik also suggest that Delhi may be losing control over the
Kashmir narrative. He justified his dissolution of the J&K
Assembly claiming that he “overruled” the option of installing Sajjad
Lone of Peoples’ Conference as the next Chief Minister. Lone was being
promoted by none other than Ram Madhav, Bharatiya Janata Party’s general secretary
in-charge of J&K, who hoped to install a government with the help of
defectors. “Had I looked to Delhi, I would have had to install a government led
by Lone, and history would have remembered me as a dishonest man,” Governor
Malik declared publicly.
It is unclear what
Governor Malik meant by “looking towards Delhi” – the forces represented
by Ram Madhav or the PMO? If the plans of Ram Madhav, and
derivatively that of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh(RSS), had succeeded, there
would have been an uproar in the Valley, in Pakistan and the international
community would have taken notice of the mockery of democracy in J&K. The
PMO may not have wanted to provoke unwelcome international attention. In any
case, the joint bid for governance by the PDP, National Conference and
the Congress and the failure of the Raj Bhavan in Srinagar and
the PMO in Delhi to foresee their move, seems to have left the Lone centered
strategy unworkable.
India’s Kashmir policy
is also intricately linked to its Pakistan policy. The deliberate heating up of
the Line of Control by targeting its military posts across the border to punish
it for promoting terrorism in J&K, was pioneered by the Modi
government. It fed into the narrative of no engagement with Pakistan.
This part of using the Big Stick has also come unstuck. Pakistan’s foreign
minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s has said that Imran
Khan threw a googly at India with the offer of opening the Kartarpur
Sahib Corridor for Sikh pilgrims. Unable to spurn an offer linked to sentiments
of millions of Sikhs in the country, the Modi regime was forced to scale down
its policy of no-engagement to one of limited contact. Outmanoeuvred, Prime Minister Modi went overboard comparing the
opening of the corridor to the fall of the Berlin Wall. He was compelled to
send two of his ministers to the ground-breaking ceremony in Pakistan. This was
barely a few days after his government described an attack on innocent
Nirankaris at a prayer meeting in Amritsar as being “Pakistan inspired” act of
terrorism.
The public relations
fallout has been unfavourable for India. Pakistan’s Prime Minsiter Imran
Khan got a platform in Kartarpur Sahib to upbraid India for refusing
to discuss the Kashmir issue. This was followed by Foreign Minister Shah
Mahmood Qureshi’s announcement that the next Kashmir Day would be celebrated in
London to attract the attention of the international community to the
continuing violence in the Kashmir
valley.This also has to be seen against the European Parliament’s decision
to hold a hearing on human rights violations in J&K on 23 January 2019.
The state’s narrative
about controlling Kashmir through use of superior force does not seem to be
working any longer. Whether it is Prime Minister Modi or someone else who assumes power
in India after the general election in May 2019, it may not be possible
to continue the Big Stick policy in J&K without the world raising alarm
over the raised levels of violence. The high pitched justification for violence
and lack of political dialogue in the name of ‘state doctrine’ may well have to
be dialled down.
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