Bharat Bhushan - Stuffing separatists in jail: A muscular Kashmir policy will fail

By Dilip - Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Yasin Malik’s life imprisonment in a ‘terror-funding’ case again displays the Narendra Modi government’s muscular Kashmir policy. Separatist leaders in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) are either locked up or dead. Following the downsizing of the erstwhile state, its mainstream political leaders are being pushed to the margins, and the dialogue with Pakistan on the Kashmir issue is at a standstill – as if the only remaining issue were the return of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. In short, the Modi government acts as if it has solved the Kashmir problem.

Today the funding of separatist leaders in J&K is being discussed as if it is something that only comes from across the border. Yet if the writings of retired intelligence officers are to be believed, separatist leaders in J&K have received funding from both the Indian as well as the Pakistani security establishment. Not only its officials but even prime ministers and cabinet ministers at the Centre have met them. Funding by the Indian establishment was to sustain potential political interlocutors, it was not to feed terrorism.

These complexities have been wiped out from the political discourse today. Perhaps the Modi government believes that it has already resolved the Kashmir issue and does not need to negotiate with any Kashmiri interlocutor who differs with its perspective. Its new roadmap relies on making legacy hurdles to the Kashmir issue disappear.

In this new political landscape, there is no space for the old terms of dialogue. To prevent them from resurfacing, old cases against the separatist leaders have been revived and they have been put on trial. If Malik’s sentencing is the precedent, then those arrested and charged are likely to be locked up for the better part of their lives. There is no question of allowing them to reform, as Malik attempted to do by embracing the path of non-violence.

Malik’s decision to not to contest the charges is not necessarily an admission of guilt. It could be read as a political statement. He is reported to have told the court that while he had given up violence, the State was intent on thrusting a gun in his hands once again to paint him black. Nevertheless, his role in killing four Indian Air Force Officers in 1990, and in the kidnapping of Rubaiya Sayeed by the JKLF in 1989, is widely speculated might earn him an execution in the first case. Cynical Kashmiris predict that judgment might be delivered at an electorally opportune time for the ruling establishment -- in late 2023 or early 2024.

While the JKLF is no longer a potent force, the prevailing sense among the Kashmiri people would be that Malik’s sentencing is yet another example of a “Hindu” State bent upon humiliating them. Doubts about the equality of all citizens before the law could well surface because while cases more than three decades old are being revived against separatists, Deputy Superintendent of Police Davinder Singh of the J&K Police is out on bail within 90-days of his arrest in a terror case. He was found ferrying two wanted Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists, one of them a known killer, in his car on the Jammu-Srinagar Highway.

The security establishment today can boast that its control over the Kashmir situation has never been better. The credibility of separatists has suffered with exposes about how they own hotels and malls. Apprehensive of violence, the people are fearful of street protests. Pro-India politicians fear for their lives. And militancy has become dispersed.

However, the security establishment’s record in J&K has been dismal. It tries to save face by announcing that every terrorist strike and killing has been promptly avenged within a couple of days. There is no way of verifying these official narratives. But more importantly, retaliatory killing of terrorists just brings the situation back to square one rather than moving towards a path of resolution. The Modi government fails to recognise that political problems demand political solutions.

Various governments at the Centre understood this in the past while engaging the Mizo, Naga, and other separatists in India’s northeast. The only time a military solution was used, in Punjab, it proved disastrous. The Modi government, however, continues to believe that political issues can be successfully tackled with a big stick. It is emboldened to persist with its ‘robust’ approach by the ebbing of international pressure on Kashmir. The US uses human rights issues cynically, targeting only selected regimes. Statements by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and Pakistan can be ignored or countered by junior Foreign Office bureaucrats.

The ground reality, however, is that neither the government nor any local leader controls militancy or the separatist sentiment. Not even Pakistan can deliver on Kashmiri grievances because its demands are limited to the settlement of borders, whereas the Kashmiri people seek restoration of their political rights. The prospect of a militancy that is no longer controlled by any institution or political leader ought to frighten policymakers in Delhi and Srinagar.

The votaries of a muscular policy in Delhi need to step back and ask themselves: Why have Israel’s “robust” security policy and creating Jewish “settlements” in the West Bank and Gaza not succeeded? A muscular policy closes all social and political safety valves. Discontent is bound to burst forth in a sealed pressure cooker on heat. Anything may trigger it. Tarek el-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire and became the catalyst for the Tunisian revolution and the wider Arab Spring.

The Kashmir issue can be settled within the flexibility inherent in the Indian Constitution. The Centre needs to convince the Kashmiri people that their democratic, social, and religious rights are safe within India by first restoring them and securing them Constitutionally. The Kashmiris must feel that they are a part of India and not being targeted as Muslims by a majoritarian government.

Delhi will never get to know who has the key to a political solution if anyone who disagrees with it has his integrity attacked or is threatened with jail.

https://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/stuffing-separatists-in-jail-a-muscular-kashmir-policy-will-fail-122053000142_1.html

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