UPA’s Kashmir Debacles

UPA’s Kashmir Debacles

Where lies the hope for Kashmir?

STATECRAFT BY HAPPYMON JACOB

United Progressive Alliance’s (UPA) Kashmir policy has been a miserable failure, to say the least. That the Prime Minister did not even visit Kashmir during his recent visit to J&K is indicative of the fact that the government headed by him does not have anything to say and offer for the Kashmiris, let alone making a bold initiative in resolving the Kashmir issue. Indeed, UPA’s foreign policy in general has been a litany of failures; but then that is a different matter altogether. So the failure of its Pakistan policy and J&K policy (the latter is of course not a foreign policy issue, but certainly not a mere internal issue: it is an internal issue with foreign policy implications) should not come as a rude shock to anyone. There is an unfortunate consistency in the failures of the UPA regime. Given my political inclinations, I hate to say that the rightist BJP had a more sensible, flexible and goal-oriented policy towards Kashmir as well as to Pakistan. But then that’s the truth and one has to admit it. It was A B Vajpayee who set the peace process going between the two countries, and again it was he who struck a cord with the people of Kashmir in April 2003 after having conducted a historic free and fair election in J&K, something the Congress party could not manage to do. The UPA government is merely following the policy initiated by the NDA government, and has not made any success even in mere follow-up action. Let’s take stock. What has the UPA government achieved on Kashmir and Indo-Pak relations? The Prime Minister’s speeches at various places have been laden with a lot of rhetoric and promises, but that was about it. He spoke about making borders irrelevant; what did his government do to achieve that? He spoke about connectivity, trade and people-to-people cooperation; what steps were taken by his government to make it a reality? The government has not even been able to make the Srinagar-Muzzaffarabad road more people-friendly. What has happened to the working group reports? The government has indeed realized the fact that its Kashmir policy has been a flop show and that it can’t deliver on its promises. In sum, UPA’s Kashmir policy was a lot of “sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Many in Delhi, both officials and others, say that the UPA’s Kashmir policy has been an utter failure and that this is the end of the road for it on Kashmir. The next government, perhaps, can do more about it, they add. Let’s take the recent visit of the Prime Minister to J&K. First of all, what was the purpose of this two-day visit to the state which is perceived to be ill-conceived, ill-planned and bereft of any vision? No significant statements, no semblance of any vision for conflict resolution, nor were there anything that one would expect from a Prime Minister. More importantly, by avoiding the whole of Kashmir province from his itinerary the government has managed to push the political process on Kashmir to the backburner. This apparent lack of confidence and statesmanship shown by the PM would send wrong signals to all initiatives for peace in the state. While the Kashmiris did not benefit out of PM’s visit to the state, who did? Going by reactions from Jammu, a lot of people in Jammu are not very happy about the fact that the PM made a visit to the state only to show some kindness to the Kashmiri Pandits, a gesture that would not benefit anyone else in the Jammu region. Displaced families from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and West Pakistan were offered 50 crores by the PM and this gesture was immediately termed as a cruel joke by many observers as what they had been asking for was much more than this pittance. Does the Congress Chief Minister of the state gain from the PM visit barely months before the state goes to elections? Unlikely. How does the Chief Minister gain from a high profile visit which is perceived to have benefited no one but have only managed to infuriate people in Srinagar and Jammu at the same time? Ironically, prior to his recent visit to the state the people and opposition politicians were convinced that the Central government only makes promises but does not deliver on its promises, now they are convinced that the central government has even run out of promises! So what holds for the future? Have we lost all that we have achieved on Kashmir so far? That the central government lacks vision for Kashmir is bad news, but the good news is that the progress made on Kashmir and Indo-Pak relations is likely to remain intact. The willingness to admit that there is an issue in Kashmir, that Kahsmiris have to be brought to the negotiating table, that the future of Kashmir lies in making it a bridge between India and Pakistan, that the local politics in J&K cannot and should not be remote-controlled from New Delhi are, if I may say so, the achievements we have made so far. Practical steps may not have been taken to make these achievements more concrete thanks to bureaucratic cussedness and vision deficit, but the achievements won’t be lost. The most important sign of this emerging and progressive discourse on Kashmir is that if somebody said five years ago that the Pakistani currency should be accepted in Kashmir and that the militants from PAK should be given free passage to come back home and live respectful lives here, he or she would be termed anti-national and brought to task by the establishment: today, partners in the government in J&K are saying the same thing with confidence and conviction. Therein lies hope for Kashmir.

(Source: Greater KAshmir, April 30, 2008. URL: http://www.greaterkashmir.com/full_story.asp?Date=30_4_2008&ItemID=24&cat=11 )