Osama Killing and South Asian Geopolitics

STATECRAFT BY HAPPYMON JACOB

One of the questions that seems to be puzzling strategic pundits around the world is regarding the nature of planning that has gone into the recent killing of Osama Bin Laden in Abottabad by the US Special Forces. Was it a unilateral American operation or was the top brass of the Pakistani Army/ISI aware of operation ‘Geronimo’? Those who argue that the Pakistanis had prior information about the operation and that they had given their consent to the operation believe that the Pakistani establishment indeed gave up one of their strategic assets as he was found to be no more useful to Pakistan’s long-term interests in Afghanistan as well as for Pak-US relations. Moreover, if Pakistan’s Afghan grand strategy is indeed becoming successful with the blessings of the Americans – exemplified by the impending re-induction of ‘moderate Taliban’ elements into the Afghan establishment and the manner in which Americans are increasingly giving into the Pakistani plan for a post-American Afghanistan – it suits the Pakistanis fine, just as it does the Americans, to get rid of Osama Bin Laden, the face of international terrorism today. Recall that one of the major reasons why the Americans started becoming uncomfortable with the Taliban regime in the first place was the asylum given to Bin Laden by the then Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Hence ‘moderate Taliban’ minus the al Qaeda influence is something that the Pakistanis have been aggressively supporting and the Americans increasingly accepting.

However, on the other hand, if the killing of Bin Laden was done by the US without consulting the Pakistani establishment, we in India should be very worried. Going by the reports that the Pakistanis, learning about the midnight attack in Abottabad, scrambled their fighter jets to prepare for counter-attacks, if necessary, we have no option but to believe that it would have crossed the minds of the Pakistani military leaders, even if briefly, that the Indians were behind the surprise attack. For the two geographically adjacent nuclear-capable enemies whose nuclear weapons are largely meant for targets in each other’s territory with hardly any jointly agreed upon nuclear risk reduction measures in place, a surprise attack on one of the countries, so close to the national capital, by a third country could potentially trigger a dangerous nuclear stand-off between them. Moreover, Pakistan does not have a no-first-use policy of nuclear weapons which simply means that Pakistan could, doctrinally speaking, respond to a conventional attack with nuclear weapons. Isn’t it strange that, in spite of being in ‘close strategic alliance’ with both India and Pakistan, the United States of America did not bother to inform either of the countries about operation ‘Geronimo’ in advance even as it has obvious nuclear implications for the South Asian region?

In fact, even if we assume that the Americans had not informed the Pakistani establishment about the operation in Abottabad, Bin Laden’s death nonetheless suits the Pakistani grand Strategy for Afghanistan, i.e., ‘moderate Taliban’ elements, closely allied with Pakistan, in power in Afghanistan without the undesirable influence of al Qaeda and Bin Laden. The Bin Laden killing will certainly have domestic consequences within Pakistan, as is already being witnessed, and the country will be pushed to a corner by the international community, but in the longer run, Pakistan will surely be placed right in the middle of the American/Western strategy for Afghanistan and the country will be in the driving seat as far as the internal affairs of Afghanistan is concerned.

What does it mean for Indo-Pak relations?

Even though the killing of Bin Laden itself may not have much of an impact on Indo-Pak relations, it would have to be seen in the larger context of the evolving Afghan geopolitics and its implications for the region. Now that New Delhi has revived the dialogue process with Islamabad, Indian strategists should focus on employing a multi-pronged, multi-faceted and differentiated strategy to engage with the Pakistani state. Considering the fact that today’s Pakistani state is a deeply divided one, there is all the more reason to develop creative strategies to engage the multiple actors and power centres within Pakistan rather than waiting for elite and social cohesion to take root there. Hence one hopes that the recent denial by New Delhi that it was in secret negotiations with the Pakistan army in the recent past was nothing but a ‘politically correct’ statement. Why not engage the Pakistan army? Today’s Pakistan is not a typical state, in the modern Westphalian sense of the term, and dealing with an atypical state requires the use of non-traditional diplomatic and strategic initiatives as well as out-of-the-box strategic imagination.

Adopting such a strategy, India should now push for resolving the outstanding conflicts that it has with Pakistan. This is perhaps the most opportune time to strike deals with Pakistan on Kashmir and other issues. Post-Osama, Islamabad’s focus will be on the Afghan border and the endgame in Kabul and will therefore be willing to reduce tensions with India and is likely to agree to less-then-perfect solutions to the conflicts that it has with India. Moreover, with the international community unwilling to accept any more excuses from Pakistan on terrorism, India should push for the resolution of Kashmir and other Indo-Pak conflicts.

Now that the Pakistani focus is on the Afghan endgame, New Delhi should make it clear to Pakistan that it has no direct strategic interests in Afghanistan. Afghanistan may be considered as part of India’s strategically important extended neighbourhood by the Indian strategists and may indeed be significant for us given the manner in which the erstwhile Taliban regime had helped Pakistani designs against India. And yet, Indian gains will be indubitably limited and genuine Indian interests will be severely harmed if India follows a course of competitive relationship with Pakistan in Afghanistan.

(Source: Greater Kashmir, May 17, 2011, URL: http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/2011/May/17/osama-killing-and-south-asian-geopolitics-11.asp )

New Delhi’s Kashmir Interlocutors

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I have been postponing this column on the Kashmir interlocutors appointed by the Government of India for a long time because I wanted to do it once their report is finalized and made available to the general public (also I did not want my ‘cynicism’ to color anyone’s understanding of the issue or obstruct the interlocutors’ work). However, I am going to write about it now for two important reasons: 1) I am puzzled by the feverish high-pitch marketing campaign and the gate-crashing tactics adopted by the interlocutors in Srinagar, and 2) even if their report contains radical ‘recommendations’ to the government of India to resolve the Kashmir conflict, I am increasingly convinced that it is unlikely to create an impact on the conflict per se.

The selection, appointment, and the functioning of the interlocutors are deeply flawed, and inaction and inertia, in all probability, await the group’s recommendations to the government of India. More so, the fundamental logic underlying the formation of this group seems to be that ‘we need a document to be put together by a group of ‘experts’ which can clearly spell out a political solution for the conflict in Kashmir’. This logic is misplaced because we neither need such a document nor do we need a group of experts to tell us and the government in New Delhi as to what should be the solution to the Kashmir conflict: the fact is that we already know what the solution should be and there are enough documents which have in great detail explained what should be the solution. It is not yet another document that we need to finally resolve the Kashmir conflict, but an honorable political process of reconciliation between Kashmir and New Delhi.

Under the supervision of MoH

The Kashmiri separatists, moderates and hardliners alike, made it clear right from the beginning that they would not talk to a low-profile, low-powered team of ‘academic experts’ (no, I don’t use the word ‘academic’ in a derogatory manner!) who are tasked with (merely) ‘suggesting’ ways to ‘resolve the Kashmir conflict’. Why, the separatists asked, would they want to talk to a group of academics/researchers/journalists who would be submitting a report to the Ministry of Home which many Kashmiris see as part of the problem in the first place? That they did not enjoy any decision-making power and that they could only act as the handmaiden to the MoH became amply clear when the Home Minister publically instructed them not to ‘give ball-to-ball commentary’ on their activities to the media.

Indeed, the appointment of this group of interlocutors is a clever move by the MoH because by setting up this group to be functioning under its guidance, which, under ideal circumstances, should be sitting in judgment of whatever the MoH has done in Kashmir for many years, the MoH has managed to assume a moral high ground. If New Delhi’s security forces and the MoH themselves are in the dock when it comes to the Kashmir problem, how can they sit in judgment of the activities of the group of interlocutors let alone bring about a genuine process of truth-finding and reconciliation? The very fact that the MoH has the power to reprimand the group shows that it controls the group and its activities, it can finally decide what to do with their report and that the group lacks the power to point fingers at its own source of origin.

Feverish marketing campaign

Once in Kashmir, the interlocutors claimed that they will not go after the separatists if the latter did not want to meet them and yet the current spate of feverish marketing campaign and the aggressive pursuit of separatists by the interlocutors are painfully demeaning for the very meaning of peacemaking. The one separatist they managed to poach from the dissident camp, Moulana Abbas Ansari, has been ousted from the Hurriyat and while the separatists publicly denounce the interlocutors, the mainstream parties are willing to say in private conversations that they are talking to the interlocutors only due to the pressure exerted on them by the MoH: this is making a mockery of the concept of peacemaking.

Flawed performance

Apart from conducting occasional visits to the state, holding press-conferences and star-studded seminars, and occasional poaching of minor, disgruntled, elements from the dissident camp, what have the interlocutors done? Forget about their ability to bring about an honorable solution to the Kashmir issue, have they at least been able to create a momentum for peace in Kashmir? Not really. Apart from the chiding they are subjected to by Chidambaram from time to time, the interlocutors have also been complicating the issues in the state with their own utterances. For instance, they have been mixing up political problems and governance issues. The group has been dialoguing with people from all parts of the state including Jammu and has said that its suggestions will also give importance to ‘problems faced by all parts of the state’. But the fact is that the political nature of the problem is limited to the Kashmir valley and expanding this problem to the rest of the state is not the best thing to do. Of course, the other parts of the state have their own problems of infrastructure, governance etc. But that is not the ‘Kashmir problem’ which is clearly political in nature. The interlocutors also said during a recent seminar that the security forces are also among the major stakeholders in the Kashmir conflict. How can the security forces be a major stakeholder in the Kashmir conflict?

Life beyond recommendations

Going by the history of the various New Delhi-Srinagar talks and reports generated by official and non-official groups in the past, including the theme-based working groups set up by the Prime Minister of India and the autonomy proposal of the NC, it is unlikely that New Delhi will take the suggestions of the three-member interlocutors seriously. As I wrote in one of my earlier columns even if one were to argue that the interlocutors would end up giving a good set of recommendations to New Delhi in order to politically address and resolve the Kashmir issue, the trouble is that since the separatists are not part of the process they are unlikely to accept them for fear of being considered irrelevant in the resolution of the Kashmir conflict. How can we expect the separatists to accept the recommendations of a group that was not given their legitimacy and blessings in the first place? That would go on to prove that the separatists are irrelevant and dispensable in Kashmir politics.

More so, with the peace-loving Manmohan singh under heavy opposition fire from multiple corruption charges, the UPA government is more likely to go back to its time-tested political position: political status-quoism. The right-wing BJP, with its new-found advantage over the government, is unlikely to let the government do anything radical on Kashmir.

In my opinion, therefore, this group appointed by New Delhi, whose members are widely recognized as learned people, should not be called interlocutors but members of a ‘Kashmir study group’ (copyright to Farooq Katwari’s KSG) at best.

(Source: Greater Kashmir, April 24, 2011. URL: http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/2011/Apr/24/new-delhi-s-kashmir-interlocutors-2.asp )

In the name of national interest

STATECRAFT BY HAPPYMON JACOB

‘National interest’ has the ability to mobilize national resources and national imagination in pursuit of the goals of a nation; it can also be the last resort of the ruling class to hoodwink the people. Hundreds of unnecessary wars have been fought, unholy alliances have been forged, human rights have been violated, oppositions have been silenced and numerous indefensible acts have been committed and then successfully defended - all in the name of national interest. Invocation of national interest has been one of the most potent weapons of statecraft and a convenient holy cow used by politicians, bureaucrats, national elites and just about anyone who wants to prioritize a particular interest over the others at a given point of time, often serving anything but the interest of the nation. What is interesting is that while national interest is invoked as if it is an objective category by those who propose it, its contents almost always belong to the subjective realm. It is this essential contradiction inherent in ‘national interest’ that also lends it the quality to be misused by the ruling elites: if something is open to interpretation by the ruling elites which can also be used as a tool to demand loyalty and silence opposition, is that not the most dangerous political weapon that anyone can possess?

Resorting to claims of national interest usually leads to depoliticisation of issues leading to their instant securitization. While politicization of issues engenders participatory public spheres generating debates on relevant issues, when these issues are securitized, there will be a lack of such discussions in the public sphere. And when issues are securitized and defined in the language of national interest, they are not only depoliticized and often readily accepted by the people but also forms the bedrock of assumptions which will then classify what is right and wrong, good for the country or bad, patriotic acts or unpatriotic ones etc. Once these sets of bedrock ‘national interest’ assumptions become, thus, part of the larger social consciousness, it becomes difficult, at times, even for the ruling elites to change it, when they want to introduce newer national interests. Don’t we often hear things like “the government wants to talk peace with Pakistan, but it is concerned about the potential negative reactions from the people”, or “the government wants to adopt a give-and-take policy with the Chinese to resolve their border conflict, but it is unsure of it acceptance domestically” etc.? This happens because when contents of national interest are securitized they tend to assume fixed meanings and when confronted with the challenge of change at a later date, there will be a great deal of resistance. And yet, national interest and its securitization are often co-existent.

That is where the importance of politicization (used here not in a narrow sense of the term that we often see) of national interest and the debates over differing conceptions of national interests in the public sphere become extremely important. The ruling elites will always have the tendency to silence the opposition by invoking the holy cow called national interest, but a political community should always resist such attempts and force the ruling elites to engender debates on what national interest entails like Anna Hazare did recently with regard to the Lok Pal Bill.

National interest and the Kashmir question

A pertinent case in point here is the history of relations between J&K and New Delhi. Successive regimes in New Delhi rigged elections in J&K, time and again, jailed many Kashmiri leaders, installed puppet regimes in Srinagar, floated all sorts of political and other outfits in the state in order to outwit the existing ones only to float newer ones to outsmart the ones floated earlier, violated human rights of Kashmiris, and killed hundreds of people in cold blood - all in the name of “national interest”. New Delhi and the Congress party in particular, believed, perhaps even ‘genuinely’, that given the history of Jammu and Kashmir and its proximity to Pakistan, it had to keep a tab on the political activities there and even try and manipulate it so that Kashmir remains with India. But then, even genuine criminality is not absolvable.

Hence Sheikh Abdullah was imprisoned for years together, Bakshi Ghulam Muhammed was appointed in his place in 1953 who was only too keen to obey New Delhi’s diktats to dilute all the important provisions of Article 370 by accepting the many Presidential and Constitutional Orders New Delhi issued thereafter to that effect. The 1975 Beg-Parthasarathy Accord was signed promising the restoration of Article 370 but a certain interpretation of ‘national interest’ by New Delhi prevented that from happening. The Farooq Abdullah government was dismissed by New Delhi in 1984 for organizing the opposition conclave in Srinagar because the Congress party thought that ‘national interest’ was not being served by Abdullah’s romance with the opposition – an instance where democracy was seen by the ruling elites in clear opposition to national interest. The Congress though found Abdullah in line with national interest when he gave up on the opposition parties and joined hands with the Congress. More importantly, the national interest of the nation was ‘supremely’ served when the two sides signed the ‘Rajive-Farooq Accord’ and thereafter went on to shamelessly rig the 1987 Assembly elections…!!

What is tragic is that the security forces, policemen, election officials and others who rigged the elections at various points of time in Kashmir seemed to believe that they were doing the right thing and were therefore serving the national interest. Through the 1990s, then, hundreds of Kashmiris were incarcerated, tortured and killed and the human rights of thousands more were violated, again in the name of national interest. The public opinion in India, for the most part, was, amazingly so, willing to buy these claims of national interest conveniently framed by the Congress leadership and New Delhi’s ruling class. Even today, what is unthinkable and seen as reprehensible in other parts of the country, and I am not merely talking about rigging of elections, are seen perfectly fine in J&K – in the name of national interest. Much of what is happening in Kashmir today is the result of this narrow, biased, partisan and imprudent understanding of national interest.

(Source: GreaterKashmir, April 10, 2010. URL: http://greaterkashmir.com/news/2011/Apr/10/in-the-name-of-national-interest-2.asp )

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In the name of national interest

Impressions from a recent Kashmir visit

STATECRAFT BY HAPPYMON JACOB

Every time I come back to New Delhi after a visit to Kashmir I feel that that I have gone through yet another experience of being through something that I do not consider to be a normal state of affairs. Every day of a politically conscious visitor’s life in the city of Srinagar reminds him of a story of political betrayals, layers of economic ruin and stagnation, simplicity of campus romanticism, and above all the moral dilemma of trying to be neutral about a political plot horribly mis-scripted by India, Pakistan and the Kashmiri leadership. As an analyst, I should maintain my neutrality and yet in my inability to do so I am comforted by Dante Alighieri’s famous saying: “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.” Hence, as the title reads, the following thoughts are impressionistic, biased, and, often, inconsistent and I am not apologetic about them being so.

In search of a less than perfect solution: There seems to be a growing stream of thinking across the board in Kashmir that Kashmirs need to focus on a practical, achievable and less-than-perfect solution to the decades-long conflict there. This is not something that you get only while talking to the mainstream politicians who would, of course, talk about various middle-of-the-road solutions, but is also something that the separatists are expressing more explicitly than ever. That the overall development of the state, education of the Kashmiri children, and the dreams of Kashmir’s youngsters cannot continue to remain hostage to the conflict in and on Kashmir conflict is something that is now widely recognized and appreciated. At the theoretical level, there are indeed many absolutist positions which, it so seems, will moderate themselves on a dialogue table premised on the possibility of an honorable settlement for all parties involved in the conflict.

Pakistan’s place in the valley: Pakistan is a long-forgotten dream in contemporary Kashmir’s political discourse and social imagination. It is now widely understood that the claims regarding the Pakistani nation being the final resting place for Kashmiri national aspirations are not to be taken seriously or should indeed be actively dissuaded. There are many reasons for this: the constitutional uncertainty faced by Northern Areas, the place of POK (AJK) in the Pakistani body-politic, Pakistan’s failure to portray itself as a model Islamic state for others, its ‘descent into chaos’ and the general lack of identification of the Kashmiris with Pakistan. Even those who once had sympathies for Pakistan are now taking a relook at own their views because Kashmirs have certainly learnt the thump rule applicable, perhaps, in all conflict regions: there is a need to constantly redefine one’s strategies and modus operandi in the light of the new geopolitical contexts and the larger goals one is pursuing.

Interlocutors: Another issue on which there seems to be a general agreement is that the much-hyped work of the interlocutors may, after all, pass off as a non-event in Kashmir. While the mainstream politicians do not say it openly, those on the separatist side do not have any hesitation is clearly saying so. One of the widely held arguments against the Padgaonkar-led group of interlocutors is that the Kashmir conflict is a political one and it cannot be resolved by journalists and academics: there needs to be, in other words, a high-level political process led by leading Indian politicians who can make decisions and not merely make suggestions which may or may not be accepted by the multi-layered and complex bureaucratic establishment in New Delhi. Even if one were to argue that the interlocutors would end up giving a good set of recommendations to New Delhi in order to politically address and resolve the Kashmir issue, the trouble is that since the separatists are not part of the process they are unlikely to accept them however enlightened or encouraging the recommendations may be for fear of being considered irrelevant in the resolution of the Kashmir conflict. In other words, this is a non-starter. More so, with the peace-loving Manmohan singh under heavy opposition fire from multiple corruption charges, the UPA government is more likely to go back to its time-tested political position: political status-quoism. The right-wing BJP, with its new-found advantage over the government, is unlikely to let the government to do anything radical on Kashmir.

Where is the Indian Civil Society? While some Kashmiris express an emotional rupture with the Indian nation, there are others who are sympathetic to the Indian nation and its many dilemmas and yet ask a very significant question: where was the Indian civil society when over hundred young Kashmiris lost their lives by the bullets of the security forces? Barring a few voices condemning and reacting to the loss of lives, many Kashmiris point out, most members of the Indian civil society, who would lose no time in condemning any injustice done in other parts of the country, were not vocal, forceful and empathetic enough in reacting to the killings in Kashmir. Isn’t it ironical that when the gun-culture was more prominent in the valley during the 1990s there were more committed civil society reactions from the rest of India, and now, when the gun-culture is on the wane in the valley, there are not many in the country who seem to care about Kashmir?

Generational Shift: There is a new generation that is taking over the legacy of the conflict in Kashmir and they are serious about creating a new set of narratives about the conflict. While the older generation, increasingly considered by the youngsters as having not done much for the Kashmir cause, had a more romanticized idea of azadi and were also emotional and temperamental in their brand of politics, the new generation not only shows a certain sense of emotional moderation when it comes to articulating the Kashmir cause. There is more clarity and theoretical finesse about their arguments and they are intent on making rational, logical and political arguments rather than engaging in a shouting match. This generational shift also tends to historicize and contextualize the Kashmir conflict even as the new generation pitches its national claims in neatly formulated conceptual categories.

New Delhi’s invisible hand: Everyone in Kashmir is consciously or unconsciously aware of the role of the invisible hand of New Delhi in managing the affairs of the state. Nothing happens in Kashmir, be it electoral results, appointment of the Chief Minister or of the local level officials, or who should be paid how much, without the knowledge of the all-powerful middlemen (another term for the Intelligence agents) of New Delhi in the state. It is not the political establishments in Srinagar or New Delhi that micromanage the affairs of the state but the ‘Intelligence walas’ who often act on their own to fit the reality on the ground to their pet theories.

Dilemmas of the moderates: As I wrote in my last column, the Kashmiri moderates are in an existential dilemma even as the future of Kashmir and the direction of its conflict lie, in a major way, in their hands. As one of them pointed out to me, they are fighting India’s battle in Kashmir for the sake of moderation and sanity and, in a sense, against complete independence of Kashmir from the rest of India. And yet when New Delhi does not deliver on its promises after holding sustained dialogues with them, it makes the moderates feel apologetic and ashamed of what they do. By making them look apologetic and as ‘bought over by New Delhi’ before their own people, New Delhi is only strengthening the hands of hawks like Geelani.

(Source: 20 MARCH 2011, Greater Kashmir. URL: http://greaterkashmir.com/news/2011/Mar/20/impressions-from-a-recent-kashmir-visit-2.asp )

The difficulty of being a Kashmiri separatist

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Contrary to popular understanding, being a separatist in contemporary Kashmir, which I argue is a far more moderate position today in comparison to being an Independenist, is not an easy political choice to make and to sustain in the longer run. While separatism is the self-embraced political position of a number of political actors in Kashmir, ‘soft-separatism’ is the term used by many nationalist political pundits to dub those whose politics falls midway between extreme positions. Let’s do some terminological clarification first. Within Jammu and Kashmir, political stances and opinions range from ‘independinist’ or ‘extreme separatism’ to ‘extreme pro-Indian nationalism’. Between these two extremes we do have a midway approach. On one side of it lies ‘soft-separatism’ and on the other is ‘soft-nationalism’. While extreme separatism often manifests itself in ‘Independenist’, cultural-chauvinist, and anti-India positions, extreme pro-Indian nationalism, on the other hand, is characterized by exclusivist, chauvinist, pulp-patriotic jingoism. Traditionally, a separatist almost always took extreme political positions. However, I argue that not all separatists believe in exclusivist and partisan politics. Some of them, who, for the sake of terminological clarification, can be called ‘neo-separatists’, tend to make moderate political arguments even as they guard against the attempts to uniformise and standardize. In other words, the traditional political battle-lines are increasingly being redrawn in contemporary Kashmir and hence ‘separatism’ has newer meanings and implications today. While traditional separatism argued for being ‘separate’ from the mainstream, the ‘neo-separatists’ are calling for a new brand of separatist politics in the valley.

Answer to questions such as ‘who is a separatist?’ and ‘what are the various shades of separatism’ depend on one’s definition of separatism and his/her attitude towards it. Personalities ranging from Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq to Academician Amitabh Mattoo have often been called a separatist. While calling Mirwaiz a separatist may not arouse anyone’s curiosity, calling Mattoo as a separatist surely has an agenda behind it. Those elements in Jammu who espouse ‘extreme pro-Indian nationalism’ dubbed Mattoo a Kashmir separatist for his liberal views on Kashmir and human rights. What they did not realize was that being ‘pro-Kashmir’ need not be in opposition to being ‘pro-India’.

People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is often accused of being a ‘soft-separatist’ party ever since the party has come out with a ‘self-rule’ formula for the resolution of the Kashmir issue which argues for the creation of cross-border institutions and eventual economic union of the two sides (Pakistani and Indian) of Jammu and Kashmir. This, the extreme pro-Indian nationalists argue, is nothing but separatism. PDP has refuted this saying that ‘Genuine Kashmiri aspirations are dismissed as separatist’. Since the PDP is dubbed as ‘soft-separatist’, the party has to often bend over backwards to explain its political positions. I do not want to call PDP a neo-separatist party but wish to merely highlight that it does share some of the characteristics of a neo-separatist political party. Similarly, People’s Conference Chief Sajad Lone is often dismissed as pro-India by the extremists in the separatist camp and he is often seen struggling to argue that “fighting elections is a change of strategy not ideology”. This is precisely my point: being a moderate in today’s Kashmir is extremely difficult because many of us have not understood the new meanings of separatism in the Valley.

The difficulty of being a (neo-)separatist
Far from being an opportunist, a Kashmiri (neo-)separatist, to my mind, is someone whose politics is to be seen as a mature and enlightened response to an ever-changing Kashmir politics. It is not an easy position to take because those who take the middle path have always been accused of being without conviction. But then what is the use of conviction in politics if the content of conviction does not keep pace with changing social and political realities? Is that not another term for obscurantism?

That said, being (neo-)separatist becomes difficult for any political actor primarily because it needs to constantly avoid the political extremes – of being an independenist or extreme (pro-Indian) nationalist. It will have to disagree both with the BJP when it wants to forcibly hoist the flag in Lal Chawk on Republic Day and with the other extreme when they justify the hoisting of the Pakistani flag there. This also makes the separatist vulnerable to continuous onslaught from the extremes. One reason, apart from all the other equally competing ones, why the Congress chose National Conference (NC) over PDP as the coalition partner after the last State Assembly elections in the state was this: sidelining of the (neo-)separatists. This can, potentially, create a situation in which the (neo-)separatist always fears being an outcast.

Separatists may also find it hard to garner enough popular legitimacy and support. The separatists will have to fiercely fight for political space and are likely to be incapable of gaining much of it because political extremes are popularly considered to be more honorable and attractive than political moderation, especially in conflict situations. J&K is no exception. The independenists perhaps are more uneasy with PDP and Sajad Lone than with the NC and the Congress since the latter do not encroach into their traditional space. The mainstreamers will try to isolate and denigrate the (neo-)separatists because that keeps their space uncontested and undivided. For me, this, at least partly, explains the defeat of Lone in the last Parliamentary elections.

Eschatologically speaking, in situations where politics of attrition rules the roost, as is the case in Kashmir, (neo-)separatists may not be the ultimate winners. Politics of attrition sees no end to uncertainty that is all around. Where everyone is fighting everyone and waiting for the end (resolution of conflicts), when the end actually arrives whosoever remains will be the winner; it may not matter what principles one stood for. Political extremes, given the extreme definitiveness of political positions inherent in them, are the likely winners of a politics of attrition.

(Source: Greater Kashmir, March 6, 2011. URL: http://greaterkashmir.com/news/2011/Mar/6/the-difficulty-of-being-a-kashmiri-separatist-13.asp )