JEDDAH, 27 November 2004 — In a highly readable book of essays on great moments in Indian journalism (“Breaking the Big Story,” edited by B.G. Verghese, 2003), Kashmiri journalist Muzamil Jaleel writes of the circumstances surrounding the assassination of Mirwaiz Muhammad Farooq, the chief imam of Srinagar’s Jamia Mosque, on May 21, 1990. “Little mystery was attached to the identity of the killers. Even their purpose was bared in street gossip. (But) the truth remains a secret that is well kept even by his own family. His young son, who succeeded him as the Kashmir Valley’s mirwaiz, or preacher, prefers silence. Both the mirwaiz and the powerful separatist conglomerate the All-Party Hurriyat Conference, founded soon after his father’s assassination, publicly talk of a conspiracy and hold the Indian intelligence agencies accountable. But privately everybody acknowledges that he was killed by ‘our own people’. They might not name any names, but if you stop a 12-year-old in downtown Srinagar, he will tell you who did it without stopping to think for a moment. Nevertheless, the assassinated mirwaiz became Shaheed-e-Millat (martyr of the nation) and is buried in the Bihesht-e-Shohdayi Kashmir, the biggest martyrs graveyard in Srinagar, alongside his assassin. And, ironically, both the mirwaiz and his assassin remain undisputed martyrs of Kashmir’s separatist movement.”
The 90s were a turbulent period in the history of India and Pakistan, and Kashmir was one of many problems plaguing the two countries. Cries of “azadi” (freedom) frequently rent the streets of Srinagar. The Taleban were making swift gains in the heartland of Afghanistan, and this had a powerful impact on the way all sides came to regard the Kashmir issue. The centrist Congress Party had lost power and the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party was making great strides toward capturing power in Delhi: Kashmir was to remain at the top of the party’s agenda, just after Ayodhya.
The rise in militancy across the border only strengthened the militants in India, and shrill propaganda came from politicians in both countries. The establishment on both sides of the Line of Control tended to believe that the issue could be settled by force — and so the Hindu fundamentalists decided to flex the nuclear muscle and Pakistan responded in kind. Their nuclear tests in 1998 isolated the two countries and internationalized the Kashmir issue, something that India had fervently hoped to avoid. But the nuclear tests proved fatal for India which lost the strategic conventional advantage it once had over Pakistan.
Crucially, however, this led to a realization among policymakers in India that war was no solution to the Kashmir problem. The increased role the United States played in cooling tempers in the aftermath of an attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001 further underscored the fact that the world community was not prepared to stand by and watch a showdown between the nuclear neighbors. With war no longer an option except for the most desperate hard-liners, political opinion on both sides matured.
This was best articulated by former Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who sensed the desire for peace in both countries and seized the initiative by normalizing relations. He was helped in great measure by Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. In turn this opened floodgates of good will between the peoples of the two countries — to the point where even a hawk such as L.K. Advani was seen to confabulate with the Hurriyat Conference leaders, a thing that would have been almost impossible to imagine in 1990s.
India is a major power in the region, and any solution to the Kashmir issue will have to be hammered out without injuring its pride. It has acknowledged that this is a dispute requiring a solution, not least because the country’s emergence as a solid economic power depends on it. India has the potential, and it has the economic policies in place, to become a giant economic powerhouse. But it cannot do so if it remains perpetually at war.
Kashmir, like Ayodhya, has been part of the political discourse in India for so long that we can barely remember a time when it was not. Our foreign policy has been held hostage to this one problem — with the result that we have been unable to focus on anything else. A viable solution acceptable to all three parties will go a long way toward making India what pundits have long tipped it to become but what its politicians have signally failed to achieve: A rival to China as an economic powerhouse.
If India prospers, Pakistan will too. But that means laying the ghosts of partition to rest — and what is the Kashmir problem but a colonial leftover? It has been more than 50 years since the British left and the Subcontinent was split. That is a long time to realize what is wrong. Look at Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and China. While India and Pakistan focused all their energies on war plans, those countries found the time to make full use of globalization and improve the lives of their citizens. No matter what one may think of their political systems, they have, to a large extent, emerged triumphant from the rubble of their colonial past.
The will is there on both sides to solve the Kashmir issue, and to solve it once and for all but it needs to be done quickly.
Then the focus could shift at last to where it should have been all along: The economic resurgence of both India and Pakistan. As Muzammil Jaleel points out, there is no longer any need to take refuge in ambiguity.
