NEW YORK, 25 May 2004 — Parallel paths to a Kashmir resolution are under way. First, Pakistan and India have placed Kashmir on a negotiating agenda. The president of Pakistan has agreed to set aside the UN Security Council resolutions as long as the wishes of the Kashmiri people are the touchstone. The former prime minister of India, Vajpayee has acknowledged that the Constitution of India might be bent to accommodate a fair resolution of Kashmir. He is on recorded to have said that the resolution of Kashmir conflict could be within the parameters of Insaniat (humanity). His successor, Dr. Manmohan Singh of the Congress Party, seems likely to pursue Vajpayee’s opening with even greater vigor.
The talks between the government of India and the Kashmiri leadership need to be all inclusive. Besides, Hurriyet (A), leaders like Syed Ali Geelani, Mohammad Yasin Malik, Shabir Ahmed Shah, Sheikh Abdul Aziz and even Hizbul Mujahedeen need to be included in the peace process. The process has to be defined to be for the final resolution of the Kashmir conflict.
Complementing the India-Pakistan, India-Kashmir tracks are international pressures for a Kashmiri settlement. The United States, the United Nations, and most of the world eagerly hope for a resolution as a pivotal step towards non-proliferation in South Asia.
At this guardedly propitious time, the role of Kashmiri leadership is pivotal and its responsibilities are correspondingly great. Leaders are essential to political change and direction. An acephalous collection of people, no matter how well intended, have never achieved anything politically significant. Leaders have invariably been in the vanguard to lead and to guide. In other words, Kashmiri leaders cannot blithely assume that progress toward self-determination will come spontaneously from the people without their advice, example, and sacrifices. Kashmiri leaders cannot be summer soldiers or sunshine patriots. History will hold them accountable for success or failure.
Their responsibilities are manifold. First is to teach and practice the adage that if we do not hang together, we will all hang separately. Kashmiri leaders thus must subordinate individual quests for political power, prominence, and other gain to the common good of all Kashmiris.
In addition, what matters is not who obtains public credit for success, but that success is achieved. Petty jealousies have no place among Kashmir’s leadership circle. All should accept unreluctantly personal sacrifices necessitated by the urgency of the Kashmir issue. Emulation by the Kashmiri people will follow, and generate the dynamics indispensable for the inevitably arduous struggle for self-determination.
The North Star for Kashmiri leaders must be the feasible, not the utopian. The world is unsentimental. On the international stage, might is customarily more powerful than right. National interests ordinarily trump intellectual consistency, international law, and professed universal standards of justice. But there are exceptions, such as East Timor or Namibia. Moral suasion occasionally exhibits teeth. Kashmiri leaders must be skillful in orchestrating the complex array of cynical and high-minded motives of nations to achieve a symphony playing the lofty theme of self-determination for Kashmiris. Such orchestration will be more an art than a science, and will require sleepless labors and lucubrations to succeed. It is not a task for the indolent or dull.
In approaching a Kashmir resolution, Kashmir’s leadership should not sacrifice the good on the altar of the perfect. The leadership should display flexibility in methods for honoring the wishes of the Kashmiri people. Pragmatism should also be displayed with regard to procedures and mechanisms for honoring the fundamental rights of minorities and weaker segments of our society. The sole non-negotiable issue should be respecting the consensus of the people of Kashmir with whom sovereignty resides. In sum, charity, statesmanship, self-effacement, perseverance, and prescience should be earmarks of the Kashmiri leadership. A standard must be set to which the wise and honest may repair. We must neither stumble nor waver in the task of attaining self-determination for millions groaning under repression and grim privation.
— Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai is executive director of the Kashmir American Council. He can be reached at [email protected]
