From demand to dialogue

The cult of violence in Jammu and Kashmir could be gradually supplanted by a genuine culture of politics if a dialogue, framed by realistic and liberal rules of engagement, is initiated in the State with the autonomy demand as the starting point .

IN the days following the Union Cabinet's brusque rejection of the demand for autonomy in Jammu and Kashmir, two events - each resonant with associations to Kashmir's modern history - served to bring about some hope of reconciliation between Centre and State. The death of Begum Akbar Jahan, widow of Sheikh Abdullah, the State's most important leader in modern times, and mother of Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, brought together State and Central leaders in a mood of shared sorrow. And an important poli tical anniversary provided a platform for State leaders to reaffirm their undiminished commitment to autonomy and express renewed faith that the prospect was not remote.

The working committee of the ruling National Conference (N.C.) began to discuss all the options before it only on July 10. The two previous days, Farooq Abdullah had been busy hosting a seminar, rather ambitiously titled "Autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir a nd the Restructuring of Indian Federalism". As the discussion moved from the academic terrain to the enumeration of practical options, the N.C. working committee was beginning, with some discomfort, to appreciate the reality that it would need to send a strong signal, probably by withdrawing from the ruling coalition at the Centre.

As the meeting adjourned for the day, the options seemed rather bleak. Withdrawal from the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) at the Centre would have seemed the most appropriate riposte to the rebuff that the Union Cabinet had administered. But this cou ld conceivably invite the threat of dismissal of the N.C. government. Sections within the Union Ministry of Home Affairs were known to believe that if the short-term consequences were to be surmounted, then the long-term political costs of dismissal woul d not be excessive. Farooq Abdullah was protected in some measure by the personal goodwill of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and by the firm resolve of the regional parties within the NDA that they would not permit the invocation of Article 356 to d ismiss an elected State government. But the risk of withdrawal from the NDA was one that he was clearly disinclined to take.

Begum Akbar's demise the following day prompted the N.C. to postpone the moment of decision. And with Home Minister L.K. Advani and Defence Minister George Fernandes accompanying the Prime Minister to the funeral in Srinagar, personal expressions of cond olences mingled with efforts at political reconciliation. The daughter of a European father and a Kashmiri Gujjar mother, Akbar Jahan had married Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah shortly after he made his initial mark in State politics in the agitation against t he Dogra Maharaja in 1931. Both the 1931 agitation and his subsequent marriage are considered to have been decisive influences in the Sheikh's political evolution - the former in marking him out as a mobiliser and leader of the first rank, the latter in nudging him towards a secular and inclusive idiom of politics which went beyond the limited aspirations of the traditional Kashmiri elite.

July 13 is observed as Martyrs' Day in Kashmir in commemoration of the 21 agitators who were mowed down by the Maharaja's forces in 1931. In the history of Kashmir this day is officially considered the beginning of the freedom struggle. As the context of the most recent commemoration showed, there are widely disparate perceptions of when and where the struggle ends.

As Farooq Abdullah spoke eloquently of his commitment to autonomy and underlined his personal belief in the good faith of Prime Minister Vajpayee, much of the Kashmir Valley and Doda district in the Jammu region remained paralysed by a bandh called by pr o-independence groups. And elsewhere in the State, relations between the Buddhist and Muslim communities in Ladakh remained fraught with tension. A public statement by a leader of the Ladakh Buddhist Association (LBA) had been construed by elements of th e Muslim leadership as "blasphemous". Yet even as the district administration began the process of controlling the damage, the murder of Buddhist lamas from a remote monastery in Kargil district was reported, plunging the two communities into deeper stri fe. As the Kashmir Valley and parts of Doda observed a general strike, Leh was placed under a blanket curfew.

COMMUNITY relations in Ladakh have been embittered since the early 1990s, when the Buddhist community, with tacit encouragement from elements in the Governor's administration and the Hindu Right, began a social boycott of Muslims. A further twist was imp arted in 1995 when Muslim-majority Kargil district opted to stay out of the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Develop-ment Council (LAHDC) that was set up by the Union government in a partial concession to the demand - mainly articulated by Buddhists - for Unio n Territory status for Ladakh. The LAHDC's recent resolution rejecting the State demand for autonomy and renewing the Union Territory demand, puts it even more firmly on a divergent path with the N.C. government in Srinagar.

Ever since the July 4 meeting of the Cabinet which had termed his autonomy demand "unacceptable", Farooq Abdullah had been keen on opening a dialogue with the Centre. Addressing the inaugural session of the Srinagar seminar on July 8, he professed himsel f to be perplexed and hurt by the summary rejection of the State Assembly's resolution on autonomy. After a day of generally supportive interventions from a distinguished list of speakers, Abdullah adopted a more combative posture in his summing up obser vations. He focussed his remarks on the Union government's expressed willingness to talk to the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), the conglomerate of diverse social, religious and political groups committed to either independence or accession to Pa kistan.

What will the government talk to the Hurriyat about, wondered Farooq Abdullah, when it was unwilling even to talk to him about autonomy. The moment the Hurriyat expressed its willingness to participate in elections, he declared, he would turn in his resi gnation and call for fresh polls. And then he would like, in a House dominated by secessionist elements, to see a resolution on "azaadi" being adopted. He would be more interested in knowing what the attitude of the Central government would then be.

Farooq Abdullah was, of course, carefully measuring the tone of his statements to the nature of his audience. In meetings with media representatives from Delhi, he was prepared to adopt a far more accommodating manner. "I believe that the Centre-State di alogue on autonomy will still take place," he said. "My understanding is that they have kept the door for dialogue open. When I next meet the Prime Minister, I will discuss the various mechanisms for the dialogue with him." What had been rejected was onl y the resolution of June 26 adopted in the State Assembly. The report of the State Autonomy Committee though, could still be considered by a group of legal experts. "If they say it is a political issue," said Farooq Abdullah, "then should it not be sent to a political committee of some kind? We have no objection to any mechanism so long as the discussion is held with an open mind."

A touch of flamboyance was imparted to the Srinagar proceedings by the arrival of the Member of Parliament from Tamil Nadu, Vaiko. Expressing solidarity and support, Vaiko laid alliterative emphasis on debate, discussion and dialogue as the basic necessi ties in tackling the situation. The Jammu and Kashmir Assembly resolution, he asserted, was not different in substance from the motion adopted in the Tamil Nadu Assembly in 1975. And his party, the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, had fully endors ed the notion of State autonomy at a conference held as recently as 1999.

From within the BJP, there was another list of desiderata, spelt out alliteratively by Narendra Modi, the party general secretary in charge of Jammu and Kashmir: development, democracy and dialogue. And if these were to prove insufficient, he had a fourt h element in the formula: the use of the defence forces. In concrete terms, it is not clear whether the scope for dialogue lies in the principle of autonomy or the practical details. The principle has been accepted by the Indian government as far back as 1995, when Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao made his often-quoted declaration from Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. It was later reiterated by his Home Minister S.B. Chavan, after which the succeeding regime of Prime Ministers H.D. Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral, and Home Minister Indrajit Gupta, repeated their commitment to autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir.

The BJP-led government itself spoke in equivocal terms, in the initial stages, despite the Hindutva Parivar's well-known aversion to a special status for Jammu and Kashmir. Prime Minister Vajpayee's initial reaction was to acknowledge that the State Asse mbly resolution was well within the domain of constitutional validity. Home Minister Advani too was cautious, merely indicating that the resolution would be placed before Parliament for a full dissection, though he did seek to pre-empt the outcome by sug gesting that rejection would be the most appropriate response.

The larger Hindutva Parivar was, however, in no mood to tolerate any elements of ideological disharmony on the eve of the birth centenary celebrations of Shyama Prasad Mookerjee. The founder of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh is still viewed within the Hindutva constellation as a man who died in the struggle against "two constitutions, two flags and two heads of state in one country". The phase of confusion that followed immediately after the Jammu and Kashmir State Assembly adopted the resolution on autonomy w as swiftly followed by seeming conviction.

The RSS Pratinidhi Sabha met at Gandhinagar in Gujarat and attacked the notion of autonomy for Kashmir as a step only different in degree from a declaration of independence and secession. Balasaheb Thackeray, the rancorous chieftain of the Shiv Sena, als o weighed in with like sentiments, though he employed considerably more vituperation. A meeting of the Union Cabinet scheduled for July 8 was with little explanation advanced to July 4 to take up the Kashmir issue. And departing from the original intent merely to discuss the resolution prior to a fuller debate in Parliament, the Cabinet decided to throw it out of court as "unacceptable".

In endorsing this decision most members of the Cabinet were careful to emphasise that nothing should be done which would jeopardise Farooq Abdullah's regime. Some of the regional parties also questioned elements of the Centre's Kashmir policy, as recentl y articulated by both Vajpayee and Advani. In particular, the offer to open a dialogue with the Hurriyat, on terms that are yet to be spelt out, came in for minute questioning.

Law Minister Ram Jethmalani was one of those who subsequently adopted a conciliatory approach. The State Autonomy Report and the resolution it inspired were too general in their scope, he argued. If the State government could instead come up with specifi c details on the manner in which Union laws had hampered the interests of Jammu and Kashmir in their application, then the Centre would be more sympathetic, he promised.

Farooq Abdullah and his principal strategists - Education Minister Mohammad Shafi and Finance Minister Abdur Rahim Rather - could well find that the devil lies in the details. The State Autonomy Committee report is itself vague on specifics. It points to the 42 constitutional application orders that were issued making Union legislation applicable to the State between 1954 and 1986, as visible evidence of an erosion of autonomy. It then enters the plea that "not all of these orders can be objected to", t hough "it is the principle that matters".

At the level of principle, the Central government may find it difficult to accept that the Constituent Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir ceased to have any legal validity after Sheikh Abdullah was dismissed from his post as Vazir-e-Azam and imprisoned in 195 3. It was on this account that the accord worked out between Sheikh Abdullah and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975 laid down strict limits on the scope of constitutional review. It allowed for a review of the constitutional provisions that had been ap plied to Jammu and Kashmir in a modified form, but affirmed that all provisions applied "without adaptation or modification" would be "unalterable".

Here is an example of a provision that was applied with modification is Article 19, which spells out the fundamental freedoms of an Indian citizen. The Indian Constitution provides for "reasonable restrictions" on these freedoms in the interests of the s ecurity of the state, public order and the sovereignty and integrity of the country, among other things. But in all these respects the restrictions on basic rights are subject to the intervention of the judiciary and its understanding of how "reasonable" they are. In the case of Jammu and Kashmir, the basic freedoms are subject to any restriction that is deemed reasonable by the State legislature. This endows the State legislature with a quasi-judicial authority. It is a matter for public debate whether the preservation of this clause serves any useful purpose.

Another case in point is Article 7 of the Constitution dealing with the citizenship rights of "certain migrants to Pakistan". Under the 1954 constitution application order, the Jammu and Kashmir State legislature was empowered to "grant a permit for rese ttlement" or allow the "permanent return" of any resident of the State who migrated to Pakistani territory. No limitations in time were specified on the application of this right, with the result that Sheikh Abdullah chose in 1982 to enact a wide-ranging "Resettlement Bill" that allowed for a broad-ranging "right of return" to Jammu and Kashmir.

Sheikh Abdullah then argued that this Bill was well within the constitutional powers granted to his State. The administration of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi demurred. A major confrontation was only averted by Sheikh Abdullah's death in September 1982 an d by his son's acquiescence in a proposal to refer the issue to the Supreme Court for a final ruling. The matter has since lapsed, for the constitutional application orders issued after Farooq Abdullah's government was ousted in May 1984 have effectively plugged this loophole. But the current initiative by Farooq Abdullah to rewrite the Constitution of the State of Jammu and Kashmir, makes it imperative that adequate prior agreement be reached on this issue, in a manner that is sensitive to the circumst ances and compulsions faced by families divided by the Line of Control.

It would be an obvious exaggeration to say that the autonomy demand has attracted wide political support in the State. But political figures as disparate as Mirwaiz Umar Farooq of the APHC and Azam Inquilabi of the Mahaz-e-Azaadi have acknowledged that i t could be a starting point for a further dialogue. If such a dialogue could be initiated in the State with a broad range of opinion, framed by realistic and liberal rules of engagement, then it is conceivable that the cult of violence that currently rul es could be gradually supplanted by a genuine culture of politics. But if doctrinaire positions insensitive to the realities of history are allowed to dominate, then this could well be another opportunity squandered.