A Tide in Kashmir’s History

By Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai

As Shakespeare might have said, from the nettle of dangerous terrorism in South Asia a flower of safety can be plucked for Kashmir, which has been bisected for decades by the Indian-Pakistani Line of Control.

All that is needed is enlightened statesmanship in India, Pakistan and Kashmir. The Bush administration deserves applause for recognizing the centrality of Kashmir to its South Asian foreign policy and the urgency of accommodating the aspirations of the Kashmiri people.

At present, the prospects are not propitious. But the gruesome alternative—more carnage, terrorism and grief—should do wonders to focus minds on the issue. It is hard to think of anything worse than protracted warfare and convulsions in Kashmir—for all parties concerned.

A good touchstone for the required statesmanship is Mahatma Gandhi, who could hardly be accused of disloyalty to India. His 1947 advice with regard to Kashmir has lost neither force nor wisdom with time: “The real sovereign of the State [of Kashmir] are the people of the State. If the ruler is not the servant of the people then he is not the ruler...The people of Kashmir should be asked whether they want to join India or Pakistan. Let them do as they want. The ruler is nothing. The people are everything.”

As acclaimed India-watcher Stanley Wolpert has written in Gandhi’s Passion, “Had independent India the courage to endorse Gandhi’s faith in self-determination for Jammu and Kashmir State, it should have agreed to hold a plebiscite there immediately, rather than fighting futile wars over the next half-century without reaching any agreement...as to the fate of Kashmir’s long suffering people.”

The current United States war against global terrorism in Afghanistan could spark a Kashmir solution. A growing consensus envisions a strong United Nations role in the transition from the terrorist Taliban regime to a broad-based decentralized Afghan government based on the consent of the governed—Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras alike.

Kashmir shares commonalties with Afghanistan which make a U.N. intervention attractive and persuasive. Its 13 million population is divided among Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs. This militates in favor of a decentralized constitutional regime. Moreover, the United Nations Security Council has been involved in the disputed territory since 1948, when it first adopted a resolution mandating a plebiscite on self-determination to end the conflict. That resolution has slumbered unimplemented for 53 years because of India’s fear that a free and fair vote would reject accession to its sovereignty.

The current U.S. war against terrorism in Afghanistan could spark a Kashmir solution.

India, however, has paid a steep price for its intransigence. Multiple billions in dollars and hundreds of thousands in military and paramilitary personnel have been squandered in propping up a popularly reviled puppet civilian government in Kashmir. Elections there are virtually universally boycotted as symbolic expressions of local dissent.

So-called Afghan-based terrorism was not the crux of the Kashmiri resistance to India’s colonial-like rule when it commenced in October 1947, and it is not the crux today. It is inconceivable that India would be unable to crush terrorism in the territory if it enjoyed even a crumb of popular support. It doesn’t, however—for two reasons: India has reneged on its pledge of self-determination for Kashmiris (imagine if Great Britain had broken its promise of independence for India after World War II). Secondly, India’s human rights record in Kashmir has been squalid. In the last decade alone, it has been characterized by more than 65,000 extrajudicial killings coupled with commonplace torture, rape, abductions, plunder, custodial disappearances, detentions without trial, and ruthless suppression of peaceful political dissent. Indian military forces have been cloaked with legal immunity for human rights atrocities in Kashmir, only aggravating their propensity for cruelty.

India quarantines Kashmir from the eyes of the international media and human rights organizations to forestall the humanitarian outrage that would explode with transparency. It further contrives terrorist incidents to justify its brutalities in Kashmir, just as Hitler used the burning of the Reichstag to justify an end to civil liberties. For instance, India recently feigned the hijacking of a civilian passenger aircraft with 52 on board, sheepishly confessing later that the reported incident was a hoax.

International Initiatives

Nevertheless, international initiatives now being considered provide optimism about extricating Kashmir from its wretchedness and should appeal to moderates in India’s political constellation. As happened in East Timor in 1999, the U.N. Security Council should organize and conduct a plebiscite on Kashmir’s future and deploy a peacekeeping force to ensure a free and fair voting climate. Voter registration and campaigning should take place over a period of 6 to 12 months. India and Pakistan should be ordered to observe a cease-fire and to minimize their military presences. The plebiscite should offer three choices: accession to India, accession to Pakistan, or independence.

If independence were chosen, the U.N. Security Council would assume transitional plenary sovereignty over all of Kashmir while preparing elections for a constituent assembly, as occurred with splendid success after the East Timorese voted for nationhood. Comparable Security Council sovereignty also applies in Kosovo and Bosnia to nurse the states into democratic dispensations. As the U.N. similarly ensured in Cambodia, the Kashmir constituent assembly would be bound to embrace a set of constitutional principles that would allay all of India’s reasonable concerns: permanent Kashmir neutrality; a general ban on foreign military bases or exercises; no standing army; a prohibition on war in international affairs; accession to all international anti-terrorism covenants; and shared immigration customs controls along its borders.

Can any reasonable Indian, Pakistani or Kashmiri voice be raised against this blueprint for a resolution to the chilling Kashmir tragedy which has reached epic proportions? Shouldn’t it be at the top of any negotiating agenda among the three chief parties to the disputed territory—India, Pakistan, and Kashmir—and mediated by the U.N. Security Council?

Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai is the executive director of the Washington-based Kashmiri American Council. He can be reached at <msayyid@yahoo.com>.