Tags:
Journalism of Courage
The roundtable conference on Kashmir, held at the prime minister’s behest last Saturday, is a breath of fresh air. After the remarkably transparent and refreshingly fair assembly election of 2002, which had generated so much enthusiasm everywhere — except in Islamabad and among the pro-Pak fringe in the Valley — this is the first concrete step taken by the Centre to suggest that constructing peace in Kashmir has a definable place on the national agenda, after all.
Frankly, doubts had begun to surface about this in Kashmir. It had begun to worry not a few that unctuousness looked like becoming a substitute for concrete action in the peace paradigm. The Indian state appeared to be unhurried because it appeared to have nothing to hurry toward. Lack of ideas seemed to be writ large on the policy-makers’ board, though ordinary people had given their go-ahead in the clearest terms by voting in impressive numbers, although they were attacked in the run-up to the polls in which 800 were killed for daring to participate.
It is, of course, true that waging peace in troubled areas is an infinitely more complex matter than waging war. The aspirations, anxieties, and possibly conflicting agendas of political parties and citizens’ groups have to be taken on board, unlike in the context of war. Negotiations big and small, local and pan-regional, have to be satisfactorily won so that no legitimately aggrieved section may remain worse off than before. But none of this can ever mean that the wait for concerted efforts to move toward fabricating peace must be an endless affair. Unfortunately, this is what seemed to be happening in Kashmir — breeding cynicism among those keen to turn their backs on terrorism and help rebuild their society.
After the 2002 election, some in policy circles believed that peace will arrive on its own, merely through the expedient of putting enough forces on the ground at sensitive locations with a view to protecting the citizenry from terrorism. Another view was that a sense of peace could be delivered through a show of rising numbers of holidaying tourists and increased commercial activity. Indeed, some of this did produce a greater yearning for normality, but alas none of it gave the Kashmiri the confidence that he had a say and voice in his society other than at election time, unless he was ready to adopt threatening ways, speak an extreme language, and invoke the aegis of Pakistan.
The long-overdue process kicked off last week could dispel such a sense of weariness. Indeed, it is fair to note that nothing like it has happened since 1947. At the table sat as equals political parties as well as social organisations from all parts of J&K to discuss issues of direct and immediate concern to them. All of them did not perhaps get an equal hearing, but it is unmistakable that a new, potentially beneficial, process has been inaugurated.
In the last 55 years, New Delhi has essentially operated through political contractors in Kashmir, not bothering to establish links with the new classes being thrown up under the ‘Naya Kashmir’ programme of the National Conference, even if its implementation was often faulty. The mass of Kashmiris were semi-serfs. Land tenure reforms and the widening of education threw up new agents in society. There was no dialogue between these newly emergent forces and the locus of political authority at the Centre. The result was for all to see three decades on, when even the National Conference was brusquely swept aside.
The roundtable talks may help to cover this hiatus if it is taken seriously, especially by the Centre, and the process persevered with even in the face of political odds. It is indeed sad that the backdrop to this effort has been unfortunate at the human level — the Handwara tragedy in north Kashmir, in which four young people were killed by the security forces while pursuing militants, was a grim reminder of the reality in Kashmir. Opponents of the very idea of a roundtable — in which all players were to have an equal voice, with no privileging of any section — were naturally gifted an opportunity to vent their spleen. But if New Delhi stays the course, we could see a new politics emerge, a push to the new historical momentum already on view in Kashmir.
The message should be: whatever the state of India-Pakistan relations or the government’s dialogue with the backers of the votaries of violence, the Centre will unwaveringly pursue a positive policy of peace and inclusive engagement in Kashmir.
The writer is a senior journalist
