Realism on autonomy

The Prime Minister has returned with some well-judged statements on Kashmiri autonomy which should calm things down for a while. He sugges...

The Prime Minister has returned with some well-judged statements on Kashmiri autonomy which should calm things down for a while. He suggests nothing so extraordinary or unmanageable has occurred that cannot be resolved by a country which is strong and flexible. And he is careful to play down fears of Centre-State tensions and differences within the National Democratic Alliance.

The right course just now is to build confidence and restore harmony. Nothing is gained by blowing the issue out of all proportion and a cautious approach towards something as complicated as the future governance of Jammu and Kashmir is surely the only sensible approach. But there must be forward movement. Ignoring the autonomy issue in the hope it would go away has been a foolish policy. Atal Behari Vajpayee can be expected to proceed with care and take account of all the ramifications, popular aspiration in Jamp;K, national commitments, domestic and international reaction and the feasibility of the form of autonomy the Jamp;K House demands. But he needs to persuade the array of other actors involved in fashioning policy on Kashmir not to take partisan positions. Flexibility is the key word.

Immediately something should be done about the worrying communication gap between the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister of Jamp;K. That the Centre was not aware of plans to pass an Assembly resolution which would bind the state government to pursuing a particular form of autonomy is hard to comprehend. It is too important a matter to be glossed over and Vajpayee and Farooq Abdullah both have some explaining to do. At the very least, the former is expected to keep himself closely informed about major developments in a sensitive state. Dismayingly, the Vajpayee government makes a habit of being caught totally by surprise in Jamp;K. Unlike Kargil, it has had months, even years, of advance notice about the autonomy proposals. But it misjudged the mood of the National Conference and failed to take account of the political impact of its own overtures to Hurriyat leaders.

If it imagined the report of the State Autonomy Committee was an innocuous document which would soon be buried and forgotten, the Centre has come to earth with a bang. Now the question of autonomy can no longer be dodged and must be faced squarely in the maximalist form of the Jamp;K resolution: autonomy pre-1953. The chance to consider the more workable version of 1975 appears for the moment to have been lost. It cannot be stressed enough that it is important not to show bad faith. Expectations have been raised in Jamp;K and genuine efforts will be needed to see how the present demands can be met. No doubt it will require an elaborate series of discussions but they should not become a means of postponing greater autonomy for Jamp;K indefinitely. Involving state politicians of all hues, including Hurriyat moderates, is the way to ensure a workable process and eventually a workable and binding outcome.

The government will also have to begin the long neglected process of building public opinion in favour of some degree of greater autonomy for Jamp;K and not leave it to rabble-rousers to influence opinion in the country.