The targeting of Kashmiri Pandits in the last few weeks would not seem to be part of the campaign against ‘outsiders’. But in reality, it is connected to it. The aim is not only to stall the ongoing measures for the resettlement of Kashmiri Pandits and land restoration but also to portray the inability of the Indian government to protect them. Such portrayal operates to debunk the notion of ‘normality’ and serves to increase the numbers of ‘outsiders’ in terms of the Armed Police Forces that may be expected to fuel alienation by their sheer presence if not by their actions undertaken to curb violence.
The major challenge with initiating the political process in J&K and in the Valley, in particular, is that it is nested in the broader framework of India’s domestic politics. The trajectory of forces generated within the contemporary political framework has acquired a markedly communal hue — one that has witnessed the growth of a Hindu majoritarian agenda driven by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This larger approach of the party at the national level restricts the political space for any fruitful dialogue in J&K as long as the region is governed as a Union Territory and the Constitutional framework applicable dilutes the powers of its elected representatives. Any political dialogue without empowered elected representatives would be a non-starter.
Economic well-being can’t hide political cracks
Kashmir, as a tourist paradise, has coped with and struggled to survive the recurrence of violence generated by more than nearly three decades of the insurgency. A major dip followed the Pulwama terrorist attack in February 2019, the abrogation of Article 370 seven months later and Covid in early 2020. But tourist footfalls touched record levels in 2022 and Kashmir’s tourism industry was scrambling to meet the surge in demand. Feedbacks from tourists who were regulars before and were there in April/May 2022 were full of praise for the changes wrought to clean up Srinagar by the current administration. The Dal Lake and its vicinity seemed to have been transformed, they averred. The yearly Amarnath Yatra set to start on 30 June is expected to witness record levels of yatris.
Resurgent tourism and its positive impact on the economic well-being of the Kashmiris cannot mask the underlying political frictions that animate Kashmir’s strategic landscape. Since the abrogation of Article 370 and the disbandment of the former state of J&K, a deepened sense of alienation from the Union has continued to fertilise its political soil. The overwhelming narrative is anchored in the suspicion that the Narendra Modi government has a long-term project to overwhelm the Kashmiri identity through a change in the demographic profile. For an average Kashmiri, ‘outsiders’ are imagined as people from outside the Valley. It is a fear psychosis that is historically rooted and one that is perceived as having lost its protective shield after 2019. Not surprisingly, internal and external adversarial forces have reared their heads and are attempting to ride the narrative. Targeted killings of outsiders with a definite slant toward Hindus as victims have emerged as the pattern.
The strategic objective of violence in its present form is evidently to strengthen the alienation of the people from the Indian Union. Once seasoned to a particular level, it can be leveraged to unleash violence on a much larger scale. In security terms, the road ahead seems foreboding and the answer does not lie in the preference to induct more Armed Police Forces or the Army against the perpetrators of the actual violence. The answer must be sought in the soil of domestic politics from where the current issues have sprung. Unfortunately, it is a route that has been shelved for too long and is clearly overdue for exploitation.
Read political tea leaves
The political route will also uphold the truism that the use of force by the State can, at most, bring violence down only to some degree of manageability. The route is one that allows for dialogue, which, in the long term, is the only way to cater to the welfare of the citizens. It is well-known that the planners and abettors of violence are rooted in Pakistan. But their effectiveness is hugely dependent on the alienation of the people of Kashmir and the Muslim-majority areas of Jammu. The alienation has also been boosted by the perceived injustice that has meted out to them through the delimitation exercise that has restructured assembly and parliamentary constituencies, ostensibly at the cost of Kashmir and became effective from 20 May 2022.
The restoration of statehood to Jammu & Kashmir at an ‘appropriate time’ has been promised by the BJP on the floor of Parliament. If the Modi government can read the strategic tea leaves of domestic politics and its impact on India’s democratic image within its internal and external spheres, there is room to arrest the present momentum of forces unleashed by its majoritarian agenda. Externally, India may draw attention to the hypocrisy of the US and the European Union regarding their record in dealing with minorities. But the fact that it can cost India when votes are cast in their legislatures on issues of strategic nature like exemptions on Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) cannot simply be ignored. Internally, the cost to India’s social fabric, manifested through claims like the restoration of temples by demolishing mosques, bodes ill for its politico-strategic stability and unity.
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‘Appropriate time’ is now
The BJP, with its overwhelming grip on power at the Centre, must take the first step towards reversing the course of adversarial politics in the strategically vital state of J&K. The initiative must restore the J&K statehood (though without the Union territory of Ladakh) and must be done before the elections are scheduled later this year. Let the forces of democracy first elect their representatives before dialogue is initiated. Let the voice of the people of J&K find expression through elections conducted with the knowledge that statehood has been restored. One of the major grudges that Kashmiris harbour against the Indian Union is that they were not even consulted when their state was dismembered. Their trust in the Indian Republic must be regained. The loss of trust is now reflected in the geopolitical emotion of alienation that has the potential to carry serious damage to India’s strategic heft.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi often refers to the concept of ‘vasudhaiva kutumbakam’ – the world is a family. It is time that the spirit embodied therein is put into practice at home first. J&K can be the first stop whose ‘appropriate time’ for statehood has arrived. The Opposition parties that belong to the same family of ‘India’ will find it difficult to not reciprocate.
Lt Gen (Dr) Prakash Menon (retd) is Director, Strategic Studies Programme, Takshashila Institution; former military adviser, National Security Council Secretariat. He tweets @prakashmenon51. Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)