While discussing the prevailing Kashmir situation, India’s lawmakers felt concerned and offered various initiatives for revival and restoration. But it lacked a consensus that Kashmir requires for a way-out, reports Masood Hussain
The garden of Kashmir became a wound of pain,
The master’s pleasure became the people’s indigence,
They fell upon the soul of Kashmir,
As voracious dogs set loose.
The doors, walls, roofs and streets,
And every soul complained like a doleful flute,
The hearts of the tyrants were as hard as stone,
They were too implacable to feel the people’s pains.
These verses from eighteenth century Kashmiri poet Saiduddin Shahabadi were part of Prof Sugata Bose’s presentation on Kashmir in Lok Sabha. Written in the backdrop of Afghan repression, the lawmaker said that managers of colonial and post-colonial States unfortunately were guided by territorial greed and have not felt the people’s pain.
Not highly encouraging, in wake of the BJP government reiterating the already known state position, the debates in the twin houses, however, offered some idea of how the politics in Delhi thinks of Kashmir. There were of voices, including that of the government, holding Pakistan responsible for everything. But some people sounded ‘out of box’ seeking some sort of introspection.
Article 370, Prof Bose said, has become “a shadow and a husk” of what it originally was in 1952-53 and indicated “a certain kind of denial of democracy” and a “negation of genuine federal autonomy” to Kashmir.
Acclaimed historian and Trinamul Congress MP, Bose is against the idea of besetting by the “ghosts of Curzon and Mountbatten” for “cling to a colonial definition of sovereignty”. Instead, he suggested completely renegotiating the federal equation to create a new political centre that will be federal, strong and a long lasting union.
“We in India learnt the concept of unitary sovereignty from the British and in 1947 we were not able to layer and share sovereignty and sadly we divided the land,” the professor said. “The British gave up absolutist claims of sovereignty over Northern Ireland, yielded political space to new democratic arenas which hold lessons for comparable conflicts.” The professor insisted that the “story of brutalization” will not end unless the “roots of injustice are not addressed.” He strongly supported talking to “deeply alienated while maintaining our own commitment to the unity and integrity of India.” He suggested against treating Kashmir as a “real estate dispute.”
Strongly seeking “minimum force and maximum restraint,” N K Premchandran regretted that people of Kashmir usually do not form the part of what we talk. “When we talk about Kashmir being an integral part of India, we are only talking about the geographical integrity and not the demographic integrity,” the lawmaker, representing Kerela’s Navaikulam on Revolutionary Socialist Party, said, “When we talk about Kashmir, we are talking that the territory of Kashmir has to be protected and not the people of Kashmir.”
He wanted the government to investigate that how a young boy using social media could barely influence only 30 boys in seven years but got two lakh in his funeral? “He has got an image of icon of martyr,” the lawmaker said.
Speaking in Rajya Sabha, TV personality and All India Trinamool Congress member Derek O’ Brien supported the strong security arrangements and the hard-policing but insisted on political process and dialogue. Strongly voicing to protect the “soul” of Kashmir and finding answers, Brien opposed the idea of pelleting. “It makes a sad story that in this day of technology, when it is common knowledge that the same has not been accepted in Tunisia in 2010; the same was not accepted in 2014 in Egypt; and there again they are going and using the pellets,” he said. He wanted the government to “understand the power of this media”.
Tamil writer and politician Tiruchi Siva, a member of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), wanted the government to understand the “wounded psyche” of Kashmir “sensitively”, insisting that “alienation and the disaffections in the minds of the people in Kashmir cannot be removed by bullets and police measures.” He said “power flowing out of the guns cannot be a complete or adequate solution”. Siva wanted “a healing touch” and the political process to begin.
“We have to accept that we are facing a serious problem of trust, of credibility in the Valley, Dr Karan Singh, former Sadr-e-Reyasat of the state, said. “It is a very serious problem. And this problem has to be tackled. And we have to look within.”
“You cannot face it with gun. You can’t face it with a war with Pakistan,” Singh cautioned. “You have got to face it with dialogue that cuts across all barriers and is with all stakeholders. Remember, there are stakeholders not just in Kashmir.”
Singh said India is “frozen with a status quo” which is unacceptable to Kashmir, Jammu or Ladakh. “If you really want to avoid this situation in future, you have to break away from the old mould thinking and got to move towards a new dynamism, a new commitment, cutting across all differences,” Singh said. “Even Mao Tse-tung said, Ta Ta, Tan Tan. It means, “fight fight, talk talk.”
CPI leader from Tamil Nadu D Raja who has been to Kashmir earlier and knows the ground situation insisted that people of Kashmiris are passing through “hell of tragedies”. He does not see Kashmir as a law and order issue. “Kashmir has always been a political problem and it needs a political solution for which Parliament will have to think over as to what kind of political process the Government can initiate,” Raja insisted.
Regretting that voices from the ruling party talk about changing the demographic composition of J&K or abrogating Article 370, Raja suggested the government must talk to separatists and get ready to repeal – fully or partially, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. “It is time that we will have to think over such things,” Raja insisted.
“When there is extreme provocation, there are new forms and sources of provocation, the restraint also has to be proportionately more,” Congress’s Dr Abhishek Manu Sighvi observed. But he raised questions on the Standard Operations Procedures (SOP). “I want to understand how it is possible if the first step is to aim below the waistline, if the first step is to use smoke, if the first step is to use water, if the first step is to use rubber and not real bullets. Then, how can there be casualties? It is already written in the standard operating procedure.”
Members in the twin houses had concerns and a lot of suggestions. Rajesh Ranjan (Pappu Yadav) felt Kashmir was “slipping away from our hands”. AAP’s Bhagwant Mann shocked the house saying that if India can cut a cake for Nawaz Sharif’s birthday, we cannot sit and talk with Kashmiris. Some leaders even suggested reviving of the Kashmir affairs ministry. There were strong voices in favour of taking an all party delegation to Srinagar.
Muzaffar Hussain Beig, PDP MP and former Deputy Chief Minister and Ghulam Nabi Azad, whose government in the state collapsed in the first unrest in 2008, also spoke in the two houses. They reiterated the status quo, offered an idea of the prevailing situation and blamed Pakistan. Main focus of Azad’s speech was the havoc that pellets created and how BJP’s impatience in jumping into J&K’s governance set-up was key to the crisis. “It took us (Congress) 70 years to try and bring peace to Kashmir, Azad said, “BJP is a misfit and will take ages to create its space in the sensitive area.”
