Kashmir: Let us speak of something that joins hearts across borders
Hell
Ain't Other People
By
SWAGATO GANGULY
26
Aug 2008
Television
makes for compelling images. Shots of frenzied demonstrations by surging crowds
at Pampore in Kashmir, followed by another one heading to the UN office in
Srinagar, has had a mesmerising effect on many. Arundhati Roy has concluded
that this is the “people... representing themselves” (or PRT, something I’ll
have occasion to refer to quite a few times). Consequently “India needs azadi
from Kashmir as much as Kashmir needs azadi from India.” While she may
represent the views of a radical-libertarian fringe members of the liberal
commentariat too have expressed similar emotions, albeit in less rousing tones.
There
is, however, a problem here. Kashmir hasn’t taken out a patent on PRT, it’s
happening in Jammu as well. And they’re equally vociferous over there. How does
one reconcile popular will in Kashmir with popular will in Jammu? Not to
mention that an independent Kashmir would be utterly unviable — a tiny,
landlocked state of about four million people sandwiched between two powerful
giants. Since it would have turned its back on India, sooner or later it would
be incorporated into Pakistan. In which case, the azadi it would garner would
be that of ‘Azad Kashmir’ or PoK, which is remote-controlled by a “ministry of
Kashmir affairs and Northern Areas” operating out of Islamabad.
But
let’s stretch a point here and assume that Kashmiris really want to be
incorporated into Pakistan. Shouldn’t one, as a liberal, back a people’s right
to self-determination? But self-determination isn’t a singular right that
exists in a vacuum. Minority rights have to be a critical part of any liberal
credo; a liberal state without minority rights is inconceivable. And here
Kashmiri separatists’ record is truly appalling. They have terrorised Kashmiri
Pandits into leaving the Valley. Close to 95 per cent of this once viable
community have become victims of a forced exodus. Even as part of the present
PRT that Roy glibly celebrates, migrant labourers from states like UP, MP and
Bihar are being asked to quit the Valley. That renders any Gandhian pretensions
that Kashmiri separatists might have absurd, as it does the support coming from
a neo-Gandhian intellectual such as Roy.
To be
sure, New Delhi is to blame for a lot that has gone wrong in Kashmir. There
have been serious violations of human rights, and election results have been
consistently manipulated. But that’s changing now. The 2002 assembly elections
in J&K, held in the presence of international observers, have been
acknow-ledged as free and fair. Let’s keep having international observers for
future elections, till no one can call into question their probity. And let
Hurriyat leaders contest them. They may have problems with the Indian
Constitution, but at least they would have demonstrated that they are the genuine
representatives of opinion in the Valley. Human rights, too, are under greater
scrutiny than before — thanks not only to the restoration of the democratic
process but also more competitive television coverage.
If one
concedes the right of self-determination to Kashmir, one can’t really withhold
the same right from Assam, Nagaland, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu or other
Indian states. Or for that matter, from Sind, Baluchistan or NWFP. Narendra
Modi has proposed that the Centre shouldn’t collect taxes from Gujarat, in
return for which the state will agree to forego financial assistance from New
Delhi — a statement that Congress leaders have accurately characterised as
seditious. If Modi organises a PRT around his demands should we grant Gujarat the
right to self-determination, which would include giving Modi a licence to treat
minorities as he sees fit? Self-determination might be an option in mature
democracies where minority rights are taken for granted. But let’s not forget
that India is a country where, only 15 years back, religious riots engulfed the
country (and Pakistan) because Hindu chauvinists decided that a temple had to
be built at the very spot where a mosque stood.
Examples
like that can be multiplied in contemporary India. Marathi politicians want to
reserve 80 per cent of jobs for locals, while chauvinists are forcing north
Indians to leave. In the auto and industrial hubs of Pune and Nashik an
estimated 40,000 workers have been forced to flee because of their ethnic
background. The Assam agitation mounted impressive PRT shows in the 1980s
urging foreigners to leave. Local chauvinists once slaughtered Bengali Muslims,
now they’re attacking Bihari Hindu migrants.
And
it’s all interlinked. Bangladeshi maulvis emigrated to Kashmir after Assam’s
infamous Nellie massacres of 1983, giving a huge boost to the growth of
madrasas there. That, in turn, has contributed to the Islamisation of discourse
in Kashmir.
Let’s,
by all means, declare azadi from each other, as long as we think through the
implications first. According to a line in a play by French existential
philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, hell is other people. Roy herself has claimed
that she constitutes a mobile republic of one. Before declaring independence,
though, let’s keep in mind that this is a particularly combustible country in a
generally combustible planet. India gets the most terror attacks in the world
after Iraq. A Kashmiri accession to Pakistan — that’s what its independence
would amount to — would revive the only partially buried ghosts of partition.
That isn’t something we need, please.
Let us
not, therefore, speak the language of changing borders — that’s so last
century. Let us, rather, speak of something that joins hearts across borders,
and eschews both Hindu and Muslim chauvinism.
Source:
The Times of India, New Delhi
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