The delicious apples of Kashmir’s glorious orchards are rotting on the ground. Soon the walnuts will also meet the same fate. The fruits cannot be crated or trucked because the Valley is under curfew. Earnings of entire communities have been wiped out. Soon winter will set in. The Line of Control runs for over 700 km at heights that average 14,000 feet and more. There will be 20 feet of snow on the LoC ridge. The barbed wire fence has only a height of 12 feet, and will be buried beneath the snow. The snow is accompanied by dense fog. Our brave soldiers cannot see beyond a couple of feet. Pakistan is waiting for this moment to send across its jihadis. Kashmir is in the grip of an unprecedented crisis. There have been crises in the past as well, but this time it appears that there is a crucial difference: the alienation and anger among the youth. Undoubtedly, some of the children, not yet in their teens, who front mobs that pelt stones on our valiant soldiers, policemen and paramilitary forces, are cynically manipulated by unscrupulous hardliners on Pakistan’s payroll. They have to be weaned away from this senseless violence, and the youth as a whole has to be given a sense of hope in the dividends of our national mainstream.
The situation is exceptionally complex and difficult, a result of both history and geography. But, since J&K will always remain an inalienable part of India, a solution must be found. Can the Indian State, and the political parties that run it, find that solution? The visit of the all-party parliamentary delegation was a positive step that should have been taken much earlier. But a sense of drift has gripped the BJP government at the Centre and the BJP-PDP alliance in Srinagar.
Democracy throws up its own compulsions, and we have scores of examples where bitter foes have come together to form a government in response to the logic of electoral verdicts. But even so, the BJP-PDP alliance was, from the very beginning, one of the most unworkable, cynical and expedient attempts to cling to power even when it was crystal clear that the resultant government would be intrinsically and fundamentally unworkable.
From its very inception, there was almost no issue on which the two alliance partners were on the same page. Both of them held diametrically opposite views on Article 370, Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, the causes behind the unrest and insurgency and the ways to handle it. And yet they formed a government, and even agreed to an 11-page “Agenda for Alliance”. For months the alliance partners sparred over how to draft this document while J&K remained without a government and the situation continued to spin out of control. The document they finally produced is a classic example of a deceptive editorial exercise to create the impression of consensus where none existed. That is why it has remained on paper and not implemented. The manner in which the BJP has reneged on key points of the common agenda is nothing short of scandalous. For instance, the agenda, citing Atal Behari Vajpayee’s initiation of a dialogue process with all political groups, including the Hurriyat Conference, commits the coalition government to facilitate a “sustained and meaningful dialogue with all internal stakeholders, which will include all political groups irrespective of their ideological views and predilections”. But once the drafting exercise was over, there was no follow up.
The extent to which the BJP would resort to subterfuge to escape its publicly stated alliance responsibilities became ludicrously clear during the visit of the all-party parliamentary delegation. An invitation was sent to the Hurriyat to meet with the delegation, but not from the coalition government. It was sent by Mehbooba Mufti, but not in her capacity as the chief minister. She sent it as the leader of the PDP. Does this not mean that the BJP, which is in government in J&K in alliance with the PDP, is deliberately subverting an initiative to which it had jointly committed while forming the government? When leaders like Sharad Yadav and Sitaram Yechury made the effort to meet with Hurriyat leaders, home minister Rajnath Singh did not object. But his party, which was committed to carrying out this dialogue in the name of Vajpayeeji, cynically stayed away. The hardliners in the Hurriyat such as the likes of Syed Shah Geelani need to be dealt with sternly and under the law. But the BJP should have, in all good conscience, made this clear when forming the government with the PDP. The party’s cynical policy now seems to be to hunt with the hound and run with the hare, leaving the PDP to fulfil the commitments to which it had lent its full support in a public document.
The same expediency can be seen in the BJP’s commitments to review the continuation of the AFSPA, the return of land under the Land Acquisition Act to the rightful owners, escalated economic development, and a review of royalty agreements with the NHPC. The net result is governance paralysis, lack of cohesive strategy, and unacceptable drift in policy-making. Apparently, the BJP has now decided to take a hard line with the Hurriyat and to focus on Islamic radicalisation in the Valley. But while adopting this policy, has it consulted its alliance partner, the PDP? Muzaffar Baig, a key aide to Ms Mufti, has asked for his leader to resign if she cannot implement the “Agenda for Alliance” with the BJP that includes talking to all stakeholders, including the Hurriyat. Quite clearly, therefore, the two partners in this opportunistic alliance are talking at complete cross-purposes. Pakistan is blatantly fishing in these troubled waters. Cross-border infiltration is growing, and will increase further during the coming winter. For how long then can this increasingly serious situation in J&K be held hostage to this non-workable BJP-PDP alliance? The BJP is answerable not only to its collapsing alliance in Srinagar, but to the entire nation.
