Sanjaya Baru: Kashmir endgame
The path shown by Manmohan Singh and Pervez Musharraf is the only way forward
Never was the tension at the prime ministers house more palpable than that April evening in 2005. The news from Srinagar was most disheartening. Terrorists had attacked the tourist centre from which the new bus service to Muzaffarabad would leave the next day, flagged off by the prime minister. The building was in flames and fear had gripped the city.
Later in the evening, a high-level security briefing, with every relevant functionary from the home minister to national security advisor to chiefs of intelligence and security organisations present, informed the PM that while two terrorists had been killed, two more were at large in Srinagar. An attack on next days public meeting was feared. The PM was advised by all to postpone his visit and the event.
The meeting ended at 9 pm. Manmohan Singh remained seated, watching TV, with sound on mute, looking grim, sullen and angry. This was to be the first step in a journey of peace that he had personally crafted after weeks of internal consultation with several experts and a quite conversation with President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan. The bus service across the Line of Control (LoC) was a bridge to a Naya Kashmir.
The terrorists knew this and so were intent on sabotaging. How could he succumb? After several minutes of silence, he turned to me and said, I will go.
I went out and called in his personal secretary B V R Subrahmanyam. Tell the NSA and home minister I am going, he instructed. Next day when we arrived in Srinagar, Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed said to me at the airport, I am glad he is here. I told him that it was his personal decision, against all security advice. Yes, I know, he said, people of Kashmir will appreciate that.
With that bus service in April 2005, Dr Singh launched a new phase in Indias effort to find a final solution to the problem of Jammu and Kashmir. The seeds were undoubtedly planted by his predecessor Atal Behari Vajpayees famous initiative of January 2004. However, it was the conversation in September 2004 in New York with President Musharraf that opened new pathways to peace.
The launch of the bus service on April 7, 2005 was a vital part of a new agenda for the final resolution of the Kashmir problem. President Musharraf was due in Delhi 10 days later. The April 6 terror attack was meant to derail a process. Mr Musharraf called the PM and praised him for the courage and determination he showed in going ahead with the bus launch.
The history of India and Pakistans attempt to resolve the Kashmir problem has often been a history of missed opportunities bedevilled by a trust and governance deficit and poor timing. This time, the two got it right. By not succumbing to that attack, Dr Singh was able to take the India-Pakistan dialogue on Kashmir to a new level, till it was aborted partly by events in Pakistan, with the political weakening of President Musharrafs position, and partly at home, with a coming together of hawks in the establishment and an assortment of myopic and self-seeking politicians.
The key to the successful progress of the India-Pakistan dialogue on Kashmir in 2004-2006 was the parallel dialogue at home that Dr Singh launched through his Round Table Conferences, involving all major political parties in the state. Along with this he also re-launched a dialogue with the Hurriyat.
When Hurriyat leaders came to meet him, his only appeal to them was that they should lay out their road map and he would then tell them what India can do and what it cannot and will not. It is a failure of the Hurriyat leadership that short of mouthing the empty slogan of azadi, they have not been able to define a formula that would resolve the situation.
For all the emotive appeal of the slogan of azadi, it is not a doable programme of action. Neither Pakistan nor a majority of the people of Jammu & Kashmir seeks the textbook version of azadi. They all seek a variant of it. And it is such a variant that Prime Minister Singh and President Musharraf had all but agreed upon. The old formulas of the 1950s have been long buried by all concerned, even if a fringe keeps resurrecting outdated buzz words like plebiscite.
The Manmohan-Musharraf formula is the only way forward. Dr Singh put it pithily when he said, Borders cannot be changed, but can be made irrelevant. That is what the bus service was all about. President Musharraf told a Pakistan TV channel in October 2006 that the understanding involved, Self-governance with a joint management system at the top for both sides of the LoC, and you make the LoC irrelevant.
Whatever the turn of events since then, any final solution cannot go against the logic of history and geopolitics. Nations are not made and remade by every generation. It is the failure of political leadership in India, in Pakistan and in Kashmir itself that has contributed to the current situation. Too many small men in big chairs, in Delhi, in Islamabad, in Srinagar.
The task at hand today is for the political leadership in Kashmir, cutting across party political lines, to restore normalcy in the state and calm anger on the streets. They must then come forward with a consensual road map for their future that is practical and realistic. Neither Delhi nor Islamabad can help Kashmir if it is not ready to help itself.
But when normalcy returns, the endgame will be played exactly the way Mr Musharraf and Dr Singh agreed to play it out. Everyone needs a reality check on that.
My friend don't let the door hit your head on the way out in reailty both nations show the whole of kashmir as there own so please before saying dumb remarks think about it twice it might help.
