Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah could have weighed his words with better care when he spoke in the Assembly earlier this week. It was the first opportunity the young National Conference leader had to place his government’s views on the complex issues underlying the three-month-long violent agitation which claimed more than a hundred lives in the Valley. In this time he was under heavy political pressure from the key mainstream Opposition, the People’s Democratic Party, and every shade of separatist opinion. It would have been fitting for him to take on these forces ideologically and politically, and to underline the transparent quality of his good intentions in relation to the governance agenda. Instead, the chief minister appeared to get carried away, calling Kashmir a decades-old “dispute” between India and Pakistan. This is as close as a mainline Kashmiri politician has ever got to the Jamaat-e-Islami or Hurriyat position. It is probable that the young Mr Abdullah used the word “dispute” in a general sense. But he holds office under both the J&K Constitution and the Constitution of India. The former categorically states that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral territory of India. The clearest Indian case is that Pakistan has committed aggression in the Indian state of J&K, occupying about 40 per cent of its territory — and that India has every intention to have the aggression vacated. Given his constitutional position, the chief minister was obliged to protect the integrity of his position when speaking on the Assembly floor. It will not do to take an alarmist view of the CM’s observations, but it is required that he be asked to refurbish his perspectives when speaking from public forums.
It is unlikely that the PDP and separatist elements will now show Mr Abdullah greater solicitousness. It is more than likely that they will now demand his head, if only to demonstrate his fidelity to his own words in the House. The BJP has already asked him to resign. The CM may thus find himself cornered between the politics of Hindu nationalists and Kashmiri Muslim nationalists. It is not in the Centre’s interest that the National Conference-Congress coalition government go under on account of the chief minister’s lack of political verve. It is, of course, quite appropriate for Mr Abdullah to assert that he was not a “puppet” of New Delhi. He is an elected leader, after all. But it is baffling why he saw the need to state the obvious. New Delhi has not treated him in a subservient manner at all, scrupulously according him all the constitutional propriety and respect that his position demands. Citing a statement of the Union home secretary apparently made in July during a television interview is to stretch matters. Looking back, it was a minor issue and the chief minister has needlessly sought to blow it up out of proportion, possibly just to look good in the House.
The stage we are in calls for the selection of interlocutors to open political channels with relevant sections of Kashmir opinion. The chief minister will do well to show awareness of this in his public statements, and to facilitate the broad process as a call of history instead of getting caught up in dodgy history by suggesting that Jammu and Kashmir had acceded to India under an agreement. This is plainly unhistorical. The facts are that in late 1947, the maharaja beseeched New Delhi to send Indian forces into the Valley to protect his state from Pakistani invaders, and in return for this he signed the instrument of accession. The document was signed in the presence of Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, the chief minister’s grandfather, following a specific demand of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru made on the maharaja.