The quest for peace

The separatist agitation on the streets of Srinagar must be recognised for what it actually is — a new phase of the proxy war with the Pakistan Army, which is trying out a revised strategy after its earlier efforts to detach the Kashmir Valley from India by direct war, insurgency and terrorism all failed. Within a democracy, if grievances are justifiable and legitimate, demonstrations of public anger demand acceptance, acknowledgement and redressal. But if, as in this case, a violent agitation seeks to

appropriate the democratic process and exploit its inbuilt soft spots to further an anti-national and separatist agenda, it must not be allowed to succeed. India is following an established democratic process to resolve the issues in the Kashmir Valley, but cannot allow it to be hijacked by extra-national elements. Indian security forces are engaged in a most unpleasant, totally thankless, but absolutely vital national task that has to be carried out under all circumstances. There is no reason to be in any way diffident or defensive about the efforts to control the situation in Srinagar and elsewhere in the Valley.
The street confrontations in Srinagar also draw attention to the changing dynamics of “aid to civil authority” and the traditional role of the Army in the maintenance of law and order. Lethal force for crowd control is politically unacceptable, but the Army really has few other options. Post-Independence, public attitude has also undergone transformation and has become much more confrontational. Also, it has eroded the traditional deterrence ascribed to an Army presence. Unruly mobs can defy a mobilised military with impunity, as demonstrated glaringly in Kolkata in the communally surcharged street rioting and arson instigated during the visit of controversial Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen to the city in November 2007.
Earlier, the only two organisations for this purpose were the civil police and the Army, the primary responsibility being that of the police, with the Army in the backup mode as a deterrent, to intervene in case police action fails to have the desired effect. But now with a substantial quantum of Central police and paramilitary forces available, the basic concept of military aid for maintenance of law and order needs to be re-examined.
Police and paramilitary forces should be more than adequate for this purpose and military assistance should be sought only if there is a possibility of disturbances escalating beyond their combined resources — a situation highly improbable unless conditions of a civil war prevail, involving external sponsorship or intervention. This would require constitutional and procedural reviews to establish “internal security” as a category separate from “maintenance of law and order”, the latter remaining the constitutional responsibility of state governments as at present and requisition of military assistance restricted solely to situations of internal security, and that too possibly only in contingencies requiring Central intervention under Article 356 of the Constitution.
Meanwhile certain section of the media, both domestic and foreign, are trying to project the street confrontations in the Kashmir Valley with the aura of a regional “intifada” on the lines of the Palestinian freedom struggle. The late Yasser Arafat was a distinguished friend of India and enjoyed widespread popular support and sympathy in this country. The Palestinian intifada took place in two waves, the First Intifada in 1987-93 and the Second or Al Aqsa Intifada in 2000-2005. There were dramatic images of stone-pelting Palestinians confronting Israeli tanks, but it was by no means a non-violent movement and one of its lesser-known aspects is the campaign of suicide bombing that accompanied it. The Pakistan Army is attempting to co-opt Intifada into its own jihadi playbook, as a tactic of opportunity against India in the Valley. Keeping the history of Intifada in mind it would be prudent to anticipate and prepare for possible increasing tempo of suicide bombing and fidayeen-type attacks in the country both within and outside Jammu and Kashmir.
The quest for political solutions to the issue of Jammu and Kashmir has been stumbling from pothole to pothole on a deeply rutted road. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh initiated one such process during his first tenure itself, with three all-party Round Table meetings in 2006 and 2007, and the constitution of five working groups to deal with its various aspects, most importantly that of relations between Jammu and Kashmir and the Central government. But beyond churning up the accumulated silt from earlier pronouncements going all the way back to the original Dixon Plan of 1950, the working groups and their reports have yielded nothing of substance. For practitioners of politics within the Valley, there are compulsions for a stridently anti-India stance and the two main political parties, the National Conference (NC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) both have to earn their stripes with the lumpen masses of the Kashmir votebanks by sailing as close to the edge of “azaadi” as possible in their party manifestoes.
Of the two, the NC and its perception of “greater autonomy” seems to be relatively more restrained, while there is very little to choose between the radicalised “self-rule” line of the PDP and “azaadi” of the separatists. Deification of the Hurriyat by successive Central governments has yielded no results, beyond bestowing almost supranational status on separatist leaders like Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Syed Ali Shah Geelani, and giving them an exaggerated notion of their importance, something which is unlikely to change unless political parties based in Jammu and Ladakh can agree to come together with a common nationalistic agenda on a united anti-separatist political platform, though even in that event, these will not constitute the political majority in the state Assembly. But certainly a large enough minority can put up a meaningful joint Opposition to the political agendas of the separatists. Meanwhile, as things stand in the Kashmir Valley, the tail of the Hurriyat will definitely continue to wag the Government of India and a calendar of uninterrupted confrontation seems inevitable, at least in the foreseeable future.

Gen. Shankar
Roychowdhury is a former Chief of Army Staff and a
former Member of Parliament