“Interlocutors” is a rather ponderous name given by the government to the group of three prominent civil society individuals it has zeroed in on to take a year to hear voices from below in Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh, filter these with sagacity, and forward the essence to the government for policymaking purposes. This group of three — to which a fourth may be added — apparently won’t be negotiators between the government and different sections of opinion in the troubled state. Their role is more akin to that of accredited journalists, except that the correspondents in question will be reporting to the government, not to independent news platforms that disseminate information to the public. In the event, it is hard to see the concrete nature of the work expected from the three individuals, other than star-gazing. Bereft as they will be of any authority, it is hard to see any serious players, particularly those in the Valley who routinely hobnob with folk on the other side in Pakistan, confiding to our interlocutors. The Kashmiris are a sceptical lot at the best of times, and at all times a deeply motivated lot, in political terms. The Mirwaiz, who is thought to be a moderate Hurriyat leader, and Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the highest ranking pro-Pakistan leader of Kashmir, have already gone on record about their absence of confidence in the interlocutors named.
This does not, however, mean that the interlocutors cannot earn the respect of those they communicate with. Much will depend on their grasp of the situation and sensitivity. The belief they need to firmly adhere to is that they are not diplomats, not politicians, not intelligence officers. They will be plain carriers of goodwill. That is an excruciating burden to carry without the expectation of concrete results. Senior journalist Dileep Padgaonkar, who is in a sense the chairman of the group, has done well to publicly suggest that he will look to the future and not be bogged down by obstacles placed by history in approaching his task. This does ease some of the burden, although the interlocutors must at all times remain intimated that the Kashmiris they will interact with will take no responsibility whatever for the dialogue they will be embarking on. The way they look at life is: their role is to make demands, it is the role of others to fulfil them or stand condemned.
The idea of getting together interlocutors to carry out continual dialogue with the people of Kashmir to put an end to the recent mistrust and violence emanated from the recent visit of members of Parliament to Kashmir last month. It was widely expected that it would be a group of politicians who would fit the bill. To that extent, picking up non-politicians comes as a complete surprise. The three chosen might have a political “persona”, as Union home minister P. Chidambaram has gratuitously remarked, but clearly they lack the skills that politicians innately and instinctively bring to their difficult job. Some would simply argue that non-politicians, even the most eminent of them, are the wrong sort to be interlocutors in the treacherous political terrain of J&K. In that sense, the chosen three may have been just thrown to the wolves for the simple reason that any politician of stature simply wouldn’t accept the assignment on account of its hazardous — possibly thankless — nature. If that is the case, the government may have been obliged to name the three individuals, who undoubtedly have an independent track record, for the sake of not losing the momentum generated after the visit of the MPs to Kashmir.