Channel to solution in Kashmir

A rainbow appears in the sky after heavy rainfall near the Line of Control in Poonch, Jammu and Kashmir, on May 24. Pic/PTI

This column last week advocated that Delhi should satisfy the political aspirations of Kashmiris in some measure, without which India can't have peace and security. Such an advocacy might seem a fantasy as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party have become ideologically more rigid since they abrogated, in August 2019, Article 370 and Article 35A, and bifurcated and demoted Jammu and Kashmir to a Union Territory.

My advocacy might also seem a fantasy because the disenchantment of Kashmiris with Delhi has only grown, not lessened. In the best of times, Kashmiris were ambivalent about their political and emotional identification with India.

But Modi was not always so inflexible. The evidence: A draft agreement between India and Pakistan on Kashmir, finalised under his predecessor Manmohan Singh, seemed acceptable to Modi. Awaiting to be signed, the draft agreement was an outcome of back-channel diplomacy conducted between late Indian diplomat Satinder Lambah and three of his Pakistani counterparts. Lambah provides an account of it in his book, In Pursuit of Peace: India-Pakistan Relations Under Six Prime Ministers.

Since the Congress-led government seemingly shied away from signing the draft agreement in 2013-14, Singh appended a note to the official file on Indo-Pak back-channel negotiations, saying this "could only be opened" on the next prime minister's instruction.

The next prime minister was Modi. A senior official in the Prime Minister's Office told Lambah that after the draft agreement was reviewed, it was decided that "no major change was required" to be made to it. "There appeared to be an intent to continue the back-channel process," Lambah wrote.

On April 20, 2017, the senior PMO official told Lambah that Modi wanted him to visit Pakistan to meet Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Two days later, he was informed that he'd be given details of the points to be discussed with Sharif. On the same day, Lambah and the senior PMO official met the late legal luminary Fali Nariman to "refresh some points" from the perspective of the Indian Constitution.

But the next day, a media report claimed an industrialist had gone as Modi's emissary to Pakistan, for meeting Sharif. Believing it would be improper for two people to represent Modi for the same purpose, Lambah withdrew from the goings-on.

Now, rewind to 2014, when Lambah, with Singh's consent, spelled out the broad contours of the agreement in a speech at Srinagar's Lalit Hotel, on May 13, 2014. He said the past six decades had shown that the Kashmir issue couldn't be settled through "war, force or violence."

Lambah, then, outlined the agreement's broad contours - no redrawing of borders; free movement of people from one side of the Line of Control to the other; removal of tariff and non-tariff barriers for locally produced goods for facilitating trade between the two Kashmirs; an end to terrorism and thereafter, reduction of the military forces to the minimum on both sides, particularly in populated areas; "self-governance for internal management in all areas on the same basis on both sides of the LoC"; and reintegration into society of those engaged in "violent militant activities."

Indeed, Modi's acceptance of the draft agreement to whatever degree is a far cry from his current position that any talk with Pakistan would be only on the status of its Kashmir. It's tempting to think the draft agreement could be resurrected, even now.

From Lambah's book, it doesn't seem the draft agreement was shown to the Kashmiri political leadership. This was certainly a big flaw. Yet the draft agreement does articulate the concerns of Kashmiris, other than the one espousing self-determination.

Kashmir's slate of concerns, obviously, has expanded since the abrogation of Article 370. It's delusional to think Kashmiris would be satisfied with just the restoration of J&K's statehood. What they fear most is the demographic flooding of J&K, with outsiders allowed to buy land there and secure domicile certificates. Out of 34,12,184 domicile certificates issued in the last two years, 83,742, or 2.38 percent, were given to those who were not "state subjects" before 2019. Between 2020 and 2022, just 185 individuals from outside of J&K bought land there, but their number, worryingly for Kashmiris, rose from one in 2020 to 127 in 2022.

Hundreds of political prisoners languish in prison, and well over 2000 were detained after the Baisaran massacre, with nearly 90 of them, according to a Kashmir Times story, booked under the draconian Public Safety Act for pelting stones and protesting in their teenage years. Newspapers have been compelled to become government mouthpieces. A murmur of dissent invites retribution.

This ambience creates a breeding ground for militancy, conducive for Pakistan to foment terror. India may retaliate against Pakistan, but every military crisis between them invariably invites third-party mediation. It's in India's interest to revive the 2013-14 draft agreement for offering to Kashmiris a solution that wouldn't seem to them a betrayal of their bloody past. Yet even such overtures can't be made until the BJP dilutes Hindutva politics, which doesn't score very high on either humanity or rationality. And that's a problem, for what the Centre can give Kashmiris must precede what they might willingly accept.

The writer is a senior journalist and author of Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste.
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