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Saturday, March 16, 2024

Any dialogue on Kashmir?

"India’s bellicose policy is contrary to advice by India’s own foreign secretaries.  India unilaterally included the disputed Kashmir state and Nepalese and Chinese territory into Indian maps. In Dogra footsteps, it heavily mlitarised Kashmir state to stifle dissent."

During his visit, the president-elect of the United Nations’ General Assembly said `India-Pakistan should resolve Kashmir mutually, will assist only if asked’. Earlier, the International Crisis Group, and United State’s Institute of Peace (USIP) stressed need for a dialogue to resolve the Kashmir dispute.

Despite India’s cartographic annexation of Jammu and Kashmir, the state remains a disputed territory, a veritable nuclear flashpoint. The Kashmir dispute as also Siachin Glacier and Sir Creek remained unresolved owing to India’s obduracy. The USIP recommended Parvez Musharraf’s formula to break ice.  This formula should have been palatable to India, being a plagiarism of former Indian foreign-secretary Jagat S. Mehta’s formula. Maybe, But, India rejected it.

History tells when negotiations stall, war results. After the war, most warriors realise that it was avoidable. India could learn this bitter reality from Europe that has been in throes of war or at daggers drawn for so long. India is reluctant to talk to Pakistan eyeball-to-eyeball. Nor is it amenable to third-party mediation. What do India’s own foreign secretaries call for?

Read More: Is Pakistan’s political map of disputed Jammu and Kashmir really an “absurdity”?

Foreign secretary Jagat S. Mehta

Mehta understood India’s abhorrence to word ‘plebiscite’. So he presented some proposals to serve as requirements for evolving a solution after a period of ten years.

His proposals are contained in his article “Resolving Kashmir in the International Context of the 1990s” Some points of his quasi-solution are: (a) Pacification of the valley until a political solution is reached. (b) Conversion of the Loc into “a soft border permitting free movement and facilitating free exchanges…” (c) Immediate demilitarization of the Loc to a depth of five to ten miles with agreed methods of verifying compliance. (d) Final settlement of the dispute between India and Pakistan can be suspended (kept in a “cold freeze”) for an agreed period.

Voracious readers may refer for detail to Robert G Wirsing, India, Pakistan and the Kashmir Dispute (1994, St Martin’s Press, New York pp. 225-228).

Read More: India’s claims on Kashmir rest on a dubious legal instrument

Shyam Saran

India’s former foreign secretary Shyam Saran, in his book How India Sees the World (pp. 88-93) makes startling revelations. He recalls how Siachen Glacier and Sir Creek agreements could not fructify for lack of political will or foot dragging.

He says ‘NN Vohra, who was the defence secretary at the time, confirmed in a newspaper interview that an agreement on Siachen had been reached. At the last moment, however, a political decision was taken by the Narasimha Rao government to defer its signing to the next round of talks scheduled for January the following year. But, this did not happen…My defence of the deal became a voice in the wilderness’.

Similarly, demarcation of Sir Creek maritime boundary was unnecessarily delayed. Saran tells ` if we accepted the Pakistani alignment, with the east bank of the creek as the boundary, then Pakistan would get only 40 per cent of the triangle.

If our alignment according to the Thalweg principle was accepted, Pakistan would get 60 per cent. There was a keen interest in Pakistan to follow this approach but we were unable to explore this further when the Siachen deal fell through. Pakistan was no longer interested in a stand-alone Sir Creek agreement’ (Thalweg principle places the dividing line mid-channel in the river).

Foreign Secretary and national-security advisor Shiv Shankar Menon:. He ruled out `a military solution’ as option to settle India-Pakistan disputes.  Menon said so while participating in a panel discussion alongside Pulitzer Prize winning American author and academic Steve Coll and US journalist and author Peter Bergen. His remarks are an affront to civilian hawks and its army chief’s gung-ho statements.

Read More: India and China fundamentally misunderstand each other on the LAC

Foreign secretary JN Dixit

As quoted in Victoria Schofield’s book Kashmir in the Crossfire, he says ‘it is no use splitting legal hair. Everybody who has a sense of history knows that legality only has relevance up to the threshold of transcending political realities. And especially in inter-state relations… so to quibble about points of law and hope that by proving a legal point you can reverse the process of history is living in a somewhat contrived utopia. It won’t work.’

Foreign secretary: Krishnan Srinivasan: In an article, he outlines ‘Lessons for Kashmir from the Kuriles’ (The Hindu dated January 7, 2019). Srinivasan points out ‘Russia has for long been Japan’s hypothetical enemy’.

But, the two countries are no longer at daggers with regard to Kurile Islands dispute. Four islands in the Kurile chain are claimed by Japan but occupied by Russia as successor state of the Soviet Union. ‘Despite the passage of over 70 years, this dispute has defied solution and prevented the conclusion of a Russo-Japanese peace treaty to draw a final curtain over the detritus of the war’. The Russians have deployed submarines and missile systems in disputed islands to preclude American intervention.

Moscow erects its claim on the post-war settlements of Yalta and San Francisco. Japan bases its claim on Russia-Japan treaties of 1855 and 1875.

Japan and Russia

After Mr. Putin’s visit to Japan in 2016, both leaders embarked on some joint undertakings on the islands without delving into entrenched legal position. They agreed to joint field surveys, joint economic activities and three levels of supervision. The cooperation covers marine species and aquaculture, greenhouse strawberry and vegetable cultivation, tourism, wind power generation, the reduction and disposal of garbage.

The cooperation, despite US reservations, is amazing. Moscow fears: (a) Tokyo amending Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, which disallows Japan from maintaining or using a military force to settle international disputes, (b) Japan is among the world’s biggest spenders on defence. It plays host to American bases and missile systems, and plans to spend $240 billion up to 2024 on cruise missiles, missile interceptors, fighter jets and aircraft carriers.

Both Japan and Russia are pursuing greater collaboration, despite US displeasure at Japan’s accommodating attitude towards Russia. Srinivasan observes ‘although no two international problems are analogous, there are important lessons to be drawn from the manner in which traditionally hostile neighbours can identify common interests and explore unorthodox avenues along which to proceed in search of innovative solutions to apparently insoluble disputes. This requires strong leadership and a bold imagination. Neither India nor Pakistan lacks either attribute’.

Read More: The story of intrigues, deception & the dual accession of Kashmir

Price India paid for inflexibility

Several times in history, India had to shun inflexibility and beg for mediation. India herself rushed to the United Nations for help against `raiders’ (Akbar Khan, Raiders in Kashmir). In 1962, battered by Chinese troops at North Eastern Frontier Agency (Arunachal Pradesh), New Delhi rushed to US President John F. Kennedy for “two squadrons of B-47 bombers” and “12 squadrons of supersonic fighters manned by American crew” (Herald, Karachi, March 1, 2019).

Unable to remove Pakistani fighters from Kargil heights, including Tiger Hill, India again approached the United States with a muffled request for help during the Kargil crisis: Renowned journalist Barkha Dutt, in her book, This Unquiet Land: Stories from India’s Fault Line says: “The former Indian National Security Advisor Brajesh Misra during an interview to NDTV revealed that a letter given to President Clinton by PM Vajpayee [in Kargil quandary] had hinted that India was contemplating crossing the Line of Control as well as using nuclear weapons if Pakistan did not pull out the fighters from Kargil.” This is also quoted in Foreign Policy (July 31, 2016). And, yet, India celebrates Kargil Victory each year.

Conclusion

India’s bellicose policy is contrary to advice by India’s own foreign secretaries.  India unilaterally included the disputed Kashmir state and Nepalese and Chinese territory into Indian maps. In Dogra footsteps, it heavily mlitarised Kashmir state to stifle dissent.

To stifle the Kashmiri’s fighting spirit, the dogra (1846-1947) punished even Kashmiri children who played with fork-slings (ghulail in Urdu) and stones (Muhammad Yousaf Saraf, Kashmiris Fight for Freedom, vol. 1, p. 50). Under the dogra rule, the Kashmiri were treated no better than beasts of burden. The reign of terror by Indian forces (now estimated at about nine lac regulars and security personnel) who replaced the maharajah’s constabulary on October 27, 1947 is no less gruesome (abductions, custodial deaths, rapes, and pellet shelling)

But, neither India, nor the dogra could gag the Kashmir’s fighting spirit. The struggle for freedom goes on. Even if India wins a nuclear war, the victory would be pyrrhic. Peace not war with neighbours is the way out.

Mr. Amjed Jaaved is editor of the monthly magazine, The Consul. He has been contributing free-lance for over five decades. His contributions stand published in the leading dailies and magazines at home and abroad (Nepal. Bangladesh, et. al.). He is author of eight e-books including Terrorism, Jihad, Nukes and other Issues in Focus. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space.