https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/kashmir-resolved-fine-as-election
"Kashmir resolved": Fine as election rhetoric, not policy
This week Prime Minister Narendra Modi credited himself with resolving the Kashmir issue. Immediately in wake of this victory lap, his home minister Amit Shah seconded the claim. Since both were speaking at rallies in Gujarat set to go to the polls early winter, this should be taken as a bit of excusable primping.
Expectedly though, Pakistan has taken umbrage and the usual India-Pakistan slugfest has been witnessed at meetings in international forums spanning three different continents over the week. Clearly, for Pakistan, Kashmir is not quite history as yet. Even though beset with the worst floods in its history and staring at a food deficit, it has chosen to do without Indian assistance, showing up Kashmir as its jugular.
Simultaneously, within Kashmir, there has been yet another instance of terrorism, the targeted killing of a Kashmiri Pandit. This means militants continue to have efficacy. If security forces are to be believed, their tactics of hybrid terrorism is suggestive of their being fish in hospitable water, the community. In other words, it’s not curtains on insurgency, such killings keeping it alive for a show down sometime down road.
This begs the question: Did the prime minister really mean what he said? Does his home minister know something that we don’t?
A theoretical lens
Three terms can help with the answer: Conflict Containment, Conflict Management and Conflict Resolution.
That the conflict in Kashmir has been contained - and, indeed, rolled back - over the last two decades is self-evident. India has been in a Conflict Management mode since, ministering upheavals between 2008-10 and 2016-18. Learning from the two episodes, it clamped down in 2019, saturating Kashmir with boots on ground. This crippled the mobility enjoyed by insurgents, precluding deaths – rightly observed by India’s foreign minister recently when he defended internet curbs as minimizing killings.
At best this has brought India negative peace, defined as absence (or near absence) of violence. Getting to positive peace – peace with an admixture of justice making it self-fulfilling - requires a look at Kashmir through Johann Galtung’s triangles on conflict, violence and peace.[1]
Galtung’s Conflict Triangle, popular in introductory courses to peace studies, has at its vertices: A-ttitudes; B-ehaviour; and C-ontradiction. The C-ontradiction is the dispute that has led up to hostile A-ttitudes and resulting violent B-ehaviour.
A corresponding Violence Triangle has as its vertices: Structural violence stemming from the C-ontradition; Cultural violence witnessed in adverse A-ttitudes; and Direct violence, result of adversarial B-ehaviour.
Theory juxtaposes a Peace Triangle to address the conflict, its vertices being: Peacemaking to engage with Structural violence or the C-ontradiction; Peacebuilding to address Cultural violence framed by A-ttitudes; and Peacekeeping for containing Direct violence.
Additionally, strategic (ends oriented) peacebuilding has three vertices: Structural peacebuilding; Cultural peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation. Structural peacebuilding is to get to normalization by tackling root causes through peacemaking and implementing agreements arrived at by elites. Cultural peacebuilding is facilitating reconciliation between parties estranged not only by the dispute but also holding grievances from the conflict. Conflict Transformation goes beyond conflict resolution, into forging deeper social and psychological bonds allowing for alternative means to address differences and tackle disputes, thereby transforming the relationship.
Negative Peace
Peacekeeping in the Galtung’s peace triangle can be substituted here with the counter insurgency, anti-militancy and counter terrorism measures and operations. All indices of violence are down, and comparatively speaking, it can be said that militancy is at ebb. The evidence of near normality trotted out is that tourist footfalls – that includes Hindu pilgrims to sites outside the Valley proper - have set new records. However, even as this is an important aspect of returning normalcy, it is not all.
It only bespeaks of a negative peace. It addresses violence through kinetic means. It does address root causes, that necessarily require engagement through other techniques: peacemaking and peacebuilding.
A truism has it that militancy cannot be ended by military means alone, but requires a political solution. A political solution implies peacemaking resulting in a negotiated settlement. Military means are only to create the conditions for peacemaking to kick-in. We need look no furrther than Sri Lanka to refresh this in our minds.
With Pakistan, peacemaking is reportedly on. Ever since the Ladakh intrusion of the Chinese, India has worked a secret channel with Pakistan, with third parties in the Gulf acting as go-between. Its chief product has been the ceasefire reiteration on the Line of Control. Talks continue, though Pakistan is holding out for substantive movement on Kashmir.
Internally, there is little obvious effort at peacemaking. The list of antagonists has multiplied, including as it does these days mainstream regional political parties clubbed with separatists. After the crackdown that coincided with the vacation of Article 370 of substance, many political activists remain in jail – one having died recently from medical causes while in custody.
That the government is insincere is clear from the special interlocutor appointed in 2017 who only created the grounds for the parliamentary maneuver on Article 370. Episodic interaction, such as the meeting mid-last year of the prime minister with the political spectrum in the union territory, reveals the lack of consistency. As it turned out, it was to set in motion the delimitation exercise, while blindsiding the consensus in the political parties on restoration of statehood.
There is of course a political ‘solution’ in place, which portends denying Kashmiris agency into perpetuity. Its first step has been in relegating the territory to being Delhi-governed. The next step is Union Territory elections over the coming winter. The spadework has been done for elections, in the form of a delimitation exercise, to pave the way for the ruling party at the Center taking over reins at Srinagar untrammeled by a coalition.
Statehood is being withheld for the moment in order to see who the electorate returns to power. If the ruling party, then statehood will be conferred as a reward; if the Gupkar opposition, then retention of intimate control by New Delhi would preclude statehood.
Peacemaking absent, peace is sought to be bought. Infrastructure-heavy investment biased towards strategic connectivity and exploiting of water resources for electricity is ongoing. Though the figures are impressive, how much of this helps Kashmiris directly is questionable.
Even so, from reports of an apple harvest rotting in trucks unable to exit the Valley due to traffic hold-up on the national highway, it can be seen that even in this easy bit of peacebuilding, India’s showing is not encouraging.
Often, throwing money at a problem does not make it go away. It is useful as a demonstration of commitment and to build momentum towards peace. Regenerating the economy and weaning it away from a conflict economy is a non-trivial essential step. But this cannot be mistaken for what it is not – positive peace - and cannot be implemented in isolation of non-material peacebuilding.
Positive Peace?
Peacebuilding as a line of operation has three strands: Structural, Cultural and Conflict Transformation.
Structural peacebuilding is not in evidence as of now. Structural peacebuilding assumes tackling root causes, in this case quenching the thirst for azadi. As of now, this is being denied to Kashmiris into the fifth year. When it was similarly denied in the early nineties for over six years, it was with plausible reason: security. By its fight year, efforts were underway – with redoubtable Seshan in the lead – to get the voters into the driver’s seat. Today, there is no excuse for central rule, but for the self-created exceptional circumstances arising from the erasure of content in Article 370.
As a former home minister found at long last, azadi is not self-determination but a community’s feeling of being responsible for and in control of its own destiny. Statehood without returning autonomy that can assure against fears of demographic change and cultural impositions will remain insufficient. Arvind Kejriwal’s experience in heading the lame duck Delhi administration indicates as much.
Constitution provisions exist for allaying such fears, such as enjoyed by neighbouring Himachal Pradesh. Not going down this route forthrightly shows the structural peacebuilding will continue to have a deficit that cannot but sabotage cultural peacebuilding.
The necessity of cultural peacebuilding and what it constitutes is well known to Indian security minders. The techniques were at play during the 2000s, when the outreach to Pakistan was underway. The five working group reports on Kashmir of the period and the report of the three interlocutors show how this could be done.
When the previous government had no use for these reports, it is easy to see the current-day security establishment oblivious to these. Today, they believe information war is all that is required.
This too is directed mostly at the populace in the hinterland. This is a hold-over from the past practice – taking the Vietnam lesson to heart – when the hinterland’s resolve to sustain a militarized template was seen as necessary to minister. This continues, though its need is much less so – the populace in mainland India being sufficiently infused with cultural nationalism to of its own accord want more of a militarized template than warranted.
As for addressing the perceptions of the Kashmiris, the engagement is rather ham-handed, as exposed by a recent study. Indian flags on high masts are to elicit nationalism. The practice is borrowed from Turkiye. It is uncertain if anyone researched how these flags appear to Kurds. How Kashmiris might be taking the demise of Army Dog ‘Zoom' in a gunfight that saw two of their young men dead too does not figure in security calculus on the brouhaha surrounding the disposal of the canine's remains. Masterly has been the substitution of the holiday in memory of the Lion of Kashmir with one on its last Maharaja.
If the film The Kashmir Files is any indicator, a reverse gear is set in respect of cultural peacebuilding. Whereas the pain of the Pandits is projected, it is almost as if the intent is to paper over that of their brethren community. This is the abuse of the Kashmir Pandits’ plight in national politics for purpose of polarization. It only shows that for now the Kashmir issue has political utility, necessitating the conflict be kept alive.
The leitmotif of cultural peacebuilding would be the reconciliation between the liberal and radical, Pandits and Muslims and between communities in its differing regions. Going beyond is Conflict Transformation, which is a change of heart wherein peace is arrived at by restorative justice and moving from tolerance to acceptance of others’ narratives. But going that far is to get ahead of the story.
It is apparent that the two prongs of strategy – one external and the other internal – and the peace techniques – peacemaking and peacebuilding - are not in sync. Negative peace is at hand, but positive peace has been sabotaged.
Accounting for the sabotage
The external prong - in respect of Pakistan – is hardly an outcome of a strategic design, but one brought about by a need to keep the Pakistan front dormant, even as India pivots to the eastern, China front. It profits from Pakistan’s external (the dividend from its assistance of the Taliban has not quite materialized) and internal (politics in disarray) discomfiture.
Even though India has been put on the backfoot by the Chinese intrusion, the asymmetry with Pakistan is of levels of which it can be said that a peace prong can witness negotiations from a position of strength. The asymmetry is not going to attenuate further that India needs to wait for longer. It cannot hope to kick in the door once Pakistan folds up.
But the tentativeness of the peace process does not suggest it has much grist. That it remains under wraps – being intelligence-led - means the political master is uncertain of investing political capital in its outcome.
Consequently, it is at best tactical, designed to restrain Pakistan till India gets an administration of its choice in place in Srinagar and tides over the challenge in neighbouring Ladakh. The danger arises from not only India being tactical, but also Pakistan – waiting to get past its constraints of today.
As for Pakistan, even a change in its Army Chief – due next month – can herald a change in attitude to Kashmir – as was the change once with the baton moving from Musharraf to Kayani. Though the feared spillover from Afghanistan has not materialized, it can yet play out – after all, reports are that Swat is once again threatened by the Pakistani Taliban.
It is not in a fit of senility that United States’ President Biden said Pakistan’s nuclear weapons without cohesion in structures that manage them makes it the most ‘dangerous’ country. A new international security order is emerging. Once the Ukraine War ends, the weaponry injected into the region is bound to spill over. Already, the Security Council has met twice informally over Kashmir, with Germany, a heavy weight permanent seat contender, saying the UN has an interest in unresolved Kashmir.
Internally, negative peace has held at the price of some 1000 Kashmiri youth killed since operations were stepped up with the killing of Burhan Wani. It is unlikely that youth will take an imposition from New Delhi as the next chief minister with equanimity. While the apprehended explosion has not transpired, that troops continue in place betrays the security establishment fears as much.
The external and internal impetus can potentially upset the current status quo. The Indian State’s suppressive capacity is infinite. Its military can rightly claim to a higher standard of ethical operational conduct. However, this is not so for its paramilitary or police. The recently released citizens’ report on North East Delhi violence reveals that these forces cannot be trusted when confronted with Muslims.
The army has been progressively disengaging from Kashmir. Some elements of Rashtriya Rifles have been deployed to Ladakh. The army is to reduce numbers too, reportedly numbering 200000. The Ladakh commitment is likely to see it tied down into the middle term. Its Agniveers are likely to be quick at the draw and imbued with cultural nationalism, coming of age in the Modi era, which makes it equally suspect when they deploy in aid to civil authority.
Consequently, keeping Kashmir quiescent is a national imperative. And yet, not buttressed by peacemaking, the negative peace is tenuous. Quite the reverse is being done by way of structural peacebuilding. It is mistakenly believed that cultural peacebuilding is only about changing perceptions though old-fashioned psychological operations, only with new media.
It is unclear how insertion of a Hindu chief minister from Jammu is seen as panacea. This only becomes clear when seen in relation to national politics. The messaging nationally is that Kashmir’s Muslim majority stands integrated into the Union.
As Modi put it, he has taken up and finished what Sardar Patel started and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee couldn’t. As election rhetoric, that’s understandable by standards set by Modi. As policy, his ‘solution’ will generate the next cataclysm.
[1] Oliver Ramsbotham, Tom Woodhouse and Hugh Miall, Contemporary Conflict Resolution, Polity, 2011, p. 10.
