The veteran Kashmir political leader, Dr Farooq Abdullah has been repeatedly offering his good office to broker peace between India and Pakistan. It is a pious idea and any citizen of the beleaguered state will welcome it if he achieves the impossible. History will write his name in letters of gold and the world community will strongly recommend that the UN nominate him for next year’s Nobel Laureate award.
Former Prime Minister of India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, too, had travelled to Pakistan by bus via the Wagah border in the hope of brokering a peace accord with Pakistan. To stake his claim for the Nobel Laureate, he started his journey to Lahore with his famous triumvirate axiom of “Kashmiriyat, Insaniyat, and Jamhooriyat.” Alas, he was played by General Musharraf, whose commandos were simultaneously scaling the Soltoro heights in Kargil.
Had not Musharraf been perfidious, Vajpayee would have achieved what he intended to, and today Dr Farooq would not have to lament the “threat to Kashmir’s development” from Pakistan’s proxies in and outside the country. Vajpayee had gone to Pakistan hoping that General Musharraf was a liberal and pragmatic leader. It is hoped that if Dr Farooq’s meeting with Pakistan’s present military chief — a product of hardcore Jama’at-i-Islami ideology — matures, he would be the prospective candidate for Nobel Laureate and it might qualify him to be elected President of India, an aspiration that he has entertained for many years.
The Kashmir Valley leadership has been euphoric about the above-cited triumvirate. Uniquely, they have an appreciation for the late Indian Prime Minister. It is encouraging that the Kashmir valley leadership has given some credit to one prime minister of India for being a sympathiser of Kashmiris, and shows appreciation and respect for him. But, alas, his adulators in Kashmir, including Dr Farooq, never expressed regret for the failure of Vajpayee’s mission and never pointed the finger of culpability for that failure towards the Kargil war strategist. Who knows? Dr Farooq’s cherished peace brokering visit may lead to something different in its trail.
This apart, nobody, not even the current leaders of his Party, the BJP, ever tried to analyse the now popular trinitarian slogan attributed to Atal ji.
The impression one gathers from the axiom is as this: (a) Kashmiriyat was something outside the pale of Indianness that the Indian nation had neither explored nor understood; (b) Insaniyat is a supreme virtue that the Indian rulers had denied to the Kashmiris, and (c) Jamhooriyat (democracy) is an asset of Kashmiris had been deprived.
Hindsight will show that the entire nation has been misled by the vague term Kashmiriyat because so far no historian or commentator has been able to define in precise terms what Kashmiriyat implies. I know how, why and when this illusory and vague term was coined and popularised through ‘non-sociable’ channels. But this is not the occasion to go into that discussion.
As for ‘Insaniyat’,’ did Atal ji mean that Kashmiris were not humans (insan) or that humane treatment was denied to them and that, therefore, they needed to be given humane treatment — a prescription of which he was a votary?
I will not attempt to indulge in a historical critique of the three components of Vajpayee’s axiom about Kashmir but I am tempted to remind the government on Raisina Hill that India is the mother of democracy, quoting the Rig-Veda and the Atharvaveda, the earliest available sacred texts referring to participatory institutions like the Sabha, Samiti, and Sansad, the last term still in use to name our parliament. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata also talk about involving people in decision-making. There are also statements in Indin ancient texts about the authority to govern being earned through merit or consensus and not by mere hereditary right. There has been constant discourse on the legitimacy of the voter in various democratic institutions such as the Parishad and Samiti. The Indian democracy is truly a festive proclamation of veracity, cooperation, collaboration, peace, sympathy and collective strength of the people.
Were these attributes denied to Jammu and Kashmir when it acceded to the Indian Union or thereafter? Who interrupted the process and why? Prime Minister Vajpayee, himself an outstanding scholar of Indology, knew that Kashmir’s contribution to the great Indic civilisation was fundamental. Ancient Kashmir radiated these virtues to the entire Bharat. Atal ji, whom the entire nation respects, could have given more credit to the Indian nation.
Dr Farooq’s aspiration to travel to Pakistan and talk to Pakistani authorities is a bizarre idea. But before he embarks on the adventure, he has to focus on two important points. The first is that his late father visited Pakistan in May 1964 at the behest of Prime Minister Nehru. He first went to Karachi where he had a meeting with the then Pakistani President Ayub Khan. What transpired between them is not publicly known but common sense suggests that he must have told his son all that was discussed. Dr Farooq should make those revelations public before he buys a bus ticket for Islamabad.
The grapevine has it that Field Marshall Ayub Khan rejected the Sheikh’s plan of a Three-State Confederation between India, Pakistan and independent Kashmir. Disappointed with Ayub Khan’s outright rejection, the Sheikh headed toward Muzaffarabad more for face-saving as ther was nothing he could productively discuss with that client state. If this account is true and only Dr Farooq can confirm it, then it is a foregone conclusion that his contemplated visit will no yield an intrinsically different result.
Moreover, it is extensively rumoured that after his 1996 election, Dr Farooq had initiated confidential parleys with Islamabad. An MP who had won his seat on the NC ticket was tasked with conducting the talks. This MP shuttled between Srinagar and Islamabad for nearly a year. However, this venture was never made public, and to date, no word has come in the press about what transpired between the two sides. Since the name of the MP never made rounds in the political circles of Kashmir, it is presumed the episode has been shelved for reasons best known to Dr Farooq. He has the moral obligation to tell the people of the State what his emissary had discussed in Islamabad and what was the outcome.
Farooq is a seasoned politician. He would never volunteer to broker peace unless he has done some spadework. Talking to Pakistan means talking to the Pakistani army chief. The channel that can facilitate the talk is the Jama’at-i-Islami Pakistan because the Chief of Staff is the product of Jama’at’s ideology. Jama’at-i-Islami of Kashmir is closely linked to its Pakistani chapter. Therefore, it is highly probable that Farooq wants to travel to Pakistan according to the JI’s agenda.
It should be noted that while Dr Farooq has been calling for Indo-Pak talks for a long time, during the past three decades and a half he has not said once that the militants should stop waging terror attacks in Kashmir, lay down their arms, and help initiate talks with Pakistan. Only a few weeks ago, he said that the militants should be arrested and not shot dead. Whose message was he conveying?
Nevertheless, we should not discourage Dr Farooq in his peace initiative. He has many friends in PoK and Great Britain besides others within the POK Diaspora in Luton, Birmingham, Yorkshire and other English towns, many of whom would like the POJK to secede from Pakistan and rejoin the Indian Union. Farooq can offer them goodwill and also some succour to help achieve what they have been calling for since last year. They have torn away the Pakistani national flag and hoisted the Indian tricolour at various places throughout PoK and Gilgit Baltistan. The attempt at a settlement is worth making.
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