What Is The Way Out Of Kashmir Impasse?
By Latief Ahmad Dar
22 August, 2014
Countercurrents.org
India and Pakistan celebrated their 68 th independence day and Kashmir as usual served parchment for annual rejuvenation of nationalist fervor of both countries. The parchment (Kashmir) thus serves the ideologies that are at opposite poles; the secular Ideology of India (as Perry Anderson will call it), and the religious ideology of Pakistan. And Kashmiris as usual feel offended when their national struggle is rendered obsolete by nationalist narratives of both India and Pakistan. But the question that remains is; if Kashmiris decry Indian secularism for its farcical practice, then why do they celebrate with alacrity the slogans that are greased with religious nationalism? How come the new generation cheer Pakistani cricket team's win against India (Recently 67 Kashmiri students were suspended from one of the Indian university when they celebrated Pakistani cricket teams victory over India, though later they were later reinstated under mounting public criticism)? Has it the bearing of the early embedded social self in which ‘social' teaches them that Pakistan is the benchmark of Muslim Nationalism, the repository of Muslim assertion with nukes in its armory? Or, is that that by the mounting Indian repression, Kashmiris find in Pakistan a ‘natural ally' when Pakistan confronts India through various means: covert actions or at UN where Pakistan raises Kashmir issue time and again (even though Zulfikar Ali Bhutto once said ‘Kashmir is the manifestation (symptom), not the fundamental cause of the Indo-Pak conflict)? The complexity of such questions becomes all more intriguing when Pakistan considers Kashmir as its jugular vein as it did a few months ago.
But how does the emerging Kashmiri nationalist discourse deal with such questions that link the Kashmiri national self-determination with Pakistan; linkage that denies Kashmir the autonomous political agency. Kashmiris have severely challenged the Indian national discourse of secular democracy on the grounds of differential approach that has basis in religious discrimination. This challenge has become more sedimented in light of human rights violations , disappearances , political killings, electoral malpractices , which hook the door of dissent that took religious connotations after militant uprising of 1989.
When it comes to challenge the Pakistani narrative, the efforts to challenge it have been nothing short of ‘frozen pens' that the coldness of religious limits have since decades condemned as dead rubber. What is the way out of such impasse? How to let off the rhetoric of two nation theory : Kashmir as ‘ unfinished agenda ' of the partition? How far have efforts been made to convey to Pakistani establishment that Kashmir exists as an independent entity not a jugular vein controlled by the ‘being' of Pakistan? I think answer is in negative.
This negative approach exacerbates the Kashmir problem and adds to the dead-lock on solving the Kashmir conundrum. What importantly kept Kashmir from reaching statehood is the ‘essentialized linkages' with India and Pakistan? If linkages with India have been challenged, it is even more important to challenge them with Pakistan, to break through gates of impasse. But the broader question is how to challenge them. The challenge should start right at the foundations of such linkages, which demands to deconstruct the religious nationalism that is used to justify Kashmir's inclusion in Pakistan. It is of immense importance because deconstruction will help in removing the rhetorical mask of religious affinity from underlying and more important economic, national, or geographical motives.
Beginnings in this direction can be made by highlighting how economic considerations motivated Pakistan more than the co-religionist claims. Add to it, as Navnita Chadha Behera in his book Demystifying Kashmir (2006) argues; Kashmir was more of political tussle between Congress and Muslim League than the ideological confrontation. The economic considerations are so over-powering that one of the experts on the Indo-Pak rivalry, Robert Wirsing, remarks that Kashmir issue is all about water conflict . It ‘is far more a consequence of Pakistan's mounting water insecurity and desperate dependence on Kashmir's river resources than any deep interest in the political liberation of Kashmiris… Western discussion of the conflict over Kashmir that treats it as little more than an historical leftover….in need of a reality check trivializes or even totally ignores what is in fact one of the most profound developments of our day – the rapidly mounting international rivalry in water scarce parts of the planet for control of fresh water resources'. This becomes clearer in the statements of the various Pakistani leaders. Zafarulla Khan, Pakistan's former foreign minister after partition, while pleading Pakistan's case for Kashmir in UN made it clear that Kashmir has potentialities for large scale hydro – electric power plants, which are also indispensable for industrialization and for raising the living standards of its inhabitants and Pakistan. To him Pakistan-both from economic and strategic point of view- will become feudatory of India if Kashmirs acceded to India. Thus the mask of religious nationalism/ two-nation theory with respect to Kashmir began to dwindle as early as 1948 by economic compulsions. Ayub khan put it more succinctly that ceasefire (enforced after 1947-48 Indo Pak war in Kashmir) is grip around our neck in the sense that three rivers on which life of whole of West Pakistan depends flow from Pakistan, and as the population increases every drop of that water has to be husbanded stored and utilized. Where again did the religious sentiment go?
Liaquat khan, Pakistan's first prime minister considered Kashmir nothing but a natural barrier, in his words, ‘against the unscrupulous government that might come in India'. So it is manifest that the much talked religious affinity by Pakistan was nothing but to hide the underlying economic and strategic motives. Recently when former Pakistani President, Asif Ali Zardari, was asked whether he will prefer trade first than Kashmir, his answer was resounding ‘ Exactly' . The reflection on these motives can serve as the beginning to shun of the religious narrative of Pakistan and put the movement for national assertion on its own footing, in which it is informed by its internal societal moorings rather than over imposed religious identity.
Latief Ahmad Dar is pursuing PhD in Political Science at University of Hyderabad, India. The area of interest is ‘ “Role of Cultural Markers in National Consolidation: An analysis of Kashmiriyat”. [email protected]
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