Mrs Gandhi has demonstrated such a sure political instinct on a number of occasions that it is difficult to believe that she may have made a mistake in reopening the Kashmir issue through her talks with Sheikh Abdullah. But the clashes between the followers of the Sheikh and Mir Waiz and the consequent renewal of tension in Srinagar suggest that there may perhaps be a case for her to take a second look at the approach she has adopted.
It is obvious that the majority community in Jammu still distrusts the Sheikh, that it regards even closer constitutional links between New Delhi and Srinagar as an essential guarantee of its own security and well-being, that the Jana Sangh is sufficiently well entrenched there to mount and sustain an agitation against any agreement the Prime Minister may make with the Plebiscite Front and that this can create serious complications. But for the purpose of this discussion this problem may be ignored and it may be assumed that Mrs Gandhi is strong enough to cope with it.
Difficulty
That would not, however, resolve her central difficulty which lies in the Kashmir valley. For one thing, once the Sheikh finalises the agreement, however favourable its terms from his point of view, and comes to shoulder the responsibilities of office under it, either directly or indirectly through one of his nominees, he will find it difficult to retain his present status as the symbol of the peculiarly vague aspirations of the people of the valley and to prevent Mir Waiz from gradually acquiring his mantle. This can surely create for Mrs Gandhi a situation not too dissimilar to the one Mr Nehru faced. Only the challenger will have changed.
It is obviously not quite fair to the Sheikh to compare Mir Waiz with him. The Mir does not possess either his political skill or his record of service in the struggle against the Dogra rule before 1947 and the Pakistan-supported tribal invasion in 1947. Even so, the Mir should not be underrated. A longish term of imprisonment for him and repeated use of force against his supporters can give him the halo which he may now be said to lack.
For all that we know, the Mir may well be pro-Pakistan in the sense that the Sheikh has not been even in moments of greatest bitterness against this country. That would certainly be a handicap for him in the long run because it is clear beyond doubt that the Kashmiri people do not wish to join Pakistan. But his pro-Islamabad stance can also be a useful ploy which for the moment assures him a certain measure of support both within the valley and outside and enables him to demarcate his position from that of the Sheikh.
The Mir was born and brought up in the valley. As such it would be surprising if it turns out that he is wholly insensitive to the valley’s socio-cultural milieu and its consequent political ambivalence. The chances are that he does not suffer from such insensitivity.
There is a semantic confusion here. Most people in this country have interpreted the demand for a plebiscite in Kashmir to imply the desire either for merger with Pakistan or for independence and labelled its supporters accordingly. It has not even occurred to them that it may represent nothing more definite than the desire to avoid integration with India on almost any terms, and that in reality the position of the Mir may not be very different from that held by the Sheikh until recently. This kind of ambivalence arid negativism has been completely outside the experience of people here and therefore beyond their comprehension.
The Sheikh’s association with the Indian freedom movement, his friendship and regard for Mr Nehru despite his dismissal and imprisonment and his genuine commitment to secularism and the preservation of the state’s present boundaries which include the Hindu-majority region of Jammu, have added to the difficulties of the people here in correctly interpreting the plebiscite demand. They have assumed that his hesitation in opting for independence has exclusively been the result of these factors, and that it has had nothing to do with the psychological make-up of the community of which he has been the unchallenged leader for over four decades. This is clearly an absurd proposition because even absolute dictators do not enjoy such a high degree of autonomy vis-a-vis their societies. The Sheikh has retained his position precisely because he has accurately reflected his community’s ambivalence in his behaviour and utterances.
Simplification
The Kashmiri Muslims, like other inheritors of diverse traditions, are a complex people and any statement about them runs the risk of being a gross simplification. Even so, it can perhaps be said that while they possess a personality which is distinct enough to distinguish them from not only the Hindus but also from their co-religionists in the whole of the sub-continent, it is not defined sharply enough to enable them to state their aspirations regarding relations with others in precise terms. Neither in India nor in the world of Islam is it possible to find an exact or even a near parallel.
Unlike most of his colleagues, Mr Nehru recognised the psychological aspect of the problem in Kashmir and sought to resolve it by according the state a very special status whereby it came to have an elected Sadr-i-Riyasat instead of the Centre-nominated Governor, a Prime Minister instead of a Chief Minister and even a separate constitution. It was also permitted to exclude the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and the Election Commission.
But it was unavoidable that this arrangement would come under attack from both those who believed in the state’s full integration with the Union and those who wanted even a large measure of autonomy. And it did. Caught in this crossfire the Sheikh first just drifted and then began to lean towards the second group, thus causing serious misgivings in New Delhi. He has repeatedly said that his attitude was a response to the communalism of the Jammu Praja Parishad and its allies in India, specially the Jana Sangh, then headed by Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerjee. But he had begun to lose grip long before the Parishad agitation because even the fairly loose relationship with the Union was not sufficiently loose to accord with the ambivalence of his followers in the streets of Srinagar or, for that matter, his own.
All this is recalled to make the point that if the Sheikh has to retain his present popularity after the agreement with Mrs Gandhi, he will find it necessary to try to whittle down the terms to make the constitutional arrangement with the Union more and more nebulous because the compulsions transcend his personal predilections. This point needs to he emphasised because issues in this country continue to be judged in terms of personalities and their goodwill or lack of it.
Challenge
Alternatively, if the Sheikh or his nominee as Chief Minister stands firm, the challenge presented by the Mir is likely to grow and if anything the position may be worse than it has been under the late Mr Sadiq and under Mr Qasim because in the process the Congress Party in the state would also have disappeared.
Much has been made in New Delhi of the argument that in the wake of the establishment of Bangladesh and the consequent reduction in the size and importance of Pakistan, it cannot have the same pull for the Kashmiri people as before. The plea is not entirely specious inasmuch as some such consideration appears to have weighed to some extent with the Sheikh. But it is by no means conclusive for the good and obvious reason that in the past, too, Pakistan’s pull was limited, and even now it has not lost either the capacity or the will to extend such financial and moral support as it did in the past to opponents of union with India.
It is true that in the new context Islamabad will hesitate to repeat its performance of 1965 when it sent several thousand armed men across the cease-fire line in a vain bid to promote a general uprising and seize the state. But it is not at all necessary for it to take such a risk for the purpose of keeping the situation in the state fluid to India’s detriment.
It is also being said in New Delhi that since the Sheikh is getting old, there is not much time to be lost. But this argument cuts both ways. For, by the same token, his capacity to make the agreement stick and to control his more youthful supporters must diminish. As it is, Mirza Afzal Beg has for years been functioning as his principal adviser and conscience keeper and his importance is bound to grow if and when the proposed agreement is concluded and necessary changes are made in the set-up in Srinagar.
Thus there is a case for a pause in the talks with the Sheikh’s consent. He himself should have no great difficulty in realising that it is much easier to open the Pandora’s box than to put the lid back again.
The Times of India, 17 July 1974