Modi’s Kashmir score card: Do walk the talk

Arun Joshi

Kashmir is a difficult and challenging terrain for any Prime Minister of the country.  It builds personalities who seize opportunities and introduce appealing concepts of their respective brand of politics in a bold fashion— as did former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee who used the soil of Kashmir to extend a hand of friendship to Pakistan. It also is a graveyard of  many a reputation — Manmohan Singh who  started his innings with a commitment  to build a "naya" or New Kashmir but ended with no grand results to show at the end of his decade-long tenure as Prime Minister.  

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had more than one opportunity to transform the political, psychological and economic landscape of all the three regions of the state, particularly the Valley, in the past two years. His biggest strength is  the massive electoral mandate  and the personality cult. Despite a mood of  trepidation  in  this  only Muslim majority state of the country there was also a hope that  he   might  chart a new course to  give a  real-time meaning to the three mantras of his illustrious predecessor   Vajpayee  who had envisioned  a solution through insaniyat (humanity), jambhooriyat (democracy) and  Kashmiriyat (a concept denoting the Valley’s composite culture)  way back in 2000. 

Modi reiterated his commitment to follow Vajpayee's path in 2014, 2015 and 2016  to reach out to the people of Kashmir, but the  Valley is  waiting for these  pronouncements to be translated into action on the ground.  The wait is getting longer as there are no visible steps being taken by New Delhi to  know what is  wrong and how it can be rectified. 

Manmohan Singh pragmatically  acknowledged the “internal and external  dimensions” of the issue. His attempt was reflected in the five working groups that he had constituted to determine  the extent of the problem  at various fronts and to find out ways and means to address those. Simultaneously, he had  opened channels of communication with Pakistan. As summed up by former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah in 2006, “There was a golden opportunity to resolve the K issue...” The internal situation in Pakistan  in 2007, following the dismissal of Chief Justice Iftikhar Choudhary followed by  26/11  halted the process.

Prime Minister Modi's opening  was  stunningly remarkable. The South-Asian neighbourhood  appeared on his foreign policy  horizon. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was among the leaders who attended Modi’s swearing-in ceremony. That was a grand gesture and there was a rethink in some quarters in Jammu and Kashmir about the image and attitude of Modi toward Pakistan and what all he wanted to achieve by this approach.  A hope had sprung up for them.

A conspicuous part of  Nawaz Sharif's visit to Delhi was that Hurriyat leaders from Kashmir were neither invited, nor did they insist on talks with  the visiting Pakistan Prime Minister. Back home, Nawaz  Sharif had to face a lot of flak for this miss. But some Hurriyat leaders sensed a chance of success of a process between two countries and were willing to wait for their turn to express their viewpoint. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq  felt that  if the two countries could make progress on their own, the Kashmir issue could be resolved  with the involvement of leaders of Kashmir at some stage.  He has  been consistent in his belief that the process would lead to results and  expectation of instant results could damage the process. Kashmir is a decades-old issue and it cannot be resolved overnight.  

 Notwithstanding the Prime Minister's endorsement of  the PDP-BJP government in the state, the PDP-BJP government is stuck in its own contradictions. Its  attempts  to regain lost paradise  are hobbled by the situation, scepticism and lack of adequate support on the ground. The PDP is unsure which side to tilt and the state's BJP leadership is clueless about Kashmir because they have never stepped out of  their cocoons in Jammu.  And, the result is that the common Kashmiri feels distanced and hemmed in by the one-sided narrative in which either the idea of composite culture or the idea of India is missing. 

When Modi took over,  there existed a breathing space for the idea of India in the Valley and forces of peace were visible. Radicalism had started appearing on the scene, but there were strong voices upholding the traditional values of Kashmir. The way he started visiting Jammu and Kashmir and unfolded the economic initiatives  in the Railways, power and connectivity sectors,  generated the hope of  progress on the political front as well. 

 But doubts surfaced  after the Foreign-Secretary level talk were called off, following a meeting of the Hurriyat leaders with Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit  in August, 2014. The fierce exchange of fire on borders, coupled with the rhetoric of the Assembly election campaign, despite the fact that there was no mention about the abrogation of Article 370 in the  BJP's vision document, suspicion gained ground. The moment  the BJP as a political party  embarked on 44-plus mission Kashmir, the Muslims felt  as if a tempest was  about to hit their boat of identity. The BJP   was more keen on securing a political victory   than showcasing itself as Vajpayee's party, announcements to that effect notwithstanding. 

In between, the Prime Minister had sounded a right note during the September 2014 floods,  when he  declared that the treasury of the Centre was open to provide relief to the marooned people in Jammu and Kashmir. But when things started moving at a snail's pace in response to the state government's plea for early release of the sum of money for the  relief and rehabilitation, all those who stoked doubts had a field day. The announcement of Rs 80,000 crore in November 2015 could not succeed in damage control. 

Today,  the alienation  in Kashmir is “more than 100 per cent,” quipped a young journalist in his twenties. This statement  or perception is enough  to  disturb the sleep. Hordes of villagers  thronging to  disrupt the Army’s operations against militants and thousands attending the funeral of  militants is a picture to which one cannot shut one's eyes. Two years have not made a difference the way people of Jammu and Kashmir were expecting.  May be something really good happens in the third year.

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