Book review: Kashmir A Tragedy of Errors

Kashmir evokes strong emotions in both India and Pakistan. For so long has the dispute been looked at from the respective nationalistic viewpoints, always mutually exclusive and hostile, that objectivity has come to be regarded as' treason´. Both countries present carefully chiseled ´truths´ to undermine the variant point of view. This puts immense pressure on individuals who might want to dispassionately analyse the situation and punch holes in the sanctified official versions.

Tavleen Singh´s book is just such an attempt. It is a chronological account of how New Delhi lost Kashmir. Childhood memories of Kashmir, interwoven with the narrative at the beginning of the book, show the writer´s empathy towards Kashmir and Kashmiris. They serve as a good starting point for Ms Singh, now grown up and striving to understand the land and its people, and the contrast between myth (stereotypes) and reality.

'The first political remark I ever re member hearing about Kashmir is: All Kashmiris are traitors. Everyone believed it, everyone said it, all the time. As a child, during holidays in Kashmir, I remember hearing it constantly…' The point that Ms Singh makes from the very outset, and which forms the motif of her work, is that at no time since 1947 when the 'National Conference…brought the state to India' has the rest of India, including the rulers in New Delhi, accepted Kashmiris as Indians.

But the worst comes later. We are told that the intelligentsia, especially the Indian press, shares New Delhi´s myopic view, dishing out the same untruths and half-truths that form the routine official line. It is this which makes the editor censor Tavleen Singh´s copy and challenge the veracity of her facts even when he is all too happy to accept other stories which have been put together on telephone.

Of the 1983 elections the author says: 'Covering this election was for me an experience that I have never been able to forget because it was the first time I came across another side of the press. The Indian press is, generally, secular, liberal and fair, but there are certain situations in which patriotism, if it can be called that, takes over.'

And that summer in Srinagar the 'true picture' had nothing to do with slogans of azadi (freedom). It merely concerned election projections which promised Farooq Abdullah´s National Conference a sweeping victory over Congress (I). When Ms Singh filed a pre-election story predicting an easy win for the National Conference, her editor killed it. 'To my horror, when the story appeared it did not even slightly resemble what I had sent. 1 was furious and rang up Delhi to find out why they had decided to write about what was happening on the basis of agency reports instead of using my story and was shocked to hear my bureau chief berate me for getting it all wrong.'

The author does not stop at that. Her indictment of the rabidly anti-National Conference Indian press is complete: 'In that summer of 1983 there was no turmoil in the Valley despite Congress attempts to create it. The Congress had an important ally in the national press and in retrospect I would go so far as to say that the press was the main reason why the alienation of Kashmir began.'

New Delhi Brinkmanship
On the Pakistani side, the conventional viewpoint would probably not accept Ms Singh´s argument that in 1983 (perhaps even in 1987), the Kashmiris went to the polls under the Indian Constitution, and that the demand for a plebiscite was not an issue. But most of the evidence supports her argument. However, that per se does not undermine the fact that once they despaired of their democratic rights under the Indian Constitution, Kashmiris decided to fallback on the position guaranteed them under the UN Resolutions–the right to self-determination.

New Delhi makes much of the polls in Kashmir, always trotting out this argument to oppose the right to self-determination. But it must not forget–and that is what makes the 254 pages of Tavleen Singh´s book–that Its own brinkmanship has brought Kashmir to this pass. The bottom line is: Kashmiris do not want to stay within the Indian Union. The Indian government, however, blames Pakistan for fomenting trouble. Not for a moment does the official Indian line accept Delhi´s own mistakes which cost it the Valley.

Writes the author:' It was natural…that when Delhi blamed Pakistan for all the problems in Kashmir this was accepted as the whole truth. Nobody was prepared to admit that Pakistan had merely jumped onto a bandwagon that began its roll in the streets of Srinagar.'

After the killings at Baramulla, Ms Singh met with the Corps Commander, General Mohammad Ahmed Zaki: '1 think Kashmir is lost. 1 told him but he said he was still optimistic.' The general, evidently, could not speak the truth. But Ms Singh is objective and courageous enough to sum it up: 'There have been moments when the government in Delhi has seriously considered conceding autonomy to Kashmir in order to buy peace in the Valley but fear of what the BJP would do has prevented this from happening.'

She adds: 'A lasting solution in Kashmir is not going to be easy. But it will remain impossible as long as Indian public opinion does not change. Old emotions and old prejudices will have to be replaced by reason, realpolitik and the political will to solve the problem.'

The Indian politicians made the people of Kashmir conscious of their separate identity. And when the Kashmiris started their struggle for more rights, Delhi reinforced its mistakes by sending in people like Jag Mohan who were incapable of looking at the problem from any but the law and order angle. In the ensuing collective struggle, Kashmiris acquired a separate national identity. Unless India concedes that fact now there can be no lasting solution to the Kashmir crisis.

What is important is that Kashmir cannot be treated as East Punjab, a diabetic case that Delhi has learnt to live with. 'There was never an insurgency in Punjab, nor was there mass support for the Khalistan cause….In Kashmir, on the other hand, there has been support for secession that goes back, at least among a very vocal section of urban Kashmiris, right up to 1947 when the dispute began. Kashmir is a special case and will have to be treated that way if peace is to return.'1947,