Two months back when an all-party delegation visited Kashmir Valley, the buzz was about confidence-building measures (CBMs). Everyone agreed that the Constitution of India provides ample scope to accommodate any legitimate political demand through "dialogue, civil discourse and peaceful negotiations."
The fact that protests are not rocking the streets of Srinagar and other towns now, does not mean that public resentment has died down. The Valley hasn't turned greener in the last two months, it is only about to go down under snow.
Yet, a number of recent incidents need to be looked at a bit more closely.
The first, of course, are the unabated attacks on senior Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who is on an India-wide tour to make Indians aware of the human rights violations being perpetrated by security forces in the Valley and the need to resolve the Kashmir issue. There have been three attacks on him over a space of just five days. Each time, the perpetrators were youth activists of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). They don't believe in listening to what others have to say. The Babri demolition had proved that they are a violent lot.
Security personnel were present at all the three venues in Chandigarh, Kolkata and New Delhi, but were unable to pre-empt and prevent the attacks. The Mirwaiz did get to address more civilised audiences who were not hostile, but the three incidents taken together begin to show a disturbing trend. The first incident should have been a warning enough for authorities; the subsequent ones give one the impression that these have been allowed to prevail.
Agreed that the attacks are not the handiwork of either the Union government or by party members of any constituent of the ruling dispensation. Those were carried out by a party which does not believe in dialogue or civil discourse. The hooligans would not have an answer to the allegation that their party could not resolve the Kashmir issue all the time that Atal Bihari Vajpayee was in power.
Forget the BJP and the UPA for a moment, and see what the Jammu and Kashmir government has been up to. On Tuesday its police re-arrested the Kashmir Bar Association (KBA) president Mian Abdul Qayoom, three days after he was released from jail following the quashing of his detention by the Jammu and Kashmir High Court. Qayoom is now alleged to have instigated people to wage a war against India while in Hiranagar jail in Kathua district.
Overshadowing these is the outrageous registering of a case against senior Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani and others. They have been charged with sedition by the Delhi Police for ostensibly "anti-India" speeches at a seminar in New Delhi last month. All governments concerned are breathing silence. At times such as this, silence is not golden; it is criminal.
None of these incidents are likely to instill any confidence in the Indian State among the people of Kashmir. These are not what you would call confidence-building measures. Considerable damage had already been wreaked in the interregnum by the three interlocutors who seemed more keen on voicing their opinions about the Kashmir issue than facilitating a negotiation process.
The first step towards CBMs is the willingness and the temperament to maintain a status quo on an issue. You can do that only when you have the guts and also the presence of mind to accept things as they are. The Indian government should know and admit as much that the all-party delegation to Kashmir was not an end in itself — the demand for Independence did not die the moment the delegation boarded the plane back to capital New Delhi. And neither did the public resentment fade away just because the intensity of street protests had apparently ebbed. Sometimes you see what you choose to see. The Indian government is not blind, it is only turning a blind eye to events.
The Indian government is probably only buying time and waiting for the movement to run out of steam. Maintaining a status quo and offering unconditional talks doesn't mean accepting the demands of the Kashmir movement; it only means accepting the fact that they have a demand. And that, why does one even have to spell out, is the starting point.
Only then can negotiations begin.
