At stake is the idea of India

At stake is the idea of India
Neerja Chowdhury

The idea of trifurcating Jammu and Kashmir as a solution to the Kashmir tangle has insidiously entered the discussion circuits in the capital.

Officially, the BJP has stated that vivisection of the state is not part of the party's agenda. But the RSS leader who publicly advocated the idea six weeks ago was obviously floating a trial balloon.

There is a growing feeling in the Sangh Parivar that one way out could be to give Jammu statehood and Ladakh Union Territory status. Once they are integrated more strongly with the rest of India, negotiations can be held more effectively with the Valley to confer it a more acceptable autonomous status within the Indian Union. Underlying this view is the belief that Kashmir has cost India dearly and the time has come to settle the issue.

The Jammu and Kashmir government's report on regional autonomy, as opposed to the one on greater autonomy for the state which has stirred a hornet's nest, is one more incarnation of the same idea. Farooq Abdullah has used it to play the Muslim card, keeping in mind the 2002 polls.

The report makes a case for a `Vishal' Valley, recommending the creation of eight regions, ostensibly on the grounds of ethnicity, six of which will be Muslim-dominated. Three of them will be in the Valley, two in Jammu (by clubbing together Rajouri and Poonch and Doda and Mahore tehsils), and the sixth will be Kargil to be carved out of Ladakh. Only Jammu, Udhampur (minus Mahore) and Kathua are to be constituted as a region. Leh will be Hindu or Buddhist-dominated.

The seeds of the trifurcation idea are also present in the February 2000 report on Kashmir prepared by the Kashmir Study Group in the US, which has clout with the American administration, and which many in the Hurriyat are inclined to consider. It too talks about reorganising "a portion" of the former princely state of J&K, without spelling out which portion. But the arrangement it advocates -- either one "sovereign" Kashmir "without an international personality", or two such states on either side of the LOC, with soft borders between them, looking after everything barring foreign affairs and defence and having a special relationship with India and Pakistan -- will not be acceptable to Jammu or Ladakh.

The idea of creating a state on the basis of religion, which reinforces the two-nation theory rejected by India at the time of independence, goes against the very fundamentals of the Indian nation -- that it is possible for people of different faiths, tongues, regions and ethnicity to live alongside each other in harmony, respecting each others' beliefs. From that tolerance of each others' differences flows India's secularism, and its unity in diversity, for all the pulls and pressures to which it has been subjected. Therein lies the secret also of its democracy, of a consensual approach, which for all its imperfections has lasted 50 years.

An extension of the argument of conceding the Valley as a separate state because it has a Muslim majority has horrifying consequences for India. It has the potential to encourage Hindu fundamentalists. They may turn around and say that if religion is the basis of statehood or nationhood, why should 150 million Muslims continue to live in India as they are doing today. Throw them out or create ghettoes for them. It will spell the end of everything India has stood for. If differences become the basis for separation, there is no end to this process. It could lead to the country breaking up into hundreds of Bosnias.

The truth is that had a Muslim-majority Kashmir been located anywhere else in India, the story might have been very different. The problem has been compounded because of a Muslim-majority state existing contiguous to a nation whose raison d'etre was religion.

All this is not to say that successive governments have not made mistakes in J&K, or that the effort to win over the people in the state should not be made now with a renewed vigour.

What has happened in J&K in the last 50 years is all the more painful because the state represented the pluralistic ethos of India better than many others. Hindus, as much as Muslims, are seen lighting `diyas' in worship at `dargahs' of sufi saints and `pirs'. The ice linga at Amarnath cave was first brought to light by a Muslim family, whose descendants have taken care of the shrine over the years. Sheikh Nooruddin Noorani of Chrar-e-sharif, worshipped as much by Muslims as by Hindus, who call him "Nund Rishi', sang the praises of a great Shaivite poetess. The influence of Buddhists, who display their relics, is evident in the way the Holy Hair of the Prophet is displayed at Hazratbal.

The Sangh Parivar, and others, may flirt with the idea of amputation as a solution, but it will jeopardise the very logic of India. For India is not fighting in Kashmir just to retain a piece of territory. It is fighting to retain its heritage, its beliefs, and its multi-religious mosaic welded by history.

India is not fighting in Kashmir just to retain a piece of territory