Kashmir is as good as gone from the Republic of India [dated September 12, 1998]
The news item was missed by many because most papers did
not care to carry it. In early August, United Liberation
Front of Asom leader Anup Chetia submitted a writ
petition to a Bangladesh judge in Dhaka, where he is
currently facing extradition proceedings. The request of
the Indian authorities to hand him over to them, argued
Chetia, should be kept in abeyance till 2005; by then,
he expects India to be divided into five or seven
independent states.
Cognoscenti occupying space in the country's heartland
will treat Chetia's rhetoric with unswerving contempt.
The reaction, however, is likely to be somewhat
different in Assam and the rest of the North-East.
Whether it is Guwahati or Imphal or Kohima, the status
report has a disturbing focus.
Is it integration with India that is still only half
complete, or is it the reality of alienation from the
nation now rapidly gathering momentum: one is invited to
pick between these alternatives. Either alternative is
arguably heavily laced with cynicism. History is
nonetheless replete with examples of how town cynics,
give or take a couple of decades, come to be hailed as
sages.
Which pushes us to the next unavoidable query: for how
long more should the rest of India be shut out from
awareness of the true situation in the North-East or,
for the matter, in Kashmir? However hard New Delhi may
try to inform the world otherwise, Kashmir is as good as
gone from the Republic of India. The facade of free and
fair assembly elections followed by the installation of
a state government with Farooq Abdullah at its helm has
not made the slightest difference; with every day, the
quality of verisimilitude in official pronouncements has
continued to decline.
There aren't great many admirers of Pakistan either in
Kashmir, but their number comfortably exceeds that of
those who swear by India. A large majority of Kashmir's
population perhaps wishes a plague on both the
cantankerous neighbouring countries and would prefer to
be an independent republic in the manner of other
Central Asian entities.
If Kazhakstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kirghizstan
can flaunt the badge of their sovereign existence, why
might not Kashmiris join their ranks? After all, they
come from the same stock, their languages are reasonably
similar; there is also a fair measure of cultural
affinity and, of course, the bind of religion.
Such speculation cannot be throttled merely by greater
and greater deployment of the army. It cannot be
throttled in Kashmir, nor in Assam and the rest of the
North-East.
The army was despatched to Nagaland and Mizoram fairly
early, within a few years of Independence. The special
arrangements the British had deigned it wise to enter
into with a number of chieftains and ethnic heads in the
region were dismissed as junk, for had not Jawaharlal
Nehru meanwhile expatiated at length, from the ramparts
of the Red Fort, on the theme of India's unity in the
midst of its immense diversity? The declamation was
taken to be a version of axiomatic truth; anyone
challenging it was invited to examine his or her head.
Not surprisingly, over large parts of the North-East,
administration gradually got reduced to army and
paramilitary personnel enforcing law and order as
defined by New Delhi minds. That dispensation has
continued.
The political party that enjoyed more or less
uninterrupted power at the Centre from 1947 onwards
treated this segment of the country as a pocket borough
that could be manipulated. Economic development of the
pocket borough was judged to be unnecessary flummery.
Brahmaputra therefore remains untamed, and Assam remains
a monoculture for lack of irrigation water round the
year. Hardly any industry worth the name embellishes the
extensive stretch of the North-East, unemployment has
swelled and swelled, grievances either subjective or
with strong objective roots have accumulated against the
inhabitants of the Indo-Gangetic valley, more
specifically, the Bengali-speaking migrants, including
those from Bangladesh.
The experience of the past few years has -- or should
have -- resolved a central issue: quasi-authoritarian
modalities of the government cannot hold India together.
Army rule, by whatever nomenclature it is described,
will evoke discontent. The resulting manifestation of
anger will take many forms. Suppressing these
expressions of resentment, by further induction of army
contingents, is bound to be counterproductive. And in
more than one sense. For the larger outlay on the
maintenance of army and police forces will mean so much
less of resources being available to finance economic
development in these areas of surging discontent.
Rulers in New Delhi, irrespective of their party
affiliation, were for long shackled to a theory: when
under strain, it pays to be brusque. Article 356 and
deployment of military personnel under the Armed Forces
(Disturbed Areas) Act in course of time became standard
mechanism for maintaining the authority of the Centre.
Machined politicians are slaves of habit; their response
to developing awkward situations, whether in Nagaland or
Manipur, continues to be quintessentially Pavolvian.
Even leaders belonging to the now disintegrated United
Front, otherwise pristine votaries of unadulterated
democratic norms and procedures, have fallen for the
charm of orthodoxy: come special circumstances, such as
what obtained in the wake of the barbaric act
perpetrated in Ayodhya in December 1992, the deployment
of Article 356 is a social necessity.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, trying hard to somehow stay
in power; does not know which direction to turn. Its
ingrained authoritarianism will not permit it to let off
Article 356; it is however equally aware of the
complications that might ensue in case of indiscriminate
applications of the article. Issues of principles have
fallen by the wayside in this contemporary discourse;
the premises and the conclusions are branded products of
free market vintage pragmatism.
The constraints of coalition politics have struck a
final deadly blow. J Jayalalitha is enjoying
tremendously her current mission, which is to establish
the fact that morality has undergone a total eclipse and
no shame attaches itself to brazen conduct. Corruption,
highway robbery not excluding, is passe.
Certain crucial administrative conventions are being
thrown to the winds because of the pressure of events.
The bureaucracy too is being dragged into the murky game
of politics; you reap what you sow, the consequences are
likely to be frightful.
Should not one offer, as a footnote, a commentary on a
further disturbing development? It is not just the
imbroglio over Article 356 -- a legislation purported to
discourage political desertions has also been turned on
its head.
Presiding officers of legislative bodies have been
vested with arbitrary powers to decide whether a
particular crossing over is legitimate or not. The
Congress has unashamedly used, alternately as well as
simultaneously, the offices of both the governor and the
speaker of the state assembly in a number of
north-eastern states to retain, by hook or by crook, its
control over the state administration. Rest assured, the
BJP has been a quick learner.
What took place in Goa in July last was sordid to the
core. Both the governor and the speaker behaved
outrageously; even minimum bourgeois propriety was cast
aside.
The Left -- supposedly the last ditch defenders of
national morality -- were also caught napping. Their
performance in Parliament during the debate over the Goa
episode was, to say the least, bizarre. They went hammer
and tongs to condemn the conduct of the governor, but
kept totally mum on the role of the speaker: Nor was
there even any cursory reference to the Congress's
grisly misdoing, over a span of 40 odd years, including
the deployment, on umpteen occasions, of Article 356 for
narrow partisan ends.
It is delusion of the worst kind to aver that the
immoral goings on at the level of the political
superstructure have no impact on how people feel or
decide. In the corridors of power and the ramparts
thereabouts, there is ceaseless talk on how to restore
law and order in this or that part of the country. As if
law and order can be restored in a moral vacuum. More
than anything else, is it not because of the collapse of
the moral fabric that the unity and integrity of the
nation are currently in peril?
Till as long as politicians of different hues fail to
admit their culpability in the matter, they will be
merely talking at cross-purposes and mindlessly
increasing military expenditure in the mistaken belief
the bulwark of defence against the enemies within is
strengthened thereby.
A harassed Central administration will every now and
then have recourse to Article 356 to save the situation
from worsening further in this or that state. The
situation will not be saved, just as corruption will not
go down.
Unchaining India, grisly manipulations in the name of
parliamentary democracy will persist. But is there any
guarantee that it will be an unfragmented India too? |
