Having failed the first round at the UN Security Council (UNSG), Pakistan continues to seek internationalising the ‘Kashmir issue’, this time round focussing more on what the rest of the world has acknowledged as an ‘internal affair’ of India, rather on bilateral aspects, which alone is a part of a historic baggage. New Delhi needs to be extremely careful in not playing into Islamabad’s hands, and there by help Islamabad achieve its goals in the medium and long terms.
The recent episode at the South Asian Speakers’ conference in the Maldivian capital of Male is nothing but an unabashed Pakistani way of internationalising what essentially still remains a bilateral issue, if at all, under the ‘Simla Agreement’ of 1972. At Male, despite open admonitions from host Maldivian Speaker Mohammed Nasheed, the Pakistani delegation raised the issue, no-holds barred.
The danger in such an approach is not only to address the ‘international community’, a reference for governments, but also to Islamic fundamentalists in host-nations especially, whose knowledge of the vexatious ‘Kashmir issue’ is next to nil.
From a purely domestic angle, the Indian delegation’s well thought-out retort was very much in order. However, it may have also served the Pakistani purposes of taking bilateral debates to regional and international fora. The danger in such an approach is not only to address the ‘international community’, a reference for governments, but also to Islamic fundamentalists in host-nations especially, whose knowledge of the vexatious ‘Kashmir issue’ is next to nil.
Thankfully, putting the prestige of their own nation as the host to the Speakers’ conference on the top, the local media, especially the web journals, played down the avoidable bilateral engagement. They stopped with reporting the main event, namely, the Speakers’ conference.
No hide-and-seek
This leads to the even more important nuclear angle to regional adversity between India and Pakistan. At a time when global political/public opinion was obviously on India’s side, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s indication that New Delhi, in future, may review its ‘no-first use’ policy viz our nuclear arsenal, may have already caused eyebrows to raise in world capitals.
Nuclear weapons policy is not for local audience, nor is it for playing international hide-and-seek. At least, that has not been the Indian approach. The Indian nation’s very credibility and acceptance as a ‘responsible nuclear weapons State’ hinges on that one commitment. Before Rajnath Singh, one of his predecessors, the late Manohar Parikkar, had raised the question. The circumstances, however, were different.
If the world acknowledges it readily, and India too could pre-suppose such appreciation of the Indian stand, it owes not only to Islamabad’s malfeasance, but more to New Delhi’s creditability in matters nuclear.
In contrast, the world has all but branded Pakistan as a ‘nuclear rogue State’, given the inherent political stability, ISI brand of terrorism and a failing economy, whose focus is only to grow as strong as India, militarily.
More recently, External Affairs Minister S Jaishanker reiterated the Indian position on not talking to Pakistan as long as it continued to practice State-sponsored terrorism. If the world acknowledges it readily, and India too could pre-suppose such appreciation of the Indian stand, it owes not only to Islamabad’s malfeasance, but more to New Delhi’s creditability in matters nuclear.
Internalised agenda
Through the 70 years of developing and testing internalised agendas, based mainly on our ethos of democracy and periodic elections, where domestic issues alone had formed the basis for political debates. India also founded its polity and society around ‘democratic socialism’ first and shifted gears to replace it with ‘market economy’. The latter too seems to be coming to a full circle, as in the First World, where it evolved.
During the period, India did fight external wars, winning most, losing one, against China (1962). Yet, there was no frenzy at failure or success it was/is seen only as a part of challenges to nation-building. This was true of the most recently-fought ‘Kargil War’ (1999). Hence, the anticipated Pakistani reaction to the Indian abrogation of Articles 370 and 35-A should be no reason for pushing the panic-button of any kind at any time.
It is in the absence of such an unemotional approach to the ‘K-issue’ that Pakistan is in a national jeopardy now. If the world is ready to declare Pakistan a ‘failed State’ every now and again, it owes to the failure of their politico-military leadership to create an ‘internal agenda’ as India did at Independence, and create the space and processes for ‘nation-building’ around such an enviable scheme.
Pakistan took the short, ‘external route’ for nation-building at Independence. Kashmir has become the very raison de’taire for Pakistan’s existence, though it might be too much to say that without the ‘K-issue’ Pakistan might disintegrate. Nations do not disintegrate that way. Having made it a part of the nation’s military doctrine, Pakistan may be more adept at ‘bleeding India through a thousand cuts’, still — whatever be New Delhi’s response.
Indian strategic community also needs to remember the doctrine that the world at large and individual nations therein have ‘no permanent friends or permanent enemies, but only permanent interests’, as Henry Kissinger said in his ‘White House Years’. They also need to remember even more that UN resolutions are worded so flexibly, and there is one resolution for every occasion that the world can turn against India with the same alacrity that it does now against Pakistan — or, against both, all at the same time.
In context, it will do well for India and Indians to remember the ‘sanctions era’ that followed the Pokhran I & II nuclear tests. They also need to recall the weeks and months prior to the abrogation of Article 370, when the ‘Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ ‘pulled up’ India on alleged violations in Jammu & Kashmir — and New Delhi’s stout and solid denial of the same.
Quick sands
Nations are influenced by their own domestic constituencies and compulsions and perceptions to which they have been wedded to, for long. US President Donald Trump’s cancellation of his Denmark trip after his offer for America to purchase Greenland, may only be a public expression of what all Americans have come to believe since the two Great Wars of the previous century.
In the case of Article 370 abrogation and attended Indian decisions, much of the world barring China at the UNSG, backed New Delhi’s position that it was an ‘internal affair’. The US was one with them, and also the most crucial of them, at the UN and outside.
But once the ‘internal affair’ issue was settled, the US possibly overshot even Pakistan (and China?) to talk about what it thought might crop up in the future. If Article 370 was an ‘internal affair’ of India, and the US and the rest of the world, including Pakistan, had nothing to do with it, why then did President Trump talk about ‘Hindus and Muslims in the region’ , and that they ‘do not get along great’?
After all, any common reference to the two communities come only in the integrated part of J&K, and not in the other half, namely, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). Post-abrogation, India has been holding that the only unfinished task of ‘integration’ pertains to PoK. That has also been the steadfast Indian position since it happened.
There is still an unaddressed ‘internal angle’ to the ‘integration’ process. The Centre has seemingly acceded to the internal provision in Article 370 for getting the views of the local population before moving ahead with the matter.
Reiterating the national resolve, Parliament passed a unanimous resolution to the effect when P V Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister. Post-abrogation, , Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has also said that future talks with Pakistan would only be about integrating PoK, and nothing else.
Inconveniencing India
Today, if some Indian leader holding a responsible and key position could talk in futuristic riddles, global capitals are going to feel uneasy all over again. In Europe and elsewhere across the world, the non-nuclear governmental lobbies are as strong as their NGOs and INGOs. They can take the issue to the UNGA and other relevant global forums, including G-7, G-20 summits and the like, as and when it suited them politically, and inconvenienced India, equally.
There is still an unaddressed ‘internal angle’ to the ’integration’ process. The Centre has seemingly acceded to the internal provision in Article 370 for getting the views of the local population before moving ahead with the matter. It assumes that after the abolition of the separate Constituent Assembly for J&K and also the dissolution of the State Assembly, the Governor had the powers to clear the same. Such assumptions had been made and decisions made elsewhere too, whenever a State was under President’s rule.
In rare cases, the respective State Legislatures, when reconvened after fresh Assembly elections, had not always upheld the Governor’s decisions made during the interregnum. They had also resolved otherwise. It is true that J&K is no longer a full-fledged State but only a Union Territory (UT) now with limited powers, but does it mean that a resolution passed by the elected UT legislature would not have the same constitutional weight as one passed by a full-fledged State’s elected Assembly?
If not the Supreme Court of India but the world would come to see it as an expression of the people’s mind. That may have consequences, all of which could not be predicted straightaway — but needed to be prepared for, nonetheless.
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