Modi rattles separatists, gets them thinking
There is, unexpectedly, a positive outcome to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's strong-arming the Pakistanis after their high commissioner, Abdul Basit, met the Kashmiri separatists of both factions of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference despite the government asking him not to. The NDA government as a retaliatory move called off the foreign secretary talks which were to have been held in the last week of August. It was a move that took everybody by surprise: while the Left was critical of the cancellation, the Congress was caught flatfooted, and others were dismayed by Modi's break from tradition with not toeing his NDA prime ministerial predecessor Atal Behari Vajpayee's large-hearted peace initiatives.
Most surprised were the Kashmiris, for Modi had led them to believe before the elections and specifically in a speech in March at Jammu, that he would continue Vajpayee's initiatives in J&K. It is an irony of Indian politics that after ten years of UPA rule, Kashmiri Muslims - who see themselves distinct from the Indian mainstream - came to regard a presumably conservative BJP prime minister far higher than his presumably liberal Congress counterpart. This is probably because Manmohan Singh's initiatives in Kashmir were limited to a few roundtable conferences which were unrepresentative and sterile, and generally a waste of time. Similarly, his initiatives with Pakistan were stillborn when he faced, a few months into his second term, tremendous blowback over the joint statement he and his Pakistani counterpart issued from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, in which he spoke of looking into Pakistani allegations of Indian meddling in Balochistan; the blowback came from his own Congress party. Singh's tenure went downhill from there on.
Such was the disappointment with Singh that the chairman of the moderate Hurriyat faction, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the hereditary head priest of Kashmir, made statements during the Lok Sabha elections that basically amounted to his looking forward to Modi becoming prime minister; again, it was ironic and unique since he was a prominent Muslim in favour of a politician who is seen by Muslims as having allowed the Gujarat riots to take place. And when Modi won, the Mirwaiz in effect congratulated him, going by the logic that he would benefit from a dialogue with Delhi that the hardline Hurriyat faction - led by diehard pro-Pakistan octogenarian Syed Ali Shah Geelani - would undoubtedly reject.
Instead, Modi cancelled the talks, with the blame on the Hurriyat; and this has completely rattled the separatists, in particular the Mirwaiz. Since the government has not revealed a roadmap for talks with Pakistan, the immediate interpretation of Modi's move was that he was telling Pakistan that there is no political problem regarding Kashmir. This is a unilateral resolution of our bilateral dispute, of course, and may not stand the test of time. But for the time being, it has led the Mirwaiz, and the bulk of Kashmiris like him, to wonder about their future: "Where do I stand?" is probably what the Mirwaiz is wondering at the moment. All indications from the Valley are that he is shaken up.
The problem for the Mirwaiz is complicated since, during the elections, he lashed out at Geelani and accused him openly of having other Kashmiris killed. This is a big problem for India in Kashmir during the last few decades: those who make a move (or are seen to) towards India are bumped off (whereas India at most puts a poisonous separatist like Geelani under house arrest), the most prominent being Hurriyat leader Abdul Ghani Lone's assassination just before the 2002 assembly election. With Modi's unilateral dismissal of the Kashmir dispute, you can safely bet that the ISI would be a threat to a young, modern, educated and reasonable leader like the Mirwaiz.
Modi is too focused on the coming Jammu & Kashmir assembly, due later this year, to worry about such nuances. His confidante Amit Shah's Mission 44 - which aims to get the BJP a majority of seats in the 87-member assembly, unprecedented in India's only Muslim-majority state - is what appears to be driving the Kashmir policy; the aim is to polarise votes in the state, and hence talks with separatists are out of the question, for the moment. Who knows what will unfold once a new government is in place in Jammu (J&K's winter capital).
It is short-sighted because, simply put, India's main problem in Kashmir is Pakistan. Common sense says deal with Pakistan. Kashmiris want to be delinked from Pakistan, and want some hope from New Delhi. But Modi has seemingly refused to give them any hope, and this has really rattled the Kashmiris.