The haunting of Kashmir

Legal eye

The writer is a lawyer based in
Islamabad.

Kashmir has erupted once again – and not due to Pakistan’s policies but despite them. There are many in Pakistan’s third generation who don’t crave expansion of Pakistan’s territorial boundaries, who believe that a prosperous future of the people of Subcontinent is contingent upon the congenial coexistence of India and Pakistan, and who acknowledge that Pakistan neither represents nor speaks for the Muslims of India.

But how does anyone with a heart and soul sleep at night after viewing images of 14-year-old Insha Malik’s face inflicted with pellets?

One can have any preference for how best to resolve the Kashmir conundrum. But the treatment being meted out to the Kashmiris by the Indian state is simply unacceptable from a human rights perspective. This is the 21st century. How can a majority of those who take pride in being citizens of the ‘largest democracy’ not empathise with ‘fellow citizens’ being brutalised by the state? Where are all the critical voices from within India asking the state why it has failed to assimilate Kashmiris as equal citizens within the Indian Union?

Even for a third generation post-1971 Pakistani who has no consciousness of India-Pakistan wars, who is curious about the causes of Pakistan’s creation merely to understand history, and is more invested in the future than in the past, it is hard not to wonder what the nightmare of being subjugated in Kashmir must feel like. When does a teenager feel so violated that he abandons dreams of a normal comfortable life and is drawn to violence? Can a ‘hostile’ neighbouring country incite a whole population that doesn’t otherwise feel alienated?

We have asked ourselves these questions in relation to Balochistan. Pakistan’s traditional state narrative regarding the restive Baloch wasn’t very different from that of the Indian state vis-à-vis Kashmir. But it has given way to introspection over the last decade. There are many who still argue that there would be no unrest in Balochistan without RAW and the NDA’s meddling. But there has been a growing realisation across the board that if the Baloch feel estranged there is something the state has gotten wrong in its treatment of this community that needs fixing.

There is recognition within Pakistan that the ideology and objects of those questioning the state in Balochistan are very different from those fighting the state in Fata, even when the tactics of both fall within the definition of terrorism. The Baloch are claiming rights for themselves. The militants from Fata, whether affiliated with Al-Qaeda or the TTP or other terror groups, wish to claim the state for themselves and force their ideology on others. The empowerment of one will heal wounds. The empowerment of the other will spread terror and violence further.

States engage in subversive activities in pursuit of their perceived interests. India and Pakistan are no exceptions. But just as India can’t be the fomenter of disquiet in Balochistan, even if it aids and arms insurgents, Pakistan’s patronage and support isn’t the cause of the valiant struggle being mounted by the Kashmiris for their autonomy and empowerment as self-respecting human beings. And with India militarising the valley to the hilt, killing protesters and blinding the youth by firing pellets in their faces, what other incitement do the Kashmiris need?

But as the third generation of Kashmiris is rising up to claim its rights and defend its dignity, Pakistan must understand that its Kashmir policy has been an utter failure. More important than agreeing on what we must do is building consensus around what we must not.

First, we must not narrowly approach or project the Kashmir issue as a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan. Kashmir isn’t a property dispute between neighbours. It is a human rights tragedy where people are being denied fundamental rights that have now come to be seen by the civilised world as inalienable.

When Pakistan and India came into existence in 1947, the world was coming to grips with the aftermath of World War II. The UN Charter had been formed and there was theoretical agreement that peace would be maintained between nation states on the basis of sovereignty, non-intervention and territorial integrity. But the process of decolonisation was at its peak at the time and the map of the world was being redrawn. As the emerging world stabilised and time passed, the world’s appetite for change in territorial boundaries began to shrink.

During the decolonisation period, support for right for self-determination of a subjugated people was seen as a noble cause. At some point the world got done with the project – even if it wasn’t complete and there remained unfinished business such as Kashmir. The new independent states were armed with the principle of non-intervention. Exceptions apart, there emerged the general sense that change of territorial boundaries of nation-states by use of force would imperil world peace and ought to be discouraged.

In the contemporary world, the right to self-determination is recognised as a fundamental right and an integral part of a desirable democratic order. There is thus acceptance for the idea that a community might wish to exercise such right to carve itself out of the parent country and seek independence (recent examples being referendums in Québec and Scotland). But there is none for the idea that one country should lose territory that another country will then gain. Independence of Kashmir is one thing, Indian-held Kashmir being absorbed into Pakistan quite another.

Second, Pakistan mustn’t encourage or allow jihadi elements into Kashmir. In today’s world, especially post-9/11, one of the paramount threats to national security that states conceive is not from other states but from non-state actors. The distinction between militants seeking independence (ie a legitimate right even if through wrongful means) and faith-based terrorists spreading anarchy has become increasingly hard to draw. And the Indian state presents the Kashmiri freedom fighter as the non-state terrorist the world is weary of.

Pakistan must not strengthen India’s narrative by seeking a military solution to the Kashmir problem and using non-state actors as an extension of such security policy. The Kashmiris, including their freedom fighters, aren’t seeking to overthrow the existing world order or force their worldview on India or anyone else. They are claiming for themselves what they believe others in India and Pakistan and elsewhere in the world enjoy and they are being denied: the right to life, dignity, equality, social ascendency and pursuit of happiness.

By introducing ideologically driven faith-based jihadis within their fold, as we did in the past, we will do the Kashmiris a serious disfavour. Being Muslim by faith, it is easy to paint the Kashmiris as cousins of globally hated merchants of terror such as Al-Qaeda and Isis; this they are not. And radicalisation of the Kashmiri youth in the name of faith will neither do Pakistan any good nor Kashmir. We have been reaping the bitter fruit of the seeds of jihadism we planted in our backyard in the 80s and are now struggling to detoxify our body politic. Let us not embrace folly once again out of the misplaced sense of trying to do something tangible for Kashmir.

At the end of the day, painful as it is watching Kashmir burn, its future rests more on the perseverance of the Kashmiris and their commitment to their struggle for dignity and equality and refusal to live as subjugated people than anything Pakistan chooses to do. We must raise our voice for them – not because we believe we have a historical right to control the territory comprising Kashmir, but because we believe that their struggle is moral.

It is in this perspective that we must extend diplomatic and political support to Kashmir and ask the world, and thoughtful Indians, if they are not pained by the denial of fundamental rights to the Kashmiris.

Email: sattar@post.harvard.edu