Books
Narrating the Kashmir insurgency
SINCE December 1989 the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir has been gripped by an ethnoreligious insurgency that shows few signs of abating. Strategic analysts in India and elsewhere frequently refer to this insurrection as a low intensity conflict (LIC). This term, despite its widespread usage in the strategic studies literature, obfuscates more than it clarifies. Even though India has not used extensive mechanized or airborne firepower to suppress this rebellion, it has exacted significant costs in blood and treasure. Between 35,000 to 50,000 individuals have died in the insurgency. Even the more conservative figure would amount to more than all the combined military losses in the four Indo-Pakistani conflicts of 1947-48, 1965, 1971 and 1999.
There are other tangible costs associated with this insurgency. Thanks to the depredations of the insurgents, much of Kashmir’s infrastructure is now in a shambolic state. Finally, the insurgency has also exacted an immeasurable psychological cost. An entire generation of Kashmiris bear the scars of psychological and physical abuse at the hands of the insurgents and the Indian security forces alike.1 Even in the unlikely event of a quick end to the insurgency, these visible and especially invisible scars will take a long, long time to heal.
Matters in Kashmir, of course, have worsened after Pakistan’s ill-considered attempt to breach the Line of Control (LoC) in April-June of 1999. Since then the insurgency has again gathered renewed steam as more vicious insurgent groups have started to stalk the haunted valley. These groups, most notably the newly-named Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, the Lashkar-i-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammed have been emboldened by the seeming weakness of the Indian state in its dealings with the terrorists who hijacked an Indian Airlines aircraft on a routine flight from Kathmandu to New Delhi in December of last year.
The insurgency has spawned a small cottage industry of literature all of which purports to explain its origins. This corpus of literature can be divided into three distinct categories. The first segment is composed of official explanations.2 These are unabashedly partisan, partial and tendentious. Given that they are intended for the purposes of placing an adversary in the worst possible light they could hardly be otherwise.
A second body of literature is of the journalistic genre. The quality of these works is uneven. Some are remarkably honest and disturbing accounts of the origins of the insurgency while others are quite partisan, partial and anecdotal. One of the best, straightforward narrative accounts of the sources of the insurgency can be found in Ajit Bhattacharjea’s The Wounded Valley. Bhattacharjea, a distinguished journalist of long standing and considerable personal integrity, traces how a series of Indian national governments showed scant regard for the principles of federalism and fair play in their dealings with the Kashmiris. This feckless disregard for the rights and privileges of the Kashmiri population, in his view, contributed to the birth of the insurgency. Bhattacharjea’s work is unpretentious and direct but lacks an analytical edge. Why, for example, did the insurgency break out in the late 1980s and not earlier? After all, there had been a pattern of Indian central government abuses of authority for an extended period of time as far as Kashmir was concerned.
Other Indian journalists have also made useful contributions to our understanding of the sources of the insurgency. One of the better, historically-grounded accounts is M.J. Akbar’s book, Kashmir: Behind the Vale.3 Akbar not only traces the tortured history of the state’s integration into India but also accurately portrays the skullduggery of the Indian central government during the days of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi that contributed to the rise of violent separatist sentiment in the late 1980s. Akbar’s account accords well with Bhattacharjea’s analysis but suffers from the same limitation. He traces the sources of the insurgency with care but fails to explain the timing of the rebellion. Another highly reputed Indian journalist of Akbar’s generation, Tavleen Singh, in Kashmir: A Tragedy of Errors has provided a breezy account of the political chicanery that preceded the insurgency.4 She pulls no punches in identifying the guilty men and women of Indian politics who bear much of the blame for the breakdown of the federal relationship between India and the state in the 1908s. The central problem with her work is its propensity to rely on the telling anecdote rather than providing a deeper and more probing analysis.
Another Indian journalist of some repute, Manoj Joshi, has written a compelling and breathtaking account of the immediate origins of the insurgency. His book, The Lost Rebellion: Kashmir in the Nineties, provides a remarkable picture of the arcane world of the insurgency. The very cogency of his writing, however, is the principal drawback of the book. What is the reader to make of Joshi’s account of the precise timings of the infiltration of particular insurgent groups and their nefarious activities in the valley? Admittedly, journalists have access to a variety of sources. However, in the absence of access to these sources, one is forced to wonder how Joshi could have acquired this fine-grained knowledge of the exact activities of a range of insurgent operations.
These books, despite their limitations, have a degree of intellectual honesty especially when it comes to carefully documenting the many misdeeds of the Indian state in Kashmir. A British journalist, Victoria Schofield’s Kashmir in the Crossfire also highlights many of India’s malpractices.5 However, she turns a virtual Nelson’s eye to the significant misdeeds of Pakistan in Kashmir. Her account which contains little new substantive information about the insurgency is also marred by a profound pro-Pakistani bias.
Finally, a third segment of literature on the Kashmir insurgency is of the academic variety. The quality of these analyses covers a wide spectrum. One of the first academic analyses of the Kashmir insurgency was the Indian-American scholar Raju G.C. Thomas’s edited book, Perspectives on Kashmir: The Roots of Conflict in South Asia.6 This collection has a large set of essays dealing with every conceivable aspect of the Kashmir dispute. The principal strength of this work is its comprehensiveness as Thomas has made a honest attempt to represent a range of conflicting viewpoints and analyses. Unfortunately, the quality of essays in the volume are quite uneven. Quite expectedly, some of the contributions are blatantly partisan. Beyond their partisan leanings, some are quite poorly argued and crafted. Nevertheless, the volume amounts to and remains a most useful compendium of divergent perspectives and explanations for the origins of the Kashmir dispute and the outbreak of the insurgency.
Another early account of the insurgency and the larger problem of Jammu and Kashmir is Vernon Hewitt’s Reclaiming the Past? The Search for Political and Cultural Unity in Contemporary Jammu and Kashmir.7 Hewitt’s book is a workmanlike effort at providing a historical account of the Kashmir problem and the origins of the insurgency. His account, which is quite fair-minded, has two important limitations. It has a number of small historical errors and also makes a scant attempt to engage the burgeoning body of theoretical literature on ethnic violence, separatism and self-determination.
A somewhat more theoretically self-conscious work is, Democracy and Violent Separatism in India: Kashmir in Comparative Perspective8 by Sten Widmalm, a Swedish academic. Widmalm’s evidence and analysis is sound and presented in a succinct fashion. He argues that the insurgency can be attributed to the restoration and the subsequent dismantling of democracy in Kashmir. This argument is compelling but partial. It fails to take into account the extraordinary degree of political mobilization that took place in Kashmir during the past thirty years which produced a vastly different electorate than the one of the 1950s.
Sumantra Bose, another academic of Indian origin, has attempted to write a particularly theoretically-driven account of the origins of the Kashmir insurgency. Unfortunately, for much of his theoretical sound and fury, the book The Challenge of Kashmir: Democracy, Self-Determination and a Just Peace9 adds little to our understanding of the social and political forces that contributed to the onset of the insurgency. Despite his attempt to summarize and utilize a body of theoretical literature on democracy and self-determination, Bose’s conclusions are entirely unexceptional. Consequently, after much adumbration of the theoretical literature, he concludes that India has singularly ill-treated the Kashmiris and that they are deserving of some form of autonomy with appropriate guarantees for minority rights.
His book, however, is by far not the weakest in the academic genre. That particular designation must be saved for Robert Wirsing’s utterly tendentious, politically partisan and analytically flawed work, India, Pakistan and the Kashmir Dispute: On Regional Conflict and its Resolution.10 Wirsing’s book covers much familiar historical ground but in an intellectually dubious fashion. Among other matters, the book has an anti-Indian undertone and repeats certain well-known Pakistani canards.
Furthermore, Wirsing still flogs the Pakistani shibboleth that India had planned to send in troops to Kashmir should the need arise at the time of the accession of Kashmir to India in October 1947. Of course, he cites no new evidence in support of this absurd claim. Worse, from an analytical standpoint, the book has a crippling flaw. In a two hundred odd page book one looks in vain for some semblance of an explanation of the origins of the insurgency. Despite its academic mien, this is a biased, lopsided and intellectually questionable work.
A complete explanation of the origins of the insurgency must be rest on four factors. Two of these factors are structural and the other two contingent. The structural factors are the dramatic degree of political mobilization that took place in Kashmir during the past thirty years. What, in turn, brought about this increase in political awareness and sophistication? Ironically, it was the efforts of the Indian state. India, in an attempt to win the hearts and minds of the Kashmiri populace, invested enormously in the infrastructure of primary and higher education and dramatically expanded mass media facilities. As a consequence of this growing educational attainments and media exposure, a new generation of Kashmiris became politically sophisticated and savvy. This growth in political sophistication took place against a backdrop of dramatic institutional stultification.
Until the famous Beg-Parthasarathi Accord which restored Sheikh Abdullah to the chief ministership of Kashmir in 1975, the electoral machinery in Kashmir had been steadily compromised since Abdullah’s dismissal in 1953. In the aftermath of Sheikh Abdullah’s return to Kashmir, two elections, those of 1977 and 1983, were ‘free’ of political taint or interference. In the 1983 election, Abdullah’s son and successor, Farooq Abdullah, though lacking his father’s organizational abilities and political dexterity, easily garnered a majority for the National Conference.
Unfortunately, shortly thereafter, thanks to the centralizing propensities of the national government in New Delhi, the old habits of political chicanery again asserted themselves in the federal relationship with Kashmir. As well documented in many of the books under review, Indira Gandhi and subsequently her son, Rajiv Gandhi, made a series of dubious political choices that undermined the authority of a legitimately elected regime in Kashmir. Earlier generations of Kashmiris would have simply accepted this form of political skullduggery as their lot; the generation of the 1980s found this behaviour intolerable.
Two questions still persist and require answers. Why did the insurgency break out in 1989 and not earlier? Also, why did it turn violent? After all, India has a long tradition of civil disobedience. Why did the young Kashmiris disaffected with their political dispensation not seek to clog the prisons of the state by courting mass arrest? The answers are not far to seek and are located in contingent factors. Ironically, it was the Indian state that had made this young generation of Kashmiris aware of political conditions and developments in India and elsewhere through the growth of mass media. As a Kashmiri activist told the author in an interview: in the late 1980s we saw the collapse of the Soviet empire on television and said to ourselves, if the might of the Soviet empire could be challenged, then why not the writ of the Indian state? The Kashmiris also chose a violent form of protest because they lacked an alternative model for expressing their discontent.
It needs to be underscored that Kashmir, as a princely state, under the authoritarian tutelage of Maharaja Hari Singh, was not part of the Indian nationalist movement. The opposition to the maharaja under Sheikh Abdullah, though secular and popular, was woven around his charismatic personality and lacked mass organization. Consequently, lacking a viable, non-violent model of political protest the young Kashmiris resorted to intifada like tactics. The knowledge of the intifada, in turn, came from Palestinian students enrolled at the University of Kashmir, thanks to India’s close ties with the Palestinian nationalist movement and the Arab world.
Sensing an important opportunity to impose costs on its traditional enemy, Pakistan immediately entered the fray on behalf of the discontented Kashmiris. Its leadership moved with dispatch to provide sanctuaries, weaponry and training to Kashmiris willing to challenge the writ of the Indian state. In this endeavour, they also quickly moved to undermine the independence-oriented and nominally secular Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) and to bolster the more Islamic organizations such as the Lashkar-i-Taiba, the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, the Harkat-ul-Ansar (more recently reincarnated as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen) and the Jaish-e-Mohammed. The rest, as the bromide goes, is history.
Sumit Ganguly
* The author is Professor of Asian Studies and Government, University of Texas at Austin.
Footnotes:
1. See for example, Human Rights Watch, The Human Rights Crisis in Kashmir: A Pattern of Impunity. Human Rights Watch, New York, 1993.
2. For a Pakistani version see Shaheen Akhtar, Uprising in Indian-Held Kashmir. Institute of Regional Studies, Islamabad, 1991; and Government of India, From Surprise to Reckoning: The Kargil Review Committee Report. Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2000.
3. M.J. Akbar, Kashmir: Behind The Vale. Viking, New Delhi, 1991.
4. Tavleen Singh, Kashmir: A Tragedy of Errors. Viking, New Delhi, 1995.
5. Victoria Schofield, Kashmir in the Crossfire. I.B. Tauris, London, 1996.
6. Raju G.C. Thomas (ed.), Perspectives on Kashmir: The Roots of Conflict in South Asia. Westview Press, Boulder, 1992.
7. Vernon Hewitt, Reclaiming the Past? The Search for Political and Cultural Unity in Contemporary Jammu and Kashmir. Portland Books, London, 1995.
8. Sten Widmalm, Democracy and Violent Separatism in India: Kashmir in Comparative Perspective. Department of Government, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, 1997.
9. Sumantra Bose, The Challenge in Kashmir: Democracy, Self-Determination and a Just Peace. Sage Publications, New Delhi, 1997.
10. Robert G. Wirsing, India, Pakistan, and the Kashmir Dispute: On Regional Conflict and its Resolution. St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1994.
STATE, IDENTITY AND VIOLENCE: Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh
by Navnita Chadha-Behera. Manohar, New Delhi, 2000.‘Bearing in mind the multiple identities of a community in terms of language, religion, caste, culture, ethnic and religious affiliations, why does a particular aspect become politicised at a specific moment in history?’ Navnita Chadha-Behera makes a valiant attempt to answer this comprehensive question. State, Identity and Violence: Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh is an intense read. The result of painstakingly detailed and well documented research and analysis, the book provides refreshing insights on a subject much written about.
Most writers treat Kashmir as an extension of an international relations debate between India and Pakistan. A majority of published works fall in this category. Those that don’t are historical books or personalised accounts of Kashmir. But few, if any, contemporary writers bother to go beyond the ‘valley’. Behera’s book is a welcome change focusing on the internal dynamics of Jammu and Kashmir expressed through identity. Written without being judgmental, the central thread running through spotlights the formation of separate identities at different times within the state of Jammu and Kashmir and how their role impacted on contemporary reality.
Much of the genesis of the Kashmir identity crisis lies in the politics of ‘majority’ vs. ‘minority’. Majority in the state – sense being Kashmiri Muslim represented by the National Conference and regionally Buddhist vs Muslim in Ladakh and Hindu vs Muslim in Jammu. When a group identity is inclusive of diversity, argues Behera, then it is powerful enough to challenge the might of the Indian state. But over the years, identities have narrowed in their definition, their support bases have shrunk, thus rendering them less effective.
The central argument, that a group identity without mass support is of little political consequence, is well illustrated. In the late 1930s, Sheikh Abdullah was one of the first to realise the importance of the ‘regional faultline’ in Kashmiri politics. Though his constituency remained predominantly Kashmiri Muslim, he introduced to the right of self-determination the concept of ‘cultural nationality’. The National Conference emphasised Kashmiriyat, the unique cultural identity which distinguished Kashmiris from other people within the state and included both Hindus and Muslims.
Post 1947, Kashmiri domination was evident in the first elected Assembly of 1951. The National Conference won 100 per cent of the seats, including 73 uncontested seats in the house of 75. One suspects that a wholescale rejection of opposition candidates’ nomination papers (45 out of 49 candidates of Jammu’s Praja Parishad were not allowed to file nominations) and uncontested seats ‘subverted the democratic process and denied Jammu a voice in shaping the future political system.’ The constant tussle between accommodating Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits for government jobs resulted in ignoring the claims of other ethnic groups: Dogras, Gujjars, Paharis, Jammu Muslims, Ladakhi Buddhists and Ladakhi Muslims.
Launched in 1952, the Praja Parishad held beliefs similar to the RSS and accused Sheikh Abdullah of Islamicising the administration. They demanded that the state of Jammu and Kashmir be fully integrated with India so that Kashmiri domination of Jammu would end. But argues Behera, the movement failed because it was not supported by the masses, particularly in the rural areas. ‘The Parishad’s identification with the Hindu landlords, jagirdars and sahukars (moneylenders) who had enjoyed a privileged position under the Maharaja’s rule delivered a body blow to its social and political appeal.’
Fed up with constant discrimination from successive governments favouring the valley, the demand for a separate state for Jammu revived nearly 40 years later. The Jammu Mukti Morcha (JMM) demanded bifurcation of the state. Its vision for Jammu addresses administrative and cultural grievances. But again, the JMM is founded by a group of intellectuals with little public support and, therefore, has had limited impact. The recent Regional Autonomy Report also advocates a trifurcation of the state.
Ladakh, with its Buddhist majority was equally apprehensive in 1947 about the transfer of power to a Kashmiri administration. No resources were sanctioned to rehabilitate refugees from Zanskar, nor was any financial assistance given to repair or reconstruct gompas. Urdu was imposed as the language of learning in Ladakhi schools. The Ladakhi Buddhist Association (LBA) argued that Ladakh should not be bound by the result of a plebiscite, if one was held and the result was in favour of Pakistan. They wished to be governed by India, or become part of the Hindu majority areas of Jammu or Punjab. If all failed, Ladakh would consider reuniting with Tibet. The LBA demanded that an administrator from the centre should be sent to Ladakh instead of being left to the mercy of Sheikh Abdullah’s government. However, the demands of the LBA died a natural death since half of Ladakh’s population, the Shi’ite Muslims of Kargil, did not support the LBA. Again, as Behera points out, the movement did not have the support of the masses.
In 1989, the Ladakhi Buddhists launched a violent agitation to revive the demand for union territory status for Ladakh. The agitation led to the social boycott of Kashmiri Muslims resident in Ladakh and soon extended to local Muslims. The LBA launched a civil disobedience movement against the state government. An agreement was reached with LBA leaders where the demand for union territory status was withdrawn in favour of an Autonomous Hill Council for Ladakh which came into being in 1995. Behera argues that the Ladakhis were successful this time round because of ‘unprecedented unity’ among the people of Leh in rallying around to demand an autonomous hill council. She points out that ‘the Kargil Muslims did not accept an autonomous hill council for Kargil, but did not oppose it for Leh.’
During the early years after Independence and before his arrest in 1953, Sheikh Abdullah too flirted with the idea of an independent Kashmir. With the Praja Parishad in his backyard, he began wondering if Kashmir would survive a Hindu nationalist government in New Delhi. Kashmiri identity had now narrowed down to just Kashmiri speakers of the valley, primarily Muslims. It didn’t pretend to include the interests of Jammu and Ladakh. The schism between Jammu, Ladakh and the valley widened. While the valley began to explore options of independence – secession from the Indian state – Jammu and Ladakh demanded the opposite.
Kashmiris did not succeed in creating an independent state. Behera argues that ‘the limited and fragmented edifice of Kashmiri identity was the most critical reason for the this failure... Sheikh Abdullah could not demand political autonomy for Kashmir from the Indian state, yet not allow Jammu and Ladakh to demand the same.’ The author comments that Sheikh Abdullah had forgotten that a group identity must be large and powerful to challenge a state: that was why the Muslim Conference was transformed into the National Conference. But here he was working in the opposite direction. Jammu and Ladakh comprised 47% of the state’s population: their exclusion from the Kashmiri group identity had weakened any challenge to India.
Two decades later, Sheikh Abdullah accepted special status for Kashmir within India: he signed the 1975 Accord with Indira Gandhi. Fresh elections were held in 1977 and the Sheikh used ‘autonomy’ as his campaign cry. His second stint in office as chief minister did nothing to allay the fears of the minority being marginalised. In Jammu, police firing on a protest against unfair recruitment of teachers in Poonch snowballed into a regional agitation for greater representation. Similarly in Ladakh, police firing on Buddhist agitators protesting against the transfer of a diesel generator from Zanskar to Kargil created a mass agitation. By the early ’80s electoral politics became communalised, further sharpening and narrowing identities. The Jamaat-I-Islami tapped a growing strata of educated youth, who began increasingly looking to Islam for political solutions.
The 1983 elections were fought on clear communal lines with the Congress reminding Jammu that it was part of Hindu India and had been neglected by Muslim Kashmir and Farooq Abdullah aligning with Mirwaiz Farooq’s Awami Action Committee, a pro-Islam party though it campaigned for preserving Kashmiri identity, whatever that now meant. Interestingly, the BJP in Jammu and the Jamaat in the valley were wiped out. The National Conference won overwhelmingly in the valley and the Congress won substantial seats in Jammu. So though communalism had set in, fundamentalism had not. It was different in 1987. The bulk of Kashmiri youth supported the Muslim United Front – the Jamaat (part of the MUF) sought to Islamicise Kashmiri identity in a radical and fundamentalist manner. Farooq aligned with the Congress. He won a rigged election, but in the bargain lost Kashmir.
Behera does an excellent job in chronicling the insurgency (1989 onwards) into five phases which does not need to be summarised here. The overwhelming support of the Kashmiri Muslims was the key to its success in the early years but vehement opposition by more than half the population of the state (peoples of Jammu, Ladakh and Kashmiri Pandits) proved to be an obstacle that could not be overcome. However, the turning points were in 1994-1995 (phase IV) and 1995-1996 (phase V). Popular resistance to militancy and exploring political avenues (the Hurriyat Conference was formed in 1994) were the highlights of phase IV.
Yasin Malik (JKLF) and Shabir Shah (People’s League), leaders of credibility with the militants and the public, were released from jail in 1994. The JKLF announced a unilateral cease-fire in 1994 to facilitate dialogue. Regaining Kashmiri control over a movement which was now dominated by outsiders was seen as critical. Phase V continued the decline of the militant movement, ‘specially the Kashmiri component.’ Voluntary repatriation, ‘peace with honour’ and restoring the political process were the highlights of this phase. Again, redefining Kashmiri identity vs an Islamic identity was critical. Briefly, the author argues that the causes of failure can be traced to a limited social base, the lack of external support (barring Pakistan) and the flawed, incoherent strategy of the militant movement.
At the end of a comprehensive analysis on contemporary Kashmir, Behera objectively weighs considered options. She emphasises a political solution which takes into account regional demands, leading to the creation of a political system that will nurture sub-national and sub-regional identities, creating stakes for them in the larger political process. NGOs, social institutions and grassroots workers have an uphill task to play in a society so brutalised by violence that children in schools learn ‘B for Bomb, C for Curfew.’ Channels of communication between Pandit leaders and Kashmiri Muslims must begin to revive a shattered bond. The state government must explore ways to communicate with militants, ex and current. Bilaterally, though dialogue with General Musharraf seems a remote possibility, lasting peace will have to include Pakistan in agreeing to convert ‘the Line of Control into a Line of Peace.’
The long term resolution of Kashmir will be possible only through a political framework with special involvement of the people of Jammu and Kashmir and the larger public in India and Pakistan. The most serious challenge, according to Behera, will be ‘to reverse the increasing and deepening communalisation of polity and society of Jammu and Kashmir,’ namely the Islamicisation of azaadi, the Islamic warriors, militant inroads in Jammu district, Hindu massacres, the ‘cleansing’ of the valley (the fleeing of Pandits) and changing political alignments (the National Conference-BJP combine).
This book contains a wealth of information and is well argued. For policy-makers, scholars and those interested in the intricacies of Kashmir, a must read.
Nayana Bose
DEATH OF DREAMS: A Terrorist’s Tale by Aditya Sinha. HarperCollins, New Delhi, 2000.
KASHMIR: The Unveiling of Truth! by Hashim Qureshi. Jeddojuhd Publications, Lahore, 1999.
Aditya Sinha tells the story of Firdous Syed Baba, or Babar Badr as he was known when he was the Supreme Commander of the Muslim Jaanbaz Force (MJF) for just over half a decade of the militancy in the valley. In 1996, he came overground, laid down arms forever and, after long thought, joined the party his father had been loyal to under Sheikh Abdullah, the National Conference.
The story is well told and has the ring of authenticity on every page with no authorial interventions except, perhaps, in the epilogue. The main body of the book comprises a blow-by-blow account of how the militant upsurge swept the valley in 1989, how and why Kashmiri youth were drawn irresistibly into the maw of violence, their modus operandi in crossing the LoC to reach their ISI and Pak military controllers in POK; the chains of command, communication and resource flows that were set up; the virtually unhindered way in which all this was accomplished in the early years when the entire machinery of the state of India seemed to have collapsed in Kashmir in the face of the unprecedented mass uprising of the people.
Equally tellingly told is the rapid unravelling, fragmentation and disillusionment in the movement once the Indian state got its act together. The Pakistani state was exposed in its basic ambivalence about Kashmiri aspirations (most significantly when it failed to back up the mass uprising in 1989-90 by an armed intervention which it had incited for years with this promise of help) and the movement itself fell apart under the weight of its own contradictions.
Sinha presents this story straight from the horse’s mouth. As a result not only the initial euphoria, romance and idealism but also the slide into confusion, duplicity and betrayal by virtually all the chief protagonists of the struggle, the dawning comprehension about the issues involved and the final reckoning unfold through Babar Badr’s eyes with a freshness which comes from telling it like it was.
What stays in my mind is the casual way in which thousands of ordinary Kashmiri boys and young men flocked across the LoC to take up arms against the Indian state. As Babar Badr describes it, many of them just left as if for a picnic, literally thumbing a lift from off the street and without a backward look. They knew what they hated but seemed to have no idea of what they wanted in its place. It was like a Luddite storm which swept them along, carrying within it a hodge-podge of dreams and aspirations but with no coherent leadership to unify or direct its raging course. As became clear to Babar in due course, this was precisely what Pakistan wanted and the blind faith which Kashmiris had reposed in it was exploited to the hilt and with utmost cynicism. But in the beginning the image is that of a childlike if not childish state of euphoria. With the Sheikh gone and his legacy in tatters, with the step-motherly treatment of the centre, this was a huge, adolescent revolt against the grownups who had betrayed them.
The leadership of the insurgency, whether that of the pro-Pak groups and parties or the JKLF, seemed to have no control over what was happening. In large part, as Badr tells it, this was also deliberately engineered by the Pakistani authorities who wanted to create anarchy and mayhem in Kashmir, to ‘bleed India in a thousand places’ rather than risk a unified movement for Kashmiri independence or an all-out war with India in order to seize Kashmir for itself.
The outcome of this strategy was not only the thousands of Kashmiris killed uselessly, but also the tearing apart and destruction of Kashmir’s social fabric. Badr describes the lumpenisation of the ‘movement’ and the arrogance of the Kalashnikov and bomb-wielding youth who soon held everyone to ransom with their demands – these being increasingly more personal than political. With the top leaders of the JKLF either killed or in jail in both India and Pakistan, and with the Jamaat more interested in ideology than in history, as Sinha says in his preface, the ‘movement’ was now in the hands of scores of disparate and uncoordinated bands of terrorists, each a law unto themselves. No wonder that by 1994, ordinary Kashmiris were sick and tired of the violence let loose upon them.
Badr himself was caught by the Indian Army and imprisoned for two years in 1991 after he had led the kidnapping of two Swedish engineers (later released safely). It was after he was released and re-joined the struggle, this time getting to Pakistan from Nepal to renew contacts and get fresh instructions, that he began to see through the Pakistani game. His plea at the end of the book is for a resolution in Kashmir which will not ‘humiliate a defeated people.’
Kashmir: The Unveiling of Truth! is a collection of writings from previous books, articles and interviews to the press and letters to various public figures. Poorly written and badly proofed, the book is nevertheless another valuable ‘insider’s view’. What is remarkable is that it was published in Pakistan, although it was apparently quickly banned, hardly surprisingly given its harsh and uncompromising exposure of Pakistan’s cynical game in Kashmir.
While Badr’s account is from within the armed movement, Hashim Qureshi, Chairman of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Party, writes as an idealogue of the JKLF in exile. His is a more objective and analytical account of Kashmir’s disaffection with India, its struggle for unification and independence from both India and Pakistan, its repudiation of violence as a means towards its ends, and its derailment by leaders such as Amanullah Khan who set up a separate armed wing, the Kashmir Liberation Army, and organised terrorism, murder and kidnappings in the valley which discredited the JKLF internationally. Indeed, he accuses Khan of ‘senseless adventurism and collaboration with the ISI.’
Qureshi also holds Amanullah Khan responsible for organising the murder of Ravinder Mahtre for which Maqbool Butt was hanged in retaliation by the Indian authorities. An ardent follower of Butt, the book starts with a detailed account of the hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane in 1971 by Qureshi and his group when he himself was only 17, in the hope of securing Butt’s release from jail in India. Presenting judicial and documentary evidence he exposes the perfidy and lies of the Pakistani authorities in that episode as also their own burning of the aircraft which they then blamed on him, incarcerating him in solitary confinement for ten years when he refused to play their game. He also takes Alastair Lamb to task for doing just this in his book, Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy.
Qureshi analyses the destructive role of Pakistan in Kashmir especially since the militancy began over a decade ago and how it has not only created a virtually rudderless proliferation of armed groups accountable to no one but themselves or their masters across the border, but also how it sent thousands of this youth to their death at the hands of the Indian armed forces by giving them no training to speak of before pushing them back to fight in the valley. He also describes how, as a result of little training and no leadership, the militants would launch their attacks on the Indian forces from within crowded areas in streets, mohallas or villages and bring down the terrible retribution against innocents who lost their lives in the retaliatory fire. He is, of course, also vehemently opposed to the driving out of the Pandits from the valley as these are part of the flesh and blood of Kashmir.
Like Babar Badr, Qureshi is only too aware that Pakistan’s interests are not those of Kashmiris and he gives supporting evidence of this by describing the backwardness of POK (where no one can oppose accession to Pakistan by law) as also of Baltistan and Gilgit, both of which have been delinked from ‘Azad Kashmir’ and integrated into Pakistan’s Northern Territories without a by your leave from the former. He also describes how successive ‘Azad’ Kashmir leaders have developed a vested interest in the status quo and would not like the valley to join them because this would upset their applecart.
Qureshi expresses admiration for India’s democratic traditions and the legacy of Gandhi and Nehru and sorrow for the betrayal of these traditions in Kashmir. But he also warns against the dangers of war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and the enormous cost and suffering this would entail for both impoverished countries, especially now that both have gone nuclear. He argues against the partition of countries as a means of solving their problems and has no time for the two-nation theory which has failed so spectacularly in the sub-continent. His solution of a reunified state of Jammu and Kashmir as it was before Partition, built step by step over a 15 year period is problematic, given the water that has flowed under the bridge since then. But if such steps could also lead to some resolution of the post-partition dilemmas of the sub-continent, they might be worth thinking about creatively.
Some enterprising Indian publisher ought to publish a second, substantially edited and updated edition of Hashim Qureshi’s book, which along with The Death of Dreams is a valuable addition to the growing literature on Kashmir, both of them being from the inside of the movement and by activists rather than scholars or journalists.
Primila Lewis
ETHNONATIONALISM AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PUNJAB by Shinder Purewal. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2000.
THE PERIPHERY STRIKES BACK: Challenges to the Nation-State in Assam and Nagaland by Udayon Misra. Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, 2000.
THE UTTARAKHAND MOVEMENT: Construction of a Regional Identity by Pradeep Kumar. Kanishka Publishers, New Delhi, 2000.
THE three books under review deal with regional assertions. Two of these grew into protracted militant movements against the Indian state for secession, though the Punjab problem is now behind us and one hopes that it will not erupt again in the old form. An armed fight for secession, though on a low key, continues in Assam and Nagaland. Uttarakhand has just been given statehood after a brief period of struggle, together with Jharkhand and Chattisgarh. The three books together show that the ‘regional problem’ in India is made up of such diverse causes that it is difficult to talk of it as a problem but rather as so many different problems, each located in one or another region of India.
None of the books advance a complicated thesis but do develop a rich description around what they consider the central reasons or causes in the making of these problems. The root of the Uttarakhand problem is ‘linked with its economic and social neglect for over forty years of independence. The lack of an autonomous political authority in the region... has led to continuous economic degradation. The vast mineral, water and forest resources of the hills have remained unexploited or have been exploited by the outsiders for the benefit of outsiders, thereby resulting in further "development of underdevelopment" in the region. In fact the model of internal colonisation applies to Uttarakhand in toto’ (pp. 80-81 and the rest of the chapter, emphasis in original). Kumar cites other writers to show the ‘degeneration of the region into the "hinterland of the country’s affluent classes and regions".’
Two questions come to mind. This region, especially its Garhwal belt, has seen some of the most powerful movements against the construction of big dams, Tehri dam for example, as being detrimental to the ecology of the region and the well-being of the local population. On similar grounds the Chipko movement against felling of trees for commercial reasons has made national news over the last many years. The question now is whether the creation of an autonomous internal political power will remove the causes behind these well-articulated movements of great popular involvement?
If these movements have a sui generis claim to legitimacy, then both forests and water, two of the three resources mentioned above, may well become inaccessable for the generation of large resources. There is the further question that the region which used the resources of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, if examined on purely economic grounds will appear almost like an ‘internal colony’ of India and a ‘hinterland’ for its bourgeoisie. We must remember that U.P. wields considerable power within the Indian union and yet remains one of the most backward areas. If it is the pan-Indian bourgeoisie that exploits both U.P., and together with it Uttarakhand, then it can continue to do so like in any other region of India.
We must not forget that the Indian bourgeoisie does not belong to any one region of India exploiting other regions for the development of its homeland. If it were so Rajasthan would be like the Ruhr region of Germany. We must also remember that the Indian bourgeoisie is trans-regional with an inter-regional mobility of capital as between profitable investments. It will be more useful to see how autonomous political power can contribute in small ways to the development of a region – say education, health, drinking water, and so on – and thus enhance the quality of life of ordinary people.
The work on Assam and Nagaland, apart from a search for causes, raises some pertinent issues for the understanding of the Indian federation in general and the kind of nation we want to be. It does so by building up the regional challenges from two diverse situations: despite being contiguous, the two areas have very different histories. Historically, Nagaland had little to do with India – virtually no cultural interaction and little by way of economic transactions. It was effectively brought under a unified administration only in the second and third decades of the 19th century. The innumerable Naga tribes too lived a life of relative isolation from one another. It had little involvement with the anti-colonial movement. The movement for secession and the other forms of regional assertions may thus be easily understood. But what about Assam with its centuries of close contact from the time of Ahom consolidation? The Vaishnavite movement which integrated it with the cultural ‘mainstream’ is now many centuries old. The Brahmaputra and Barak valleys of colonial Assam were deeply drawn into the national movement and produced many great national leaders.
Assam is, therefore, rightly seen as a test case for understanding the problem of Indian unity in general and of the handling of federal problems in particular. There is no religious angle like in Kashmir and Punjab nor historical entanglement which involves other nations. Misra thus finds that ‘certain secessionist ethnic movements cannot be explained in terms of simple economic criteria such as uneven or lop-sided development or disjunction between industry and agriculture’ (pp. 157, 183). In the case of Assam, economic neglect remains important but what makes for the problem is the inability of the Assamese to realise themselves within their culture. On one hand the mosaic that surrounds it demands dissection as the influx from across the borders has threatened its identity. Equally, it has found it difficult to handle the diversity within. The complexity of Assam is unique to itself, non-generalisable; yet the underlying emphasis throughout the book is on Assam as an internal colony of India.
This, I suggest, begs the question. I do not want to dispute the nature of the exploitative relationship with pan-Indian capital, whether we take tea as an export commodity or extractive industries like oil. Even in regions which have done much better like Himachal Pradesh, where the author wrote his book, it can be shown that the entire surplus capital out of the orchard economy goes out of the region through the operations of merchants and merges into the pan-Indian monopoly capital.
The question is important because backwardness cannot be the sole criterion of a region being an internal colony. This would be patently unscientific from an economic point of view. A more objective criteria is required and none of those who argue for it have ever worked out one. Who extracts how much of the surplus of a region and for what purposes? Consequently, the magnitude of surplus as well as the enrichment of some other area(s) is the minimum we require to establish.
Something more intricate is happening in what is now left of Assam. Assam, par excellence, is a region that inverted the logic of pan-Indian nationalism and is unfortunately paying for it. All nationalisms question outside domination, logically, a power seen as an external authority defining our situation as a nationality or a ‘sub-nationality’. Due to a variety of factors listed in the book, the Assamese feel that they are not an equal partner in the Indian union but are dominated by it, like Punjab too did. But in building up a movement on such grounds it is hoist on its own petard. The logic Assam uses can easily flounder, because given the specificity of its make-up in terms of the composition of populations, it is easy to activate smaller, distinct identities.
The Bodos, for instance, remain far more backward than the ‘Assamese’ and feel they do not have a say in the making of decisions vis-a-vis the Ahoms. Would it make any sense to call ‘Bodoland’ an internal colony of Assam? The separation of smaller but distinct people from the Assam mainland has gone on for a long time. Even what remains of Assam has been besieged from within for being too dominant a presence among smaller, distinct populations. What will be left of Assam when the Bodos, with their elongated stretch of territory, too exit? The many plains tribals, all comfortably contiguous, feel the same as the Bodos.
In an attempt to solve the Assam problem, Ahom-defined nationalism will have to try something creatively new while fighting the arbitrariness of the Indian state. Nothing of the kind seems to be emerging as one looks within the sophisticated and finely tuned criticism of the Assamese intelligentsia.
The book on Punjab is in a sense much simpler. It advances a straightforward thesis and examines all the different aspects of the Punjab problem through it. Though written sympathetically, it is without the slightest apologia for the Khalistani or Sikh militant viewpoint. If anything, it is more sympathetic to the many ‘deviant’ sects within Sikhism for being targetted by the Bhindranwale orthodoxy. This is welcome for most volumes written on the Sikh problem take a blanket pro or anti stance. The book’s central thesis is drawn from the working of the political economy of India as it impinges on the region called Punjab. This is not reducing everything to the ‘economic factor’ as is often alleged when someone takes recourse to a political economy approach.
The thesis is simple. The present day Punjab problem had its genesis in a clash of two forms of capital for hegemony. Which of these capitals would call the shots in Punjab? There was the industrial capital controlled by the pan-Indian bourgeoisie operating through the central government. And there was the ascendant capital in Punjab agriculture seeking a dominant position in the politics of Punjab. The battle for hegemony was joined. The ‘kulak’ was confident and impatient like all ascendant forces, seeking a quick victory. I am in sympathy with this thesis. There is nothing in Sikh religion or in Punjab’s history which suggests a clash between Sikhs and Hindus. That it happened was a purely contingent matter. In another conjuncture something else from the same religion and history could have been activated.
The thesis of clash for hegemony is however insufficient. It needs to be extended. This I will do by citing from my earlier article, ‘The Political Implications of Economic Contradictions in Punjab’, Social Scientist 161, October 1986. I wish to make two points: First, the widespread success of the ‘green revolution’ in Punjab, unlike in many other regions of India in terms of its extent and depth, created very sizeable classes of capitalist landlords and rich peasants, each with a large surplus in their hands. As the surplus accumulated, there were no productive outlets for its investment. It could not expand itself in agriculture because of land ceiling legislations.
Neither could it move into areas of (big) industrial or commercial capital as these were monopolised by the kin-networks of Hindu castes. Individuals drawn from these Hindu communities enjoyed a hegemonic control over the non-agricultural sectors of capitalist economy. Over and above the growing conflicts between the two forms of capital controlled by different religious communities, a potential communal divide, due to the perceived terms of trade, another conflict slowly built up. Any growing capital, on finding the avenues of expansion blocked and aspirations of the bearers of capital thwarted, comes into conflict with that which blocks it.
So here was a situation of bourgeois aspirations (represented by the Sikh kulaks) blocked by the bourgeois hegemony (enjoyed by certain Hindu castes). Conflicts of aspiration vs. hegemony can occur anywhere without getting communalised. This happened as in Punjab the clash brought the two different religious communities face to face. Given the highly centralised nature of state power in India, the political process in the region got deflected as the Punjab (Sikh) vs. the Centre (Hindu) issue. As a result, even the day-to-day discourse in Punjab was communalised. For instance, if electricity supply is increased to agriculture (agriculture in any case consumes close to half, 46%, of the total electricity in Punjab) and cut down for industry, it is pampering the Sikhs; in reverse it is seen as pandering to the Hindus.
Punjab is a rich state with the country’s highest per capita income and a sizeable section of very rich farmers. In addition to the huge agricultural surplus which is exported to different regions of the country, income flows into Punjab from all over the country. This contradicts the thesis advanced in the earlier two works – that of internal colonisation. On the contrary, the state draws in money capital from all over the country. Yet the Punjabi politicians and intelligentsia drew on the thesis of discrimination. To understand this it is important to recall one peculiarity of the colonial inheritance – the industrially advanced pattern of development. This has to do with a dual disjunction, to borrow the term from Amiya Bagchi, between agriculture and industry. Regions where agriculture developed remained industrially backward while regions which developed large scale industry remained agriculturally backward.
In a clash with the centre, any region may draw upon one or the other backwardness to convince its people that it has been discriminated against. What Punjab can show in terms of a lack of public investment in industry, another state, say Gujarat, can argue by showing a relative lack of public investment in irrigation and therefore demonstrate backwardness in other respects. The political economy of development in India is more complicated than a mere clash of different types of capital. This disjunction between agriculture and industry is crucial, even if it does not apply in the case of Assam. Along with this there is the problem of the making of nationalities or ‘sub-nationalities’.
On this question our understanding is Euro-centric, regardless of the perspective we take, Marxist or liberal, as in the writings of Lenin or Gellner. It is language in conjunction with capitalism-industry (and therefore market), that goes into the making of a people as distinct national groups. I want to suggest here a radical change which has come about in the post-colonial period. The crucial condition today for people with a national make-up, who are in the midst of movements of national awareness for the consolidation of their national distinctness, is the presence of bourgeois conditions.
Needless to add, these can arise without each specific people having a (national) market. A single market may span an area which is inclusive of a large number of nationalities. In fact, the bourgeois condition can dislocate people as much as a newly emergent market did in the period of ascendant capitalism, although it may not always integrate people into new economic activities as happened earlier. We only have to look to the various people in India, as the Nagas or the Jharkandis and many others, in regions where market conditions are not even developed.
We, therefore, find national movements arising out of specific conditions and taking forms not foreseen by Lenin. For example, in Africa, large coalitions of big tribes with a resemblance to one another, are moving towards becoming nations. If we hold that tribes cannot directly move to become nations, a la Engels, we are likely to be accused by African radicals of being colonial anthropologists. There is also among the hill people all over a clamour to be treated as separate national groups and here topography, with its distinct sense of space and horizon of time and of labour, has become a source of feelings of national distinctness. This can be observed in the Himalayan region of India. Ever since colonialism and late capitalism in our part of the world, determination of causal chains and relative salience of various attributes has undergone significant transformation.
In citing the above examples and patterns I am not suggesting that India is like Africa or Latin America. Far from it. But within the great diversity of India there are regions and pockets within regions, which may in many ways be similar to, say, Africa. All this is a matter of specification. Clearly much work needs to be done.
Javeed Alam
