[sacw] On Current Pak India conflict in Kashmir

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web / South Asians Against Nukes
June 3, 1999

[1.] Kashmir, the Imperiled Paradise By SALMAN RUSHDIE
[2.] Press Release by citizens of Calcutta on the Current Pak India conflict

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The New York Times
June 3, 1999

Kashmir, the Imperiled Paradise
By SALMAN RUSHDIE

Salman Rushdie is the author of "The Satanic Verses," "The Moor's Last
Sigh" and, most recently, "The Ground Beneath Her Feet."

LONDON -- For more than 50 years, India and Pakistan have been arguing and
periodically coming to blows over one of the most beautiful places in the
world, Kashmir, which the Mughal emperors thought of as Paradise on earth.
As a result of this unending quarrel, Paradise has been partitioned,
impoverished and made violent. Murder and terrorism now stalk the valleys
and mountains of a land once so famous for its peacefulness that outsiders
made jokes about the Kashmiris' supposed lack of fighting spirit.
I have a particular interest in the Kashmir issue because I am more than
half Kashmiri myself, because I have loved the place all my life and
because I have spent much of that life listening to successive Indian and
Pakistani governments, all of them more or less venal and corrupt,
mouthing the self-serving hypocrisies of power while ordinary Kashmiris
suffered the consequences of their posturings.

Pity those ordinary, peaceable people, caught between the rock of India
and the hard place that Pakistan has always been!

And, as the world's newest nuclear powers square off yet again, their new
weapons making their dialogue of the deaf more dangerous than ever before,
I say, A plague on both their houses. "Kashmir for the Kashmiris" is an
old slogan, but the only one that expresses how the subjects of this
dispute have always felt; how, I believe, the majority of them would still
say they feel, if they were free to speak their minds without fear.

India has badly mishandled the Kashmir case from the beginning. Back in
1947 the state's Hindu maharaja "opted" for India, and in spite of United
Nations resolutions supporting the largely Muslim population's right to a
plebiscite, India's leaders have always rejected the idea, repeating over
and over that Kashmir is "an integral part" of India. (The Nehru-Gandhi
dynasty is itself of Kashmiri origin.)

India has maintained a large standing military presence in Kashmir for
decades, both in the Vale of Kashmir where most of the population is based
and in mountain fastnesses like the site of the present flashpoint. This
force feels to most Kashmiris like an occupying army and is greatly
resented.

Yet until recently the generality of Indians, even the liberal
intelligentsia, refused to face up to the reality of Kashmiris' growing
animosity toward them. As a result, the problem has grown steadily worse,
greatly exacerbated by laws that threatened long jail sentences for any
Kashmiri making anti-Indian statements in public.

Pakistan, for its part, has from its earliest times been a heavily
militarized state, dominated by the army even when under notionally
civilian rule and spending a huge part of its budget -- at its peak,
around half the total budgetary expenditure -- on its armed forces. Such
spending, and the consequent might of the generals, depends on having a
dangerous enemy to defend against and a "hot" cause to pursue.

It has therefore always been in the interest of Pakistan's top brass to
frustrate peacemaking initiatives toward India and to keep the Kashmir
dispute alive. This, and not the alleged interests of Kashmiris, is what
lies behind Pakistan's policy on the issue.

These days, in addition, the Pakistani authorities are under pressure from
their country's mullahs and radical Islamists, who characterize the
struggle to "liberate" (that is, to seize) Kashmir as a holy war. But
Kashmiri Islam has always been of the mild, Sufistic variety, in which
local pirs, holy men, are revered as saints. This open-hearted, tolerant
Islam is anathema to the firebrands of Pakistan and might well, under
Pakistani rule, be at risk.

Thus, the present-day growth of terrorism in Kashmir has roots in India's
treatment of Kashmiris, but it has equally deep roots in Pakistan's
interest in subversion. Yes, Kashmiris feel strongly about the Indian
"occupation" of their land; but it is also almost certainly true that
Pakistan's army and intelligence service have been training, aiding and
abetting the men of violence.

The fact that India and Pakistan possess nuclear weapons makes urgent the
need to move beyond the deadlock and the moribund 50-year-old language of
the crisis. What Kashmiris want, and what India and Pakistan must be
persuaded to offer them, is a reunited land, an end to Lines of Control
and warfare on high Himalayan glaciers. What they want is to be given a
large degree of autonomy; to be allowed to run their own lives.

The Kashmir dispute has already exposed the frailty of the cold war theory
of nuclear deterrence, according to which the extreme danger of nuclear
arsenals should deter those who possess them from embarking even on a
conventional war. That thesis now seems untenable. It was probably not
deterrence that prevented the cold war from turning hot, but luck.

So here we are in a newly dangerous world, in which nuclear powers
actually are going to war. In such a time, it is essential that the
special-case status of Kashmir be recognized and used as the basis of the
way forward. The Kashmir problem must be defused once and for all, or
else, in the unthinkable worst-case scenario, it may end in the nuclear
destruction of Paradise itself, and of much else besides.
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The following press statement was issued by some citizens of
Calcutta at the initiative of some members of the PIPFPD, West Bengal and
was release to the press on 28.5.1999.

" We are deeply schocked and pained at the serious conflict situation
arising once again between India and Pakistan. This has definitely marred
the atmosphere of friendship created by the Lahore Declaration (1999) and
has shattered the great expectations roused by it. Any such conflict not
only means loss of lives but it also increases the economic burden on the
people of the two backward developing countries.

Hence we feel that :

1. Both Pakistan and India should coolly sit down to take stock of
the current situation and find out some peaceful permanent solution to
the conflict ;
2. There should be a continuous dialogue between the two governments
so that never in future any farther misunderstanding leading to violent or
armed activities arise ;
3. Since the Kashmir issue is the main bone of contention between the
two countries a fresh and serious move should be taken to solve the
problem. For that matter both the governments and peoples of these
two countries should be involved in this challenging dialogue that would
also include the peoples of Kashmir on both sides of the Line of
Control ( LoC );
4. Pending the solution of the Kashmir problem both the governments
should immediately take up positive steps towards bilateral commerce,
cultural exchanges, information inflows and people to people contact."

Signatories:
1. Shantimoy Roy
2. Pranab Ghosh
3. Dr. Bishnu Mukherjee
4. Amit Chaakraborty
5. Sagnik Chakravartty
6. Krishna Bandyopadhyay
7. Dr.D.P. Sen
8. Prof. Amalendu De
9. Md. Sulaiman Khurshid
10. P.R.Ghosh
11. Shyamal Nandi
12. Madhab Banerjee
13. Malay Mukherjee
14. Dr. Dilip Banerjee

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