Finding Peace in Kashmir

The Indian-administered region of Kashmir, a Muslim-majority valley in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, has recently experienced a new bout of unrest. One wonders if Kashmir will truly know peace unless there is a major paradigm change in the regional politics of South Asia as well as conditions in the valley itself. Kashmir has known unrest and violence in doses of varying strength since it became part of India in 1948. The violence was especially brutal during a popular insurgency in the 1990s when both militants--many sponsored by Pakistan--and the Indian Army committed excesses.

The unique political history of Kashmir is a function of its 19th century history, when a Hindu maharaja came to rule over the Muslim-majority (since the 14th century) Kashmir valley. Jammu and Kashmir was a princely state under the British Raj from 1846 to 1947, ruled by a dynasty of Dogras, Hindu hill warriors from the Hindu-majority Jammu region. Most of what became the future princely state was conquered in the 1830s and 1840s for the Sikh Empire by its subordinate hill rajas, including the raja of Jammu from 1822, Gulab Singh. Ladakh, the eastern, culturally Tibetan region of today’s Jammu and Kashmir was acquired during this time as well. Although Gulab Singh was a loyal general of Ranjit Singh, the founder of the Sikh Empire, his loyalty toward the empire decreased due to the factionalism and chaos that followed Singh’s death. Thus, during the subsequent Anglo-Sikh War of 1845-1846, Gulab Singh did not take action against the British, who acquired Muslim-majority Kashmir as a result. This they sold to Gulab Singh for 7.5 million rupees, whereupon Jammu and Kashmir became a princely state under the British Raj.

Jammu and Kashmir is situated in a strategically important region at the crown of the Himalayas. When India and Pakistan became independent in 1947, the 562 existing princely states in the region were given the option of joining one of the two new countries. For most, the choice was obvious based on demographics and location. The biggest question mark was Jammu and Kashmir, which controlled a congruent country-sized territory on the edges of both Pakistan and India. In addition to strategic reasons, Pakistan’s claim on Kashmir was based on its Muslim majority, as Pakistan was founded to be a homeland for all of South Asia’s Muslims. India, on the other hand, wanted Kashmir to disprove the necessity of a homeland for subcontinental Muslims and to emphasize the power of secularism. What both India and Pakistan failed to comprehend both then and now is that many Kashmiris have political desires that do not fit into either of these two national narratives.

The ruler of Jammu and Kashmir at that time, Hari Singh, was hostile to the leaders of both new countries, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru and Pakistan’s Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and maneuvered to maintain his state’s independence. However, after a Pakistan-sponsored invasion of tribesmen to force the issue, Hari Singh legally acceded to India on October 26, 1947 under the pressure of the leader of the valley’s Muslims, Sheikh Abdullah, a friend of Nehru’s. India then airlifted troops into Kashmir, and, since then, the erstwhile princely state has been effectively split between Pakistan and India. A planned UN plebiscite never occurred. The majority of the valley of Kashmir today is administered by India.

Much of the bitterness and conflict in India’s Kashmir valley dates to the late 1980s, when the Indian government and Kashmiri society failed to manage their relations in a mutually tolerable manner. Despite its status as a Muslim-majority region in Hindu-majority India, the Kashmir valley was calm for most of its first four decades as a part of India; during the 1965 war between India and Pakistan, Pakistan failed to incite a revolt in Kashmir. Things changed in 1987, when the Indian government rigged a Kashmiri election to keep Islamist parties out of the region’s legislature. This led to widespread protests and popular militant action that was exacerbated in 1989 when the the Soviet War in Afghanistan ended. Former mujahideen came to Kashmir to stir things up--with Pakistani aid. The 1990s were a time of vicious conflict and atrocities committed by both the insurgency and the Indian army. The journalist James Buchan, summarizing what happened in Kashmir during this dark period wrote:

“In the years since 1990, the Kashmiri Muslims and the Indian government have conspired to abolish the complexities of Kashmiri civilization. The world it inhabited has vanished: the state government and the political class, the rule of law, almost all the Hindu inhabitants of the valley, alcohol, cinemas, cricket matches, picnics by moonlight in the saffron fields, schools, universities, an independent press, tourists and banks. In this reduction of civilian reality, the sights of Kashmir are redefined: not the lakes and Moghul gardens, or the storied triumphs of Kashmiri agriculture, handicrafts and cookery, but two entities that confront each other without intermediary: the mosque and the army camp.”

The insurgency quieted down by the end of the 1990s due to actions of the Indian Army, and the desire of Kashmiri Muslims to solve their problems through local political action. Many Kashmiris blamed foreign militants for brutalizing the conflict. But wounds and mistrust remain between Kashmiris and the Indian government, even when things seem to get better, such as in 2014, when the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Democratic Party won elections and formed a coalition with the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The anger is largely a function of local grievances stemming from the frequent shootings and disappearances of Kashmiris by the Indian army. Indian authorities may be too trigger happy, but this is also a function of always being on edge guarding against terrorist attacks.

Even relatively minor and spurious events can trigger unrest from time to time in Kashmir. July 2016’s unrest was triggered by the killing of Burhan Muzaffar Wani, a Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) militant, by security forces on July 8. Many locals allege that Wani was not an active militant, but a passive resister, who fought using social media. Many younger militants and nationalists are using the spread of social media and the internet to air their grievances in a savvier way, leading to greater interest in Kashmir again in political issues. Massive protests broke out all over the valley as a result of Wani’s death and tens of thousands of people attended his funeral. In the subsequent riots, over 60 people have died and over 4,500 have been injured. As The Diplomat went to print this month, curfews were still in effect.

What this demonstrates is that Kashmiri sentiments remain charged, despite intermittent exterior calm. Any permanent solution has to be social and political; the military, whose only job should be to fight outright militancy and not contain local activism or get involved in policing, cannot be the source of a solution. In addition to local politics in Kashmir, the dispute remains a key bone of contention between India and Pakistan at the national level. It is frequently cited by militant jihadist groups in South Asia as a casus belli against India. The Kashmir conflict moreover poisons relations between India and Pakistan and precludes them from agreeing to a permanent peace with a demilitarized border. In any attempt to gain leverage over each other, India and Pakistan support or threaten to support other militant movements in each other’s countries, such as in Punjab (Khalistan) and Balochistan.

A resolution to the Kashmir conflict is thus the single most necessary event for peace and regional integration in South Asia. There are only a few practical options. One thing is obvious: India and Pakistan will never allow Kashmir to hold a plebiscite and become an independent country. The only reasonable way forward is working with the territorial and political status quo. On the international front, India and Pakistan should make the Line of Control (LoC) between them the permanent border, as it is inconceivable that either country would voluntarily give up any more territory. This is similar to a peace plan floated in 2006, which unfortunately did not go through, by Pakistan’s former president, Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf proposed that the interested parties give up their claims and make the borders irrelevant. Unless Pakistan collapses and India recovers all of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir state from the vacuum that would form in such a case, it is unlikely that any other solution would work. War between the two nuclear-armed powers is hardly an option.

However, as much of the conflict is driven by local factors, what is really needed is a measure of political and social autonomy in Kashmir—especially Indian Kashmir. While this autonomy need not be total and should respect the rights of Jammu and Kashmir’s Hindu and Buddhist minorities, it can be quite broad, and should accept any parties and ideological groups that operate within the law and remain peaceful. Furthermore, the Indian army’s role should remain tightly proscribed. Other factors can also help: the beautiful valley should invest heavily in tourism, for example. Kashmiris should be made to feel Indian; they should be encouraged to live and work in the rest of India. The converse should also be true, even though it is politically controversial because of its demographic implications: Indians from the rest of the country should be encouraged to visit and perhaps even settle in Kashmir.

A permanent resolution to the Kashmir issue is perhaps still many decades down the road. However, a process towards resolution can begin now, forging greater understanding between Kashmiris and India’s broader political class.