New Delhi | Brahma Chellaney: The action of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in revoking the statehood and special constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) marks a watershed for India. Although control of the original princely state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) is divided among India, Pakistan and China, only India was maintaining special powers and privileges for its portion. The timing of the Modi government’s action was driven not just by domestic factors but also by international considerations, including U.S. President Donald Trump’s Kashmir mediation offer and America’s looming bargain with the Pakistan-reared Afghan Taliban.
China took the lead earlier this month to internationalize the J&K issue by successfully calling for a special but informal United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting on the dispute, but only in relation to “the India-Pakistan question”. By brazenly cloaking its own role in the dispute, including its unlawful occupation of 20% of J&K, China has presented J&K as just an India-Pakistan issue.
It would be a mistake to believe that China’s UNSC machinations yielded nothing. The fact is that these machinations are only emboldening Pakistan and its terrorist proxies. China’s scheming also aids separatists in Indian J&K. In fact, the UNSC meeting — even if it resulted in only talk, no action — brought India’s J&K policy under international spotlight. The closed-door huddle represented the first official UNSC meeting on Kashmir since 1971, when Indian military intervention helped create Bangladesh.
The Chinese machinations are a reminder to India that China’s J&K interference will only increase. China’s strategy is to attack India’s weak points and stymie its rise to the extent possible. Beijing views the Indian portion of J&K as India’s Achilles heel.
Against this background, the J&K constitutional change can help India to more ably counter the Sino-Pakistan nexus centred on Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. India has separated its J&K-related territorial disputes with Pakistan and China by carving out Ladakh as a new federally administered territory and turning the rest of its J&K from a state into a union territory with a legislature.
Article 370 came to be seen by Pakistan as Indian acceptance that J&K is a disputed territory. That only encouraged the Pakistani establishment to up the ante. Article 370, by allowing only permanent residents to own land, also encouraged Islamists in the Valley to change, by force, demography and property holdings by expelling Kashmiri Pandits.
With its diverse ethnic and religious communities, J&K was a microcosm of pluralistic India, before its syncretic culture and traditions came under a sustained Islamist onslaught. Since 1989, with successive governments in New Delhi helpless to arrest the trend, the pluralistic traditions of Kashmir have largely given way to a Wahhabi/Salafi culture. The defanging of Article 370 may not stem the Arabization of the Valley’s Islam but it will certainly help to lift the ambiguity on J&K’s status by integrating it fully with the Indian Union. More broadly, the constitutional change empowers the central government with greater authority in dealing with the J&K security situation.
India has managed reasonably well the international fallout from its J&K action. But India now must brace up to its internal-security and regional challenges. The current government restrictions on movement and communications directly impinge on constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties. Yet, given the high risk of a deterioration of the security situation, these restrictions can be eased only in a graduated manner.
While the people of Hong Kong are fighting for democracy, the armed jihadists in the Kashmir Valley reject democracy and wish to establish a caliphate. In this situation, authorities must lift or re-impose restrictions in the Valley’s troubled districts as part of a decentralized, calibrated strategy that seeks to build peace at the local level in each borough through reward and punishment.
India’s bigger challenge relates to the deepening Sino-Pakistan nexus. With China’s protection, Pakistan will continue to use armed jihadists against India. India needs to tackle head on Pakistan’s protracted proxy war by seeking to impose costs on the Pakistani military generals (the terror masters), rather than on their expendable terrorist proxies. India’s 2016 ground-launched surgical strike after the Uri terrorist attack and the more recent Balakot raid in February targeted only the terrorist surrogates, leaving the generals unscathed to continue their death-by-a-thousand-cuts strategy against India.
The power behind Pakistan, however, is China, against which India is reluctant to even speak up. In fact, Beijing is using the profits from its spiralling trade surplus with India to expand its military capability and advance its aggressive ambitions without firing a shot. India is effectively funding its own containment. China already dominates India’s telecom sector but New Delhi, instead of banning Huawei from its 5G trials, is still searching for a middle ground.
The Wuhan spirit did not survive even a week after the April 2018 Wuhan summit. Yet, despite China’s latest provocations, Chinese President Xi Jinping will be in India in October for a second Wuhan-like informal summit, which could be held in Varanasi. Before that summit, China intends to take India round and round the mulberry bush in yet another round of border talks.
Economically, the least New Delhi can do is to erect roadblocks on China’s inroads into key Indian sectors. Politically, India needs to strengthen its hand by exercising countervailing leverage. If India continues to ignore China’s provocations, including the recent UNSC machinations, it will be negotiating from a position of weakness when Modi hosts Xi in October or when next month National Security Adviser Ajit Doval meets his Chinese counterpart in the border talks.
More fundamentally, J&K is a core issue of secular identity and national security for India. In the short run, the security situation in the Kashmir Valley could worsen, resulting in India coming under greater pressure from domestic and foreign critics and human-rights groups. But over the longer term, J&K’s greater integration and development are likely to contribute to the normalization of the situation in the Valley. India must stay the course unflinchingly, bearing short-term pain to secure long-term gain.
(The article is an opinion piece by Brahma Chellaney. The views expressed in the article are of the author and Jagran English does not take the responsibility of the views expressed here)
Posted By: Aalok Sensharma
