EDITORIAL: India's prime minister Narendra Modi has finally met a group of Kashmiri leaders and sought their cooperation to help him gerrymander constituencies so that he can have a government of his liking in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK). And to win over their support he offered the sop of restoring IIOJK's statehood - but at an "appropriate time". Even when the Hurriyat Conference was not included, as it was not invited to New Delhi, the group did not bite the bait and demanded restoration of pre-August 5, 2019 "special status" of the state. The meeting in India's capital lasted about three hours and the participants left the venue offering cryptic comments reiterating their common demand that the constitutional provision disfiguring the state's autonomous status be revoked. "We will struggle for restoration of Article 371, be it in months or years. We didn't get this special status from Pakistan, but from India, Nehru. There can be no compromise on this," said Mehbooba Mufti, one of the three former chief ministers who met Modi. The question whether Narendra Modi will stop at this has no easy answer. Given his Chanakyan mindset he can come up with yet another sop. Since the abrogation of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir's special status on August 7, 2019, the Indian establishment has carried out a number of actions to change the demographic character of this Muslim-majority state. Obviously, his plea to carry out delimitation of constituencies is clearly aimed at winning elections where it is presently not feasible. Since his BJP has already made significant inroads in the IIOJK, he would like the world to be convinced that Kashmiris are largely secular people, and if there is far-right Hurriyat Conference it is a foreign-funded setup.
In fact, even if Indian atrocities are not being condemned internationally the way these should be, Modi is uncomfortable for the present state of things in IIOJK; his political opponents too are critical of the continuing lockdown of the state. There is also a report saying that even the India's anti-China Quad comrades have expressed reservations over New Delhi's growing belligerence against Kashmiris. India is also likely to free the imprisoned Kashmiri leaders, and the group who met Modi is expected to be the main beneficiary of this move. The answer to the question whether the incarcerated Hurriyat Conference leaders too would be set free is in the negative because they are treated as a product of Pakistan. However, intriguingly, there is another facet to this exercise. After the UAE-hosted 'secret talks' between intelligence chiefs of Pakistan and India there was ceasefire on the Line of Actual Control, and then there was a talk of importing food stuff from India. Sometime back even Prime Minister Imran Khan said at a public meeting at Kotli, Azad Kashmir, that Pakistan would have no objection if Kashmir becomes an independent state. Then only a few days back Pakistan offered to give up its nuclear weapons, if India did the same.
Modi's offer to Kashmiri leaders has nothing to do with bilateral peace with Pakistan. He wants to shorten their doori (distance) with New Delhi and that's all. Also, keeping half a million boots in IIOJK is an expensive proposition, a realization that haunts Indians now that their country is beset with daunting economic challenges, multiplied as these are by the rampant Covid pandemic. He wants his troops out of IIOJK and for that he needs the Kashmiri leadership's willingness to go along.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021