Essay Instructions: Reflect on the dynamics of ethnic conflict in Kashmir from the primordialist and constructivist persuasions. Explain the pattern of power-sharing known as federalism and consider its relevance in the case of Kashmir with reference to the Kashmir Study Group website.
Basic Readings/Interactive Website:
o Assigned Readings: Schaffer and Schaffer, “Kashmir: Fifty Years of Running in Place” in Grasping the Nettle, Crocker, Hampson, and Aall, eds. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2005, pp. 295-318 (Blackboard 9); Esman, An Introduction to Ethnic Conflict, Cambridge: Polity Press Ltd., 2004, pp. 136-54.
o Foreign Affairs LEARNING COMMUNITY ONLINE: Sumit Ganguly, “Will Kashmir Stop India’s Rise,” Foreign Affairs July/August 2006 85 (4): 1-5 online, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61731/sumit-ganguly/will-kashmir-stop-indias-rise
o Kashmir Study Group, http://www.kashmirstudygroup.net/
Kashmir Conflict
? causes of conflict
? nature of the dispute
? parties to dispute
? obstacles to settlement
? third-party involvement
? lessons from the past (for the future)
Pre-1947 princely state of Jammu and Kashmir
Five Major Areas (consult the map on PPT for Module 9):
Under Indian Administration ??"
• valley of Kashmir, 4.7 million, Kashmiri-speaking Sunni Muslims ??" prominent Hindu minority now mostly lives outside the Valley after over a decade of insurgency; the heart of Kashmir ??" population seriously discontented with the current political configuration ??" none of the other areas have any great desire to be ruled by the Muslims of the Valley
• Jammu ??" Hindu majority, 4.5 million, with several Muslim-majority districts
• Ladakh’s 200,000 people ??" predominantly Tibetan Buddhist; some Shia Muslim areas as well
Under Pakistani Administration ??"
• Azad (free) Kashmir ??" immediately adjacent to the Valley, 3.1 million people, virtually 100% Muslim ??" has ties to both the Pakistani Punjab and the Valley
• Northern Areas ??" a number of small principalities, 1.1 million people are virtually all Muslims, some are Shia or Ismaili, unlike the Sunni majority in the Valley, and several areas have their own language; isolated from the surrounding areas and there is no road connecting it to Azad (free) Kashmir
1947-49 (first Kashmir war)
o an imperial legacy, fought to decide the main outstanding issue in the partition of India, but it was even then a war over two different concepts of the successor state, the competing nationalisms of Muslim Pakistan and secular India;
o cease-fire line established then remains the Line of Control (LOC) today, except for very minor changes of alignment
o line left the Valley of Kashmir entirely under Indian administration
Pakistan’s position
• the state’s final disposition must be settled by a plebiscite that offers voters the same two choices identified by the United Nations (UN) in resolutions of 1948 or 1949; that is, voters can opt for Kashmir becoming part of either India or Pakistan
• Pakistani government ??" more attention in recent years to ‘the wishes of the Kashmiris’ ??" raises possibility of three-option plebiscite: (1) Kashmir as a part of India; (2) Kashmir as a part of Pakistan; (3) Kashmir attaining its own sovereign independence
India’s position
whole state belongs to India ??" could live with a solution that turns the Line of Control into a permanent boundary
Intra-Party Dynamics in Kashmir
• vocal independence movement has complicated the situation
N.B. Kashmir has to come to identify the countries’ identity dispute
• for Pakistan, Kashmir represents the one Muslim-majority part of the South Asian subcontinent that did not become part of Pakistan, the ‘homeland for the Muslims’
for India, it is a symbol of the country’s secular identity, and this symbolic significance has grown stronger with time ??" many Indians fear that the loss of Kashmir would trigger massive anti-communal Muslim riots in India itself where Muslims make up about 12 percent of the population
Principal Obstacle to a Settlement
• at the outset the unwillingness of India or Pakistan to compromise on an issue both regard as fundamental to their national identity
• in Pakistan it remains almost impossible to talk about any solution that leaves the map unchanged ??" amidst the devastating problems and insecurities Pakistan is dealing with, dedication to the cause of Kashmir is one of the few things most Pakistanis agree on ??" Pakistan’s internal weakness has become an additional obstacle complicated by the power of the militant organizations within Pakistan
in India its growing power and confidence made India more willing to accept a solution that turns the present Line of Control into an international border ??" reluctance to consider any deviations from its standard practices in the governance of Kashmir has made it hard to take new initiatives
Third-Party Involvement
o Soviet Union ??" one brief effort to encourage a settlement (1966) ??" invited leaders of India and Pakistan to Tashkent in an attempt to reach a more durable settlement
o United States supported this effort at Soviet peacemaking ??" Tashkent conference simply restored the prewar status quo on the ground in Kashmir
? the Simla Agreement ??" the two countries pledged to solve Kashmir and other problems bilaterally
? the same document committed both sides to respect the Line of Control dividing their forces in the state and to refrain from the use of force in violation of that line
? reported that the two leaders secretly agreed to make the Line of Control their international border
1965 (second Kashmir war)
o from August ??" September 1965 the two countries went to war again after Pakistan launched a covert offensive across the ceasefire line into Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir
o India retaliated by crossing the international border at Lahore
o the Soviet Union, led by Premier Alexey Kosygin, hosted ceasefire negotiations in Tashkent, now in Uzbekistan, where Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and Pakistani President Ayub Khan signed the Tashkent Agreement, agreeing to withdraw to pre-August lines no later than February 25, 1966
o the ceasefire remained in effect until the start of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971
1971 (Indo-Pakistani war)
o the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 resulted in the defeat of Pakistan and Pakistan Military's surrender in East Pakistan (Bangladesh). The Simla Agreement ??" signed between India and Pakistan on July 2, 1972
o the agreement laid down the principles that should govern their future relations. It also conceived steps to be taken for further normalization of mutual relations
o most importantly, by this treaty, both countries agreed to settle all issues by peaceful means and mutual discussions in the framework of the UN Charter
o it also cemented the Line of Control as something close to a permanent border
o the agreement also paved the way for diplomatic recognition of Bangladesh by Pakistan
o the agreement has been the basis of all subsequent bilateral talks between India and Pakistan, though it has not prevented the relationship between the two countries from deteriorating to the point of armed conflict
o the accord was signed in Simla, India, by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, and Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India
Dynamics of Conflict
• periodic outbreaks of insurgency
• Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests in 1998 greatly magnified concerns about Kashmir
India
strong bias against outside mediation
• essential to engage with all those who have the potential to wreck an agreement, insiders may be more critical than outsiders
• no substitute for leadership ??" absence of Kashmiri leadership since 1982
• gap compounded by the fragility of the Pakistani state
• peacemakers must mount a serious effort; dabbling is useless
• managing intractable problems will not necessarily make them easier to solve
• putting a problem on ice is insufficient ??" needs to be supplemented by a strategy for “ripening” the conflict
• leadership is necessary to bring peace talks to a successful close
o Howard B. Schaffer and Teresita C. Schaffer. “Kashmir: Fifty Years of Running in Place” in Grasping the Nettle. Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall, eds. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2005, pp. 295-318.
? Balance of Power Considerations
• Cold War Scenario
• US-Pakistan Relations
• USSR-India Relations
• Post Cold War Scenario
• Balance of Terror (Nuclear Standoff) in India-Pakistan Relations
? Capacity and Resources
• US Shifting Relations with each country
• India’s growing economy
• Stable political system (democracy) inside India
• GDP of India and Pakistan
• Poverty rates, literacy rates, employment rates in country
? think beyond the narrow conceptions of the three parameters along which this conflict is traditionally viewed: (a) ideology; (b) nationalism; and (c) self-determination ??" each is a serious impediment to resolution
? at the time of the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan in 1947, Kashmir became entangled in a dispute arising in part from two mutually exclusive ideologies
• Pakistan ??" argues that including a Muslim-majority state such as Jammu and Kashmir in India repudiated the two-nation theory that is responsible for its identity
India ??" insists that Kashmir’s accession validated the theory of secular nationalism on which it was founded
• sixty years later ??" Kashmir is still being treated as a test of each state’s legitimizing ideology
? Kashmir ??" part of the subcontinent’s princely order, the Dogra state of Jammu and Kashmir lay outside the domain of British India, which in 1947 was divided on the basis of a two-nation theory
? at that point, Kashmir was not yet considered an inalienable part of either Pakistan or India but an important asset from the standpoint of geographical consolidation and the defense needs of the respective dominions
? the battle between India’s Congress and the Muslim League over Kashmir’s accession was fundamentally political in nature
? from the earliest demands for a separate state and the creation of Pakistan in 1947, Islam has been both a rallying force and a legitimizing ideology for a wide array of political and religious leaders (instrumentalism)
? after Jinnah, almost all of Pakistan’s leaders, including those with secular leanings, suppressed ethnic, regional and economic discontent, using Islam to justify their coercive and authoritarian actions
? scholars observe that ‘the official discourse of inclusionary nationalism far from contributing to the evolution of a collective ethos’ has impeded the accommodation of local and regional social formations
? the secession of East Pakistan on the basis of Bengali nationalism in 1971 proved this point
? the demographic fact that India has nearly as many Muslims as either Pakistan or Bangladesh raises serious questions about the necessity of searching for nationhood in religious terms
• despite being an independent state for fifty-nine years, Pakistan has yet to evolve an identity that does not hinge on the inclusion of Kashmir
the ideological debate in India centers on secularism ??" Indian secularism, critics argue, has failed to achieve its original objectives of deterring the persecution of religious minorities and ‘imposing limits on the political expression of cultural or religious conflicts between Hindus and Muslims’
the peculiar characteristics of Indian society, such as blind loyalty to caste and religious community, can easily slide into communal rivalry and more dangerously into communal conflict
the state’s policy of making separate laws for religious communities also contravenes the fundamental principle of the separation of religion and state
some even argue that secularism is ‘culturally inappropriate’ for India partly because ‘it is much too much a public matter to be privatized’
not indigenous to the religious cultures of India and imported from the West, secularism continues to sit uneasily with homegrown worldviews
Nehru’s concept of a secular state did not negate religion, however; it meant equal protection for all faiths
the state did not establish any official religion but reserved for itself the right to intervene in matters of religion in the interest of necessary social reforms
Lessons from the Past (for the future)
? the biggest challenge to Nehruvian secularism was mounted by the Hindu nationalist political party Jan Sangh (JS) and it successor, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
? the JS/BJP sought to subsume different cultural, linguistic and caste layers of community identity under a single overarching category of religion as well as to transform the multifaceted religious system of Hinduism into a monolithic one
? ‘Hindutva acts as an exclusionary force in the Indian society rather than [being] universalistic and open to the values of other cultures’
? the real testing ground of Indian secularism has not been Kashmir but developments such as the demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992 and the anti-Muslim riots in the BJP-ruled state of Gujarat in 2003
? Kashmir provides a rallying point to all shades and hues of this ideological debate on both sides of the border
in India, it is not only the secularists but also the Hindu nationalists who seek to appropriate the Kashmir issue to their cause
• in Pakistan, Kashmir becomes a unifying force for the modernists, the orthodox, and the jihadis
• not one of these groups has yielded critical spaces to Kashmiri voices
• in the triangular relationship between India, Pakistan, and Kashmir, it is important to distinguish between ‘religion as faith’ and ‘religion as ideology’
• religion as faith may be defined as ‘a way of life, a tradition that is, in terms of definition, non-monolithic,’ whereas religion as ideology denotes a ‘sub-national, national or cross-national identifier of populations contesting for or protecting non-religious, usually political or socio-economic interest’
• ideology in this sense is a modern construct that is deeply uncomfortable with the inherent plurality of faiths
• when appropriated by a state as a legitimizing tool, it invariably acquires a majoritarian character whatever its specific form, whether Hindu nationalism/secularism, Islamic principles, or even a Kashmiriyat-based ideology
• the real source of Kashmir’s various problems is not so much the limiting boundaries of an Indian, Pakistani or Kashmiri ideology but the fact that ideology with its homogenizing tendencies, is being applied at all to a deeply plural community
• this plurality must be the uppermost consideration in formulating an appropriate policy framework for the peace process
• nationalism, with its hegemonic attributes, has added another problematic dimension to the Kashmir dispute
• both India and Pakistan assign a central place to Kashmir in their respective nation-building strategies
• the nationalist discourse, whether Indian or Pakistani, with its core values of sovereignty and sacred and inviolable territorial borders, makes it difficult to arrive at a creative political solution for a complex community such as Kashmir
• those involved in the peace process must rethink the concepts of state sovereignty, borders, and boundaries and contend with the reality that ‘sovereignty today is an extraordinarily flexible, manipulative concept’
• ‘divided sovereignty may be essential to a polity’s survival in a period of…ethnic assertiveness’
• perhaps they should take a cue from the precolonial concept of ‘suzerainty’ and explore the meaning, form, content and viability of ‘layered’ or ‘shared’ sovereignty in the context of Kashmir
• diverse sets of sovereign-suzerain state structures would better respond to the needs of the individuals and groups within each state who are theoretically the repositories of ultimate sovereign authority
• the leadership in New Delhi and Islamabad needs to view the conflict from the people’s perspective
• self-determination ??" the doctrine of national self-determination postulates that ‘any people, simply because it considers itself to be a separate people has the right, if it so desires, to form its own state
• the fundamental problem here is that ethnographic boundaries almost never coincide with political ones
• creation of a Westphalian state ??" the ultimate goal of most self-determination movements
• may simply compound the problem by failing to address the more important question of political rights
• there is a close relationship between self-determination and popular sovereignty: ‘national consciousness was a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the advent of national self-determination
• popular sovereignty, the notion that ultimate political authority rests with the people, was the other necessary part of the equation
• it is important to distinguish between the territorial and political dimensions of the right to self-determination
? Kashmiri demands for self-determination have always been viewed in a territorial light, being demands for sovereign rights over an independent territory
? popular sovereignty or the political rights of the people have been much neglected, although Kashmiris (on the Indian side) were able to secure popular sovereignty for a very brief period in the early 1950s during which they had a separate constitutional assembly to determine the future of the Dogra rule and drew up a state constitution
? political goals and territorial ambitions eroded the state’s autonomy when Sheikh Abdullah began exploring the option of a sovereign, independent state of Jammu and Kashmir ??" after three decades of this erosion, through the imposition of New Delhi’s political choices and the blatant manipulation of the electoral process, the idea of azadi (freedom) reemerged in the early 1990s
? although the violent movement that inspired it has fizzled out, the idea has survived
? the challenge for political leaders engaged in the peace process is to segregate the political and territorial dimensions of the demand for self-determination and work toward safeguarding the political rights of the people of Jammu and Kashmir
? a territorial vision of the right of self-determination is entirely the wrong point of departure
? New Delhi and Islamabad will not allow their respective parts of Kashmir to secede, and the idea violates the ‘territorial integrity norm’ of the late twentieth century
? the international context has changed since September 11, 2001, with few willing to believe the myth of the ‘freedom-struggle’ used to justify jihadi terrorism in Kashmir
? territorial independence for Jammu and Kashmir state will not ‘resolve’ the Kashmir problem because it is not supported by all the people of the state
? the secessionist agenda underlying the right to self-determination lacks an inclusive character
? the collective and consistent opposition of the state’s linguistic, regional and religious minorities has checkmated the demand for secession by the majority community of the Kashmiri Muslims
? a just, viable, and lasting peace in Kashmir must involve all the communities and nationalities living in the state, not just the Kashmiri Muslims who resorted to the gun and thus became the real victims of the political violence in the state
? if the political demands of the nonviolent mobilizations in Jammu, Ladakh and the Northern Areas are not addressed through the peace process, it will send a message that violence pays, defeating the very purpose of that process
? more recent peace process ??" between India and Pakistan, formerly known as the ‘composite dialogue’
? meeting in Islamabad during January 2004 between India’s prime minister Vajpayee and Pakistan’s president Musharraf restarted the process
? Vajpayee’s successor, Singh, committed to carrying the process forward and Musharraf came up with some new proposals for Pakistan
? the peace process is expanding in its policy parameters and the set of players with a stake in and commitment to the dialogue
o Navnita Chadha Behera. Demystifying Kashmir. Washington DC: The Brookings Institution Press, 2006.
o Recommended DVD Viewing - Mission Kashmir (2000) Hindi
