E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

Uneasy truce in UP BJP
THE "unanimous election" of Mr Kalraj Misra as President of the Uttar Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Party does not necessarily mark the end of the unhappy phase of unity-threatening differences among leaders who are expected to guide the party to victory in the assembly elections next year. 

Chandigarh unplugged
CHANDIGARH has pretensions to becoming a fully wired city in the not too distant future. But the capital of Punjab and Haryana remained virtually unwired for the past one week, with the residents finding it impossible to make an outstation call. 

OPINION

Mandela still in thick of national life
by Hari Sharan Chhabra
TWO years ago, when Nelson Mandela was still the President of South Africa, his 80th birthday was a big national event, the African National Congress (ANC) leadership having decided to celebrate their beloved leader’s birthday with year-long programmes of rejoicing, dancing and music. 

MIDDLE

Unforgettable bureaucrats 
by R. S. Dutta
MAN experiences many incidents, good or bad, in his life. While most are forgotten, a few stick in mind till memory lasts. Here are three incidents, all good, which I experienced in my life.

ON THE SPOT

What went wrong with peace talks
by Tavleen Singh
WHEN Abdul Majeed Dar’s name came up as the chief negotiator for the Hizbul Mujahideen in Kashmir I had a moment of deja vu. More than five years ago when I was writing a book on Kashmir I met him for a longish interview which happened just after Atal Behari Vajpayee said on television that Muslims were as much to blame for the Hindu-Muslim hostilities that are at the root of the Kashmir problem.

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

Trade union of CMs 

APOLOGISTS of the Eleventh Finance Commission (EFC) and its misplaced zeal to re-engineer the development engine have dubbed the forthcoming meeting of 17 Chief Ministers a “trade union” activity. The conclave, convened by Andhra strongman Chandrababu Naidu on August 21, will denounce the recommendations of the EFC and demand their wholesale revision. The states are angry because of the reduction of their share in the divisible pool of central taxes. This is the result of altering the weightage of various indices that go into fixing the share of each state. Since the declared policy of the EFC was to narrow the regional imbalances, the new formula is tilted in favour of the less developed ones and at the cost of the richer and comparatively developed states. Punjab and Haryana are among the losers as are all the states in the south and west. Under the changed criteria, the income level of the population will decide 62.5 per cent of the entitlement (60 per cent earlier). The higher a state’s ranking in the national chart of per capita income, the lower its slice in the tax cake. The area fetches another 7.5 per cent, up from 5 per cent. These are tailor-made to divert more funds to huge and poor states like UP, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Orissa, Assam and its north-eastern cousins. The biggest victim is naturally Maharashtra which boasts of a per capita income of over Rs 20,000.

The Centre faces a dilemma. It ignored the initial murmurs of protest but when it grew to be a loud demand for a corrective, it tried to take refuge under a questionable constitutional provision. New Delhi says the recommendations of the EFC are mandatory and it has no power to tinker with them. That is not true. Article 291 stipulates that the Centre has to table an action taken report along with the main report, which clearly implies that the Centre can accept, reject or modify any proposal. The BJP, the leader of the alliance government, has stakes in both winner-states and loser-states, but more in the former. Either it is dominant or wants to be so in all those big states which stand to benefit by the new rules of the game. So redoing the formula is out of the question. But letting it remain is also politically painful. Mr Naidu has taken the lead and it would not do to annoy him or to reject his appeal. Remember his 29 MPs who are additionally fiercely loyal to him. So a Buddhist middle path is suggested but that may turn out to be a loss-loss situation. For the present, it is searching for an option while echoing the “trade union” criticism. It should seek legal help and economic advice. That would get it out of the mess.

The government received help from a totally unexpected quarters. Congress spokesman on economic affairs Jairam Ramesh has spiritedly defended the modified formula. His is the “India is one” argument with everybody having equal right to economic development and also equal economic responsibility. It is Maharashtra’s and Gujarat’s obligation to help in Bihar’s development as it is Bihar’s duty to provide cheap unskilled labour for Mumbai and Vadodra. Others have been less sophisticated and are weak on logic. There is no other way to fund the many unfinished or unplanned projects in these backward states and anyway being “rich” states, the others can easily manage. Two, the so-called loss is notional; it shows what the states would have received under the old formula but on the basis of the present tax kitty and what they will actually get under the new rule. Frankly in rupee terms, in some cases the devolution during the next five years will be more than the comparative figures for the past five years. This contention is frankly nitpicking; the share of states have been pegged low and this cannot be challenged. The EFC-induced diversion of funds from those who have to those who need is likened to the Third World demanding aid from the rich nations. This is ridiculous since the South’s stand stems from centuries of exploitation by today’s rich nations. It is an atonement not an act of compassion. Incidentally, everybody has forgotten that the agency to spur development in all states is the Planning Commission. Why not ask it to keep all this in mind when Mrs Rabri Devi comes calling to finalise the annual plan for Bihar?

Uneasy truce in UP BJP

THE "unanimous election" of Mr Kalraj Misra as President of the Uttar Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Party does not necessarily mark the end of the unhappy phase of unity-threatening differences among leaders who are expected to guide the party to victory in the assembly elections next year. A fourth term as party chief may, in fact, mark the beginning of the end of Mr Misra as a political force in UP. Mr K. Govindacharya may pretend to be happy with the facade of unity he was able to project by "persuading" Vice-President Ram Prakash Tripathi to withdraw from the contest, but his political antennae will have to remain finetuned to catch even the faintest signal of dissension within the UP unit of the saffron party. The sequence of event which helped Mr Misra get elected unopposed would make even a die-hard BJP supporter feel uneasy about the party's electoral prospects in 2001. Until Wednesday the Tripathi camp was determined to contest the election for the UP party chief's post. A contest was very much on the cards when the 8 p.m. deadline for withdrawal of candidature expired without Mr Tripathi showing any signs of backing out of what may have been a no-holds barred kind of contest. But Mr Govindacharya got into the act, with support from U.P. Chief Minister Ram Prakash Gupta and Union Surface Transport Minister Rajnath Singh, of persuading the returning officer to extend the deadline for withdrawing from the contest. The "election process" which was to start at 9 a.m. on Thursday was delayed by two hours while Mr Govindacharya and company virtually locked themselves in a room along with the "rebel" candidate. Mr Tripathi had not quite wiped his tears, the result of his being "persuaded" to retire, when he came out of the room to announce his withdrawal from the contest.

If the manner in which "unanimity" was achieved for ensuring Mr Misra's victory was not proof enough of the congressisation of the party which once boasted of being the most disciplined in the country, the conduct of a former Congressman Mr Sanjay Singh left no scope for doubt that the charge was not without substance. He barged into the party headquarters in Lucknow on Wednesday and in the presence of reporters virtually abducted a BJP worker who had "dared to propose the name of Mr Tripathi". As a former member of the infamous Sanjay Gandhi brigade, he did not forget to issue the threat of bringing in goons if Mr Tripathi did not change his mind. The two factions even threatened to use "rifles and bullets" for settling scores before embarrassed party leaders could break up the fight. It is not only the drama which was witnessed before the "unanimous election" of Mr Misra which bodes ill for the BJP in UP. There are other political factors which may see the party sink further than projected during the assembly elections. Mr Misra may have a good personal rapport with Ms Mayawati of the Bahujan Samaj Party, but will he be able to bridge the "east-west divide" in the UP BJP? All the political heavyweights are from eastern U.P., including Mr Rajnath Singh, Mr Misra and his predecessor in the party Mr Om Prakash Singh. Even if they were to bury their political differences and work as one for the success of the BJP, they cannot take victory for granted, at least in western U.P. This territory is seen as the natural political habitat of the three Singhs. Reports indicate that Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mr Kalyan Singh and Mr Ajit Singh are working out the modalities evolving a united front for the crucial assembly elections. In the post-Mandal U.P. the BJP without Mr Kalyan Singh is like fish without water. It is doubtful whether Mr Misra would be able to contain the caste battle within the party and lead his divided troops to victory, through the minefield of delicate caste equations, in the more crucial electoral battle next year.

Chandigarh unplugged

CHANDIGARH has pretensions to becoming a fully wired city in the not too distant future. But the capital of Punjab and Haryana remained virtually unwired for the past one week, with the residents finding it impossible to make an outstation call. Imagine being cut off from the rest of the world for full seven days in this age of globalisation! What this inglorious isolation did to business, industry, media-related organisations and commercial establishments can be well imagined. A technical snag in the trunk automotive exchange (TAX) installed last year threw the entire network of STD, ISD, Internet and fax services out of gear. Equally debilitating was the simultaneous malfunctioning of the mobile service run by well-known multinationals. There were serious technical snags which were not attended to. Apparently, the transfer of technology and maintenance have not been given the priority they deserve. The loss to the DoT alone was of the order of Rs 1 crore; that suffered by the consumers was hundreds of times more. The biggest was the loss of reputation. More than the disruption, what rankled was the sense of helplessness of the authorities. All that the General Manager, Telecom, would say during the height of the crisis was, “Since the situation is new to us, we have sought help. There is nothing much we can do. Right now, we can only wait and watch”. Lower-rung officials were either apathetic or haughty. The suffering public had no shoulder to cry on. After all, you cannot survive a week on the staple diet of official response, which sounds like a hopeless medical bulletin: “Telecom services are critical but stable”. In any other country, many top heads would have rolled for a breakdown of this order But here, not many would go beyond rolling their eyeballs and saying “chalta hai”. The snag that laid the services low this time may be new but the experience was nothing novel for the residents of the city. Earlier, they used to be similarly cut off thanks to a spell of rain. Can the country afford such slipups in the 21st century?

Since this disruption has taken place in a modern city like Chandigarh, there has been some semblance of concern. But in areas surrounding this very city, there are pockets where it is nothing unusual for telephones to remain dead for weeks and fortnights. All this points to uneven growth due to which even if we manage to procure the latest machinery, it is not possible to run it at optimum efficiency. The Chandigarh breakdown has revealed two things: one, that there is hardly any backup to deal with such emergencies. And two, that the engineers concerned are not fully trained to handle the situation. The harried consumers and those running STD kiosks are asking for compensation for the losses they have suffered. But knowing the DoT, it is like asking for the moon. The least that the department can do is to take the consumers into confidence by telling them what it has done to ensure that such a snag will not take place in future. 

VEXED KASHMIR PROBLEM
A via media has to be found
by T. V. Rajeswar

KASHMIR’S problems of insurgency, terrorism and the encounters between the security forces and the militants have all been pushed back to the background with the autonomy issue coming to the forefront. Kashmir had always occupied a special status in India’s constitutional framework ever since its accession on October 26, 1947. The accession instrument specified 16 subjects under the three heads of Defence, External Affairs and Communications for which the Indian Parliament could make laws. The question of putting in practice the instrument of accession’s terms was negotiated by Jawaharlal Nehru with Sheikh Abdullah, which eventually led to an agreement in July, 1952, and this is known as the 1953 Delhi Agreement. It listed 10 points detailing the legislative, administrative and judicial powers of India in respect of J&K.

The 1953 agreement was much more than any Central authority would concede to a federating unit, but J&K was not a mere federating unit and it was an entity entering into a special relationship with a bigger neighbour on certain specific terms. On reflection, it was extraordinary that this agreement should have been entered into. The prominent provisions of this agreement were that the residuary powers of legislature, which vested in the Centre in respect of all states, did not apply to J&K; J&K would have its own flag in addition to the Union’s flag; the Governor of J&K would be known as Sadar-i-Riyasat and would be elected by the State legislature and not nominated by the President of India; and Article 356 of the Constitution, which gave power to the Centre to dismiss a State government in case of failure of Constitutional machinery, would not apply to J&K.

Following the 1953 agreement, there was a phase of serious doubts on the part of Jawaharlal Nehru regarding the attitude and bonafides of Sheikh Abdullah, which resulted in his detention from August 5, 1953. Mir Qasim was appointed Chief Minister of J&K and during his time, by virtue of a constitutional order of 1954, the jurisdiction of parliament to legislate for J&K on most of the subjects in the Union List were extended. However, there was no sense of satisfaction or feeling of finality in J&K affairs. After nearly 20 years in jail Sheikh Abdullah returned to Srinagar in February, 1975, as Chief Minister, at the instance of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. This was followed by the signing of the 1975 Delhi agreement by Mrs Indira Gandhi and Sheikh Abdullah. It accepted many of the constitutional changes that had taken place in the intervening years. However, even the 1975 agreement could not reach an understanding on the nomenclature of the Governor and the Chief Minister.

After the passing away of Sheikh Abdullah in 1982 and his succession by his son Dr Farooq Abdullah there was again a phase of uncertainty marked by polemics. Periodic demands for autonomy and reversion to the 1953 status were emanating from Dr Farooq Abdullah and his camp. He was being quietly encouraged by foreign powers, especially the USA. A junior official of the US State Department, Ms Raphael, was known to have asked Farooq to stick to his demand for return to the 1953 status. In 1995 Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao said that the sky was the limit in conceding autonomy to the J&K and his successor, Mr Deve Gowda, had also announced that the Centre would extend maximum autonomy to J&K. The National Conference contested the State Assembly elections of 1996 with emphasis on the autonomy issue. Soon after its return to power, with more than two-thirds majority, the CM appointed a State Autonomy Committee. There was also a regional autonomy committee report on the future of Jammu and Ladakh, which read more like a plan for division of J&K on communal lines. However, the RAC report had since been put in the cold storage. The State Autonomy Committee submitted its report towards the end of 1999 and it was released in April this year.

The State autonomy report seeks to define relations between J&K and India on the basis of the 1953 agreement and visualised repeal of all matters in the Union List except for Defence, External Affairs and Communications. It also seeks denial of jurisdiction of the Election Commission and the C&AG and also restoration of the nomenclature of Sadar-i-Riyasat and Wazir-i-Azam. It seeks permanent status to Article 370 in the Indian Constitution. The SAC says that “changes from 1954 onwards, particularly in the 1960s, were so rapid that things started changing even beyond recognition”. The SAC contends that the constitutional order of 1954 and the subsequent extension of various provisions of the Constitution to J&K were not in consonance with 1953 agreement. Encroachment on the State’s jurisdiction was obvious, which reduced the state autonomy. But then Sheikh Abdullah was no more the Chief Minister and his successor, Mir Qasim, and the successive Chief Ministers of J&K and the State legislature had all accepted the integration of J&K in the national framework of India. And when Sheikh Abdullah returned to power in 1975, he had entered into the Delhi Agreement of 1975, which upheld most of the provisions of the 1954 constitutional order.

The state assembly of J&K, which met in June, adopted on June 26 a resolution accepting the State Autonomy Committee report, against all expectations of the Centre and the leaders of various political parties. Reaction was sharp and swift on the part of the BJP and the NDA government at the Centre. The Union Cabinet outright rejected on July 4 the J&K resolution for autonomy. The rejection of the Cabinet was as sudden and unexpected as that of the adoption of the SAC report by the J&K legislature. This was followed by quiet diplomacy by Indian interlocutors staying in Srinagar. The visit of Prime Minister Vajpayee to Srinagar to attend the funeral of Farooq’s mother on July 11 paved the way for the reopening of the issue. Farooq was invited to come to Delhi for talks by Prime Minister Vajpayee.

There are now various suggestions about the issue of autonomy for J&K. It is conceded even by the National Conference that a return to the 1953 status is not possible and Law Minister Handoo of J&K had conceded it. A via media has to be found for conferring J&K with maximum autonomy, whether it is called devolution of powers or autonomy. The Union Law Ministry has said that the issue should be sorted out politically and much can be done by presidential orders transferring several subjects from the Concurrent List to the State List. Mrs Indira Gandhi had appointed the Sarkaria Commission on Centre-State relations in March, 1983, in the wake of the Akali agitation and the Akali demand for implementation of the Anandpur Sahib resolution. The Sarkaria Commission had submitted its report in 1987 and this was discussed at length at various forums. The main theme of the Sarkaria Commission report was that there was a genuine case for more devolution of powers to the states. Justice Sarkaria has recently spoken and his advice is that much can be done to cool the tempers by merely transferring more autonomous powers to the state by presidential orders.

There is now a move to entrust the entire subject to the Constitutional Review Commission presided over by Justice Venkatachaliah. If this is done the CRC’s recommendations may take a long time. Is it practicable or wise to push the issue to the background for about a year and to expect the National Conference to keep quiet till its recommendations are available? Something more practicable, resulting in speedy solution to the problem, has to be thought of by the Centre. The entire issue of extending more autonomous powers or devolution to the states has come to the foreground. It may be recalled that Tamil Nadu has raised the demand for autonomy as early as 1971 and there are similar demands from practically every state in the North East and Punjab. The uneasy peace in Nagaland cannot also be ignored and it has to be resolved only by conferring the people in Nagaland with more autonomous powers. This is a time for all political leaders to exercise patience and display practical wisdom in coming to grips with the hot issue of autonomy for the states, with particular reference to J&K. Let us hope that the leaders of the country would rise to the occasion.

The writer is a former Governor of West Bengal and Sikkim.

Unforgettable bureaucrats 
by R. S. Dutta

MAN experiences many incidents, good or bad, in his life. While most are forgotten, a few stick in mind till memory lasts. Here are three incidents, all good, which I experienced in my life.

It was the first summer monsoon after I had built a house in Chandigarh in early 1980s. I noticed that the rain water stagnated in our lane for days on end, emitting foul smell and breeding mosquitoes. A survey led to the conclusion that there was no drainage of storm water, something unbelievable in fully developed sector, which had quite a number of houses built. I wrote to the Home Secretary, who was known to me since my service days. He used to come to me for one official business or the other. When I failed to hear from him I went to his office but he was busy in one meeting or conference and had no time to see me. In utter desperation I wrote to the Chief Commissioner (CC), as the head of Chandigarh was then designated, even though I had no hope that the top brass would care to respond.

One evening I was painting the grills, when there was a ring at the door bell. It was a man in mufti with a revolver in his holster. “Chief Commissioner Sahib has come”, he said. I hurriedly washed my hands and put on a shirt and pulled pants over the under-shirt and under-pants that I was wearing and went to receive the CC. “I had kept the “Pilli Chithi” (my letter heads in those days were printed on yellow paper), in my brief case and did not pass it on to my PA or tell my gunman or the chauffeur where I was to go”, he said. “I had been waiting for rain to see things for myself”, he added. He had already seen the pools. In fact there was one closeby where his official car was parked in front of my house. He took out his note book to jot down what else I had to say — insanitary conditions, unmetalled roads etc. Over a glass of chilled ROOH AFZA, the goody-goody CC asked me from where I had retired, whether all my children were settled and so on.

It did not take long to prepare estimates, invite tenders et al and lay underground drainage pipes in our and some other lanes nearby. Whether any enquiry was made why drainage was not provided originally and if there was any hanky-panky about it, I cannot say. Apart from carpeting of roads etc it was for the first time that road cautions and pedestrian crossings in front of the nearby Government Model Senior Secondary School were provided at the instance of the considerate ex-soldier IAS CC Mr Krishna Banarji. I learnt he also visited the community toilets in the markets, to see how they were being maintained. Rare indeed are such top bureaucrats who care to visit the homes of senior citizens to listen to their grievances.

The other incident relates to an overcharge in my water supply bill. When the necessary adjustment was not made in three subsequent bills, I wrote in vain to the Sub-divisional Engineer (SDE) concerned. Even a visit to his office was of no avail as he was not available and was said to be out on “a site”. Letters to the Executive Engineer and then to the Chief Engineer (Mr K.K. Jerath, who is facing trial in a kickback case involving several lakhs of rupees) proved abortive. As a last resort I wrote to Mr Sanjay Kothari, Home Secretary (HS) even though I had little hope that he would do anything. About a week later, my wife said that someone was knocking at the entrace gate. It was the SDE. He had brought the revised bill after adjustment of the overpayment of Rs 190 odd, he said. Obviously the worthy HS had directed him to deliver the revised bill personally. The humbled SDE gave me his residence telephone number, if I had any problem in the future.

The third case related to allotment of a residential plot at SAS Nagar to my daughter-in-law, settled in Canada. She had paid the full price of a 14-marla plot in dollars. When all efforts for allotment failed, we filed a civil writ in the High Court, which ordered that either a plot be allotted or the price be refunded with interest, within a couple of months. When neither a plot was given nor the price refunded, contempt of court notices were served to the Esate Officer (EO) and others. This worked. A letter was received from the EO that it had been decided to allot a 16-marla plot and that the difference in price of a 14-marla and 16-marla plot be paid in dollars. Simultaneously they filed an SLP in the Supreme Court, which we learnt when a notice was received from the Apex Court. This was a great high handedness.

In those days Punjab was under President’s rule. One day it struck me to find out who was the Adviser concerned. I learnt it was Mr R.P. Ojha, who was known to me from my service days. I rang him up. He promised that if he could have the case withdrawn from the SC he will do it. And he did it soon enough. I received a copy of the letter written to the State counsel to withdraw the SLP from the SC.

Mandela still in thick of national life
by Hari Sharan Chhabra

TWO years ago, when Nelson Mandela was still the President of South Africa, his 80th birthday was a big national event, the African National Congress (ANC) leadership having decided to celebrate their beloved leader’s birthday with year-long programmes of rejoicing, dancing and music. A number of projects involving the welfare of children and women were undertaken all over the country, many of them in rural areas. Soweto, the sprawling black township where Mandela started his political apprenticeship, was the centre of the activities.

But, on July 18 this year when Mandela turned 82, it was a quiet birthday in Johannesburg in which only his family members, including his grandchildren, participated. This was his personal decision, though many of his admirers wanted a big bash.

It is well known that his old colleagues and friends have not forgotten him. There is all the time an affectionate crowd of people waiting to have a word of advice from him. His day is as busy as ever; he does not spend any time in the rocking chair. Reading newspapers and magazines remains his favourite hobby. And he is still fond of cracking jokes: “I am a penisoner with a new wife and large family to support”.

M.S. Prabhakara, a knowledgeable Indian journalist, who is based in South Africa, has this to say of Mandela’s retired life: “The fact is he is as busy as, if not busier than, he was when he was President. He continues to travel widely both within the country and abroad, offering his services in resolving conflicts. East Timor, Northern Ireland, Lockerbie and Libya are only some of the conflict areas where his good offices facilitated some move towards accommodation.”

Today Mandela may not be holding any political or administrative office but he does enjoy a lot of moral authority. One thing which many in South Africa admire about Mandela is that he does not interfere in activities that are the domain of his successor, President Thabo Mbeki. No one has ever said that he has tried to upstage Mbeki.

Political analysts say that Mandela as President was loved and respected, but he did not govern the country. He only fostered unity and reconciliation, and made sure that South Africa did not plunge into civil war. Mandela in fact stepped aside voluntarily to let Mbeki do the job of governance.

Two important conferences were held this July in South Africa in which both Mandela and Mbeki played constructive roles and made substantive inputs. One was the XIII International AIDS Conference in Durban and the other the ANC’s National General Council meeting in Port Elizabeth.

There was a small row over the origin of AIDS, but Mandela was firm that the controversy should not distract from the effort to save lives. Mandela spoke after widespread criticism of Mbeki, who failed to acknowledge the link between the HIV virus and AIDS in his opening speech at the world’s most important conference on AIDS.

Mandela was calm but grim when he heard Mbeki at the ANC conference talk of corruption from which the ANC was no less immune than any other liberation movement which had become ruling party of the government. But what did depress Mandela was the revelation that membership of the ANC had steeply fallen with some estimates putting it at less than half of what it was in 1994.

One international assignment that Mandela appears to be liking is bringing peace to ethnic war-torn Burundi, a former Belgian colony. The peace process between the two warring tribes, the majority Hutu and the Tutsi minority, entered a crucial stage this July as Mandela and five African leaders, those of Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, pushed the warring parties to back a peace accord drafted by Mandela. They met in the Tanzanian town of Arusha to add their voice to Mandela’s appeal for end to a war which has cost 200,000 lives since 1993.

South Africa’s former President was hoping that the peace accord between the leader of one of the main armed rebel groups in Burundi and the government delegation will be signed at the Arusha summit but the signing has been deferred until August 28.

Under the draft peace plan, the Tutsi minority, which has dominated Burundi’s political and economic life since its independence in 1962, would have to hand over power to a democratically elected government in three years. Mandela is keen to bring peace to Burundi because the conflict has also spilled over to neighbouring Rwanda.

Mbeki is proud of the post-retirement role being played by this father figure, especially in solving conflict situations like the one in Burundi. The ANC and Mbeki would very much like Mandela to continue to be a peace-maker, a statesman and a conciliator in the African continent and outside.

What went wrong with peace talks
by Tavleen Singh

WHEN Abdul Majeed Dar’s name came up as the chief negotiator for the Hizbul Mujahideen in Kashmir I had a moment of deja vu. More than five years ago when I was writing a book on Kashmir I met him for a longish interview which happened just after Atal Behari Vajpayee said on television that Muslims were as much to blame for the Hindu-Muslim hostilities that are at the root of the Kashmir problem. As I remember, the interview was in the context of the demolition of the Babri Masjid and Vajpayee said something to the effect that if mosques were going to be used for political purposes then you would have politics played from temples as well. “Agar masjidon sey rajneeti kheli jayegi to mandiron sey bhi kheli jayegi”. Vajpayee was only an Opposition leader at the time but his frankness appealed to Dar because he perceived it as a more honest approach to the problem then the secular Congress Party had ever shown.

Dar, then also number two in the Hizbul ranks, arrived, I remember, with a small army of heavily armed men who sat in a circle around us on mattresses in a small Kashmiri living room. Dar was a mild, unmilitant sort of man who spoke in measured tones but had very militant things to say. Kashmir could never be part of India, he said, because whenever he had visited India he had felt like a foreigner. He had also been badly treated on two of his visits. Once when he and another Kashmiri were beaten up for no reason in Delhi’s Jama Masjid area and another time when he and his friends got off a train at some station in Uttar Pradesh and found the doors locked when they tried to get back on again. Their women and children were on the moving train but some “Indian” fellow passengers refused to let them back on the train. Dar recounted how he jumped on to the engine and forced the train to halt. The police was called but it seemed to be on the side of the miscreants instead of them. Dar also told me that he had always been mistaken for a foreigner whenever he was in India and all of these things had convinced him that Kashmir must get out of India.

Throughout the time we talked there was almost nothing he said about India that was pleasant or encouraging. So much so that when I suggested that perhaps the Kashmir problem would not have occurred if the state had better governance and less unemployment he sneered that Kashmiris were not beggars and did not live in the sort of dire poverty that he had seen in India. The only hopeful moment in the interview related to what he had heard Vajpayee say on television the night before. He said that he appreciated Vajpayee’s frankness in the interview and asked if I thought the Bharatiya Janata Party would ever come to power in Delhi. When I asked why he said that he believed that the BJP could solve the Kashmir problem because they were prepared to talk straight. It was a refreshing change from the approach that the “secular” Congress had always taken. To him, and to many other Kashmiris, Congress secularism seemed insincere and hypocritical, merely a guise for the jackboot that Kashmir had been crushed under.

How ironic that it should, all these years later, have been Vajpayee who talked sincerely about peace being possible in the framework of “insaniyat” and how ironic that it should have been the Hizbul who responded with car bombs and guns. And, that it should have been the same Abdul Majeed Dar caught in the middle.

In Delhi, since the peace process ended in violence and bloodshed, there has been much speculation in opinion-making circles about what went wrong. The story, as I have pieced it together, appears to be that it was the Hizbul (through Dar) who first approached the Government to begin a peace process. Emissaries then went to and fro between Srinagar and Delhi and the Prime Minister’s Office initiated talks despite serious misgivings from the Home Ministry.

There is a feeling now that the Hizbul ceasefire was a sham, merely an excuse for them to regroup their forces and that the key player in the new realities of Kashmir is now Azhar Masood. The Pakistani militant we released in Kandahar to buy the release of the passengers on the hijacked Indian Airlines plane.

Masood, they say, is responsible for creating the mysterious new militant group called Jaish-e-Mohammed and it is this group that now has the fullest support of the Pakistanis. Does all this matter, though, in the larger context of the Kashmir problem?

Not really because no matter if we talk to the Hizbul again or the Lashkar-e-Toiba or the Jaish-e-Mohammed we are in fact talking to Pakistan. If something is to come of a Kashmir dialogue then we will have to talk directly to the Pakistan Government. The problem with doing this is that in Delhi’s corridors of power there is such deep paranoia about talking about Kashmir to Pakistan that there are no signs yet that a real dialogue is possible. High officials in Delhi make it clear that in their view Kashmir is a domestic problem that will have to be solved in a domestic context “just like Punjab and the North-East”.

The difference, of course, is that Kashmir is an international problem. There are resolutions in the United Nations to prove this and as long as they exist we cannot pretend to ourselves that Kashmir is as much a domestic affair as Punjab or the North-East. Eventually, there will have to be a peace process that involves Pakistan and even international mediation since we cannot talk to each other any more.

Meanwhile, it is important before we begin any further peace talks that the Indian Government makes it absolutely clear that there will be no further redrawing of India’s borders. The Prime Minister said this in so many words when he quoted Sahir Ludhianvi in his Independence Day address to emphasise that those days had gone when all talk was of two communities and of Partition. “Voh vaqt gaaya, voh daur gaya; Jab do kaumon ka nara tha; Veh log gaye is dharti se — jinka maqsad batwara tha! Ab ek hain sab Hindustani; Ab ek hai Hindustan! Yeh jaanle saara jahaan!”

It is hard to put it better or more clearly and it is this position from which all further bargaining must take place whether with Pakistan or with its proxies in the Kashmir Valley. It should be more than evident to anyone that the Prime Minister has been more than sincere in his efforts to end the Kashmir problem but a solution does not lie in redrawing borders. It lies in persuading Kashmiris, Pakistan and the international community that a peace process is necessary but it has to be one that is based on the premise that India will not be further divided for the sake of Islam.

So, although Abdul Majeed Dar was right in thinking that a BJP Government could solve the problem he was wrong in believing that a BJP Prime Minister would allow Kashmir to turn the clock back to an age that has gone — voh vaqt gaya, voh daur gaya.

Spiritual Nuggets

The mind is said to be twofold:

The pure and also the impure:

Impure — by union with desire :

Pure — from desire completely free.

— Maitri Upanishad, 6.34

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Be like the ocean. The waves come and go, but the ocean stays .... We are not waves, pulled this way and that by every passing breeze, by the daily changes in the moon. Yet we act like that.

We act as though we are light bulbs and anyone who wants to can simply switch us on or off .... So many times I hear people say, "Oh, I was in such a good mood, but then Robert called and told me what Julie said about me", or "Oh, that phone call just ruined my day." .... How can one phone call or one rude comment from a person have so much control over us? Are we so volatile in our emotions that others have more power over our moods than we, ourselves do .... Is not there more to this human existence than the law of action and reaction? We must learn to keep that light switch in our own hands and to give it only to God. Otherwise we are switched on and off all day long and the only effect is that the light bulb burns out.

— Swami Chidananda (Muni Ji), International Yoga Week, 1999

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When you go to bed at night, have for your pillow three things — love, hope and forgiveness. And you will awaken in the morning with a song in your heart.

— Victor Hugo (1802-85)

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Nature has given us two ears and two eyes, but one tongue, to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak.

— A Greek apothegm

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In success and failure, in sunshine and rain, in prosperity and adversity, be at peace with the world and with yourself.

— T. L. Vasvani

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Do not complain that the rose bush has thorns. Rejoice that the thorn-bush bears roses.

— Hazrat Ali

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Everybody knows that we have five senses. But there is one more sense the sixth sense which is common sense, which should be devoid of nonsense.

— Swami Adhyatmananda of the Divine Life Society