When Radha Rajan told me that 'Vigil' is going to be organizing this seminar on Kashmir, I checked my diary and realized there was a nominal conflict of interests.

Today in Delhi, there is another seminar, not on Kashmir, but something else, that is very fashionable these days - what goes by the name of Track II. Track II is an exercise where extremely well meaning Indians get together and talk to extremely well-meaning Pakistanis and collectively lament how both their countries are exactly the same. And at the end of the day, they all try and evolve a solution to Kashmir.

Now rather than being an observer in this well-meaning exercise, I thought it would be better to talk and hear about Kashmir, in Chennai. Because following the prime minister's musings from Kerala where he spoke about evolving a new architecture for a solution to Kashmir and deviating off the beaten track, I think it would be rather more germane and relevant to find out what, as Radha rightly called it, is the national mind.

Before we talk to Pakistan, before we talk to the Hurriyat, whose nationality and affiliations are indeterminate, I think it is far more important to find out what Indians think about the solution or a possible approach to the issue of Kashmir. To that extent, I think Mr. Narasimhan is right in that we have to strike the right balance between heady emotionalism, which can influence our approach to the issue, and practicalities of what is possible and what is not.

Although Parameswaran-ji did not directly dwell on the contemporary situation in Kashmir, and spoke of Kashmir from the civilizational perspective, the sub-text of what he had to say, is very revealing.

And had I been wearing my journalist's hat today, I would certainly have drawn several conclusions about how he approaches what is going on in Delhi today.

The ceasefire in Kashmir, which has just been extended for another month, is being extended not because the ground situation obtaining there permits us to extend it. The security situation there is very bleak. I will give you three inputs, which we have received from the very highest quarters about the situation in Kashmir today.

On the positive side, shelling from across the border, that is, Pakistani troops shelling from across the Line of Control, has come down substantially. Someone in the South Block told me that this has resulted in India being saved crores of rupees every month, which is a typical accountant's perspective of a tragedy. Not so encouraging is the fact that infiltration has more or less kept up with very determined members of the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad getting across into our country.

A jehadi from Birmigham was brought in by the Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorist group to carry out the suicidal attack at Badamibagh. The LeT sent its own brand of jehadis to carry out the attack in the Red Fort.

Another significant fallout of the ceasefire has been that during this entire period the intelligence apparatus has been crippled, and I use the word consciously, by the selective killing of those, who the terrorists think are 'informers'. What this really means is, these are people who are loyal to the Indian nation and who have been providing the police and security forces with vital information about the movements and hideouts of these terrorists.

And thirdly, and this is the reason why Dr. Farooq Abdullah was dead set against the ceasefire, National Conference party members and activists throughout the state have been selectively targeted and killed during this period. These are not killings targeting the big names in the party.

Farooq Abdullah of course was made the target but the people who are being killed is the district secretary here and a panchayat member there - crucial people who help keep the political culture alive in very difficult and adverse circumstances. So despite the fact that the ceasefire has only had so many negative consequences, why did the Government opt to declare a unilateral ceasefire, and what is more, why has it now extended it for another month?

The reasons for this lie, not in what is happening on the ground in Kashmir, but in certain calculations about what is happening in the world. They reckon, and here we come to Parameswaran-ji's very appropriate observation about how Indians turn spiritual in moments of crisis, the calculation is, if India is seen to be a nation avowedly committed to the peace process, it will, in the eyes of the world contrast very favourably with Gen. Musharraf's inability to prevent, or his commitment to perpetuate, cross border terrorism and to perpetuate jehad in Kashmir. So it is really a calculation that the world opinion has turned very favourable towards us.

And the reason for this swing in attitude is that there are several countries today plagued by Islamic terrorism. For several years India persisted with the stand that she will not allow the Kashmir issue to be internationalized. Today whether we acknowledge it or not, the Kashmir problem has been internationalized. So when we talk of the nation-state and its various dimensions and its implications for the Kashmir issue, we have to look at current trends in world polity, and how these trends impact upon India and the way we are dealing with the problem.

At the crux of the way we approach the problem of Pakistan's intentions towards Kashmir and through Kashmir, towards India, is the concept of the nation-state. Before I elaborate upon this concept, let me narrate a small anecdote.

In 1989-90, when the euphoria over the collapse of the Berlin Wall was at its peak, a political journal in the U.S., called the Atlantic Monthly, very influential in certain circles, carried an article titled, "Why we will soon miss the Cold war." It was considered farfetched at that time, particularly by that section which later opined that John Le Carr's novels lost their punch and relevance with the ending of the Cold War. The West's penchant for making the Cold War as some kind of reference point for world affairs is understandable because underlying the unmistakable tensions and hostilities of the Cold War, was acertain certitude to world situations. The world was roughly polarized between two politically antagonistic ideologies.

A certain territorial demarcation was also attempted between the two worlds with certain gray areas comprising India and China too. There were certain rules of engagement, which characterized the relationships among and between the nations of these camps. When the Hungarian uprising took place in 1956, the U.S. did not send its troops into Hungary. When the crisis of Czechoslovakia exploded in 1968, then too the U.S. did not see any reason to interfere. But when in 1979, the Soviet tanks moved into Afghanistan, the Americans felt compelled to intervene. But they did not intervene directly. They fronted the Mujahideen, armed them, trained them and backed them to the hilt. So a certain definite pattern emerged, for good or for bad, of international world order, which was, in many ways, a continuation of the world order that emerged nearly three-hundred years ago with the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which for the first time in Western polity institutionalized the concept of territoriality.

Around this time several trends emerged in Europe, all linked to one another - reactionary religious doctrines challenging the Roman Catholic Church and leading to the birth of Protestantism, reactionary schools of philosophy challenging the Church's totalitarian control over social and religious institutions leading to the birth of Freemason societies, socio-philosophical movements like the Enlightenment, reactionary political ideas of republicanism challenging the almost despotic nature of the power of the Church and the Monarchy, all of which happened around the time of that defining period of European history - the Thirty Years War among the nations of Europe, culminating in the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia and the origins of the western nation-state.

Thereafter, in Europe, notions of the State with its accompanying bureaucracy, and the political process of participatory democracy, began to gather momentum. Once the idea of a State, independent of the Church had begin to take shape and once the State developed its administrative mechanism free from the totalitarian control of both the Church and the Monarchy, the consciousness of nation and nationhood began to be expressed. When the idea of nation coupled with the idea of the modern State in the West, the western nation-state emerged in the form we see today.

This is a purely western/European political development in the seventeenth century. But since European perceptions of nation and State, rooted in the events leading to the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia, have played a disproportionately important role in the shaping of 'world opinion' and the idea and nature of world order, we cannot but take note of it since it is a continuation of this very same world opinion, this Government is relying upon to bring pressure to bear upon Pakistan, and conversely, that which seems to be holding us back from taking any proactive measures ourselves.

In India, as Parameswaran-ji pointed out, the idea of 'rashtra' or nation is ancient. We have always had the nation, its borders have been well defined, we have always had the feeling of nationhood but the idea of statehood combining with nationhood has been feeble over the last 500 years. The reason is obvious. The State, in very large parts of India, was the Moghul State and this State, far from being an expression of the nationhood of the people, often worked to obliterate this feeling from our consciousness. But it is not as though we were never conscious of our statehood.

The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are historical records of Chakravartis ruling over the vast expanse of territory under the sway of the Indian civilization. During these periods nationhood was co-terminus with statehood. And this continued under Chandragupta Maurya, Emperor Ashoka and Harsha Vardhana, and later to some extent with Chatrapati Shivaji, and then with Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The idea of the Indian State is modern while the idea of the Indian nation isn't so. So we have had this issue in India where the nation-state in its totality may be considered a modern phenomenon but where the Indian nationhood has a very hoary ancestry.

I refer to all this because after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, there have been frenzied attempts to redraw national boundaries. What constituted the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia are the most significant examples of this trend. Prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, and after the Second World War, Pakistan and Bangladesh were the only new nation-states to be created.

The partition of India may be seen as a part of the process of de-colonization. We have various separatist movements now, in Northern Sri Lanka, in the Basque territory in Spain, in Polissario in Morrocco, in East Timor in Indonesia, all of them claiming to be national liberation movements, to use Marxist terminology and these movements gathered momentum since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Maps were not redrawn in the name of the right to self-determination, during the Cold war period because it did not suit the international strategic implications for the two super powers or what constituted their national self-interest.

Things have changed since then. There has been a spurt in the demands for self-determination and secession, and East Timor was thus created last year - a Christian majority island in Indonesia. East Timor is thus a new Christian nation created after the Cold War. Czechoslovakia has been split into two, Yugoslavia has been fragmented and it seems the problems of Serbia, Croatia and the other countries thus created, is interminable. All this has a bearing on what our understanding is of the problem in J&K and how we deal with it; and also on our understanding of how the world views the problem. The West and the Islamic world see the turmoil in Kashmir as a continuation of their respective worldview and a continuation of their stakes in the fate of the erstwhile Yugoslavia.

I will not go into great details on this aspect but will only say that both the west and the Islamic world have their respective reasons for desiring the separation of J&K from India and for not desiring a strong and independent-minded India.

It is not merely the redrawing of the world map that should cause us concern. The question of the future of the nation-state should also concern us in the context of globalization and the resulting fast eroding fundamental assumption of the nation state - that of national sovereignty. With the establishment of multi-lateral structures like the GATT and now the WTO, what seems like a new world order is once again emerging. The basic premise underlying this world order is the desire of the developed nations, which have large stakes in the WTO, for a high degree of uniformity and stability in those parts of the world in which they have large economic interests. Therefore the most significant fallout of the WTO is that people, even if they are a miniscule minority, are beginning to talk of the irrelevance of the nation-state and how it is now time to dispense with the idea of national sovereignty.

There are intense debates, I know, within the U.S. and in Europe on this issue. In Britain for instance very deep emotions are being roused by the debate on whether the national currency, the Pound Sterling should now be given up in favour of the Euro, the common currency of trade for the European Union. The system of uniformity, which was applied first to terms of trade now touches upon issues associated with national sovereignty and even identity, like the question of passports. In most European countries, there is no separate passport; while it is true that it has made travel easier for frequent travelers like me, because we do not need quite so many visas now, it is equally true that not having a currency of one's own or the national passport somehow affects the identity of individual nation-states. But this is a significant pointer to how the western world views the future of nation-states.

A significant portion of the opinion making section views the nation-state as something of a relic of the 19th and the 20th century and are viewing the new world order as that which has gone beyond the nation-state, with pan-national, global structures to regulate and control world polity and economy. Whether the nations of the world will really accept to be a part of this global arrangement, surrendering their identities, whether politics and economics can be formulated without the influence of national culture and history, is something we will all have to wait and watch. But what we have all failed to grasp is the monumental paradox of globalization.

As I said earlier, globalization was, in the beginning merely an economic arrangement; but it has inevitably impinged upon world polity too. And an intrinsic feature of global world polity, at least the lip service that is being paid to it, is the emphasis on democracy. Democracy is essentially a contract between the State, and its citizens, whereby both had the right to demand responsibility and obligation from each other. If you voted in a Government, it means you have certain expectations from that government, and it is expected that the government will fulfill them. Today with globalization becoming more and more intrusive into the internal affairs of a country and with democratically elected governments losing their sovereignty, some of us are forced to conclude that democracy has been one of the more serious casualties of globalization. The basic understanding of the idea of democracy breaks down in the face of this growing trend.

I will reinforce this view by citing the example of Britain and the question of Scottish identity. For many of us, Britain was co-terminus with England. But if we were to go to England today, and spoke of England and the English, people would look askance at us. For, there is no such thing as England or the English anymore. There is Britain though, and the British, and this includes the Asian migrants too. And then there is Scotland, Ireland and Wales. But this category called England has been more or less jettisoned. There may be a tiny section of people in the home counties of southern England who may still call themselves English but that is about all. And even this British identity is, more and more, being subsumed in the larger European identity. And it was this erosion of national identities, which triggered afresh the moves for demands for Scottish independence. Such a demand would strike all of us as being absurd.

Here is such a tiny land contiguous with the rest of Britain, unlike Ireland which is an island proper, off the British Isles, a contiguous territory bound to the rest by a common language, a common history going back to four hundred years, and a common religion too. Why should there be so much antipathy to being a part of the larger Britain, it is difficult to understand. But the answer to this lies in the phenomenon of globalization.

The European Union has in fact, led the rest of the world in subsuming national identities into the larger continental identity. It has set the norms by which most of productive economic activity is governed. The health of your currency is determined by the bank in Frankfurt, the norms governing your trade are determined by events in Brussels, and so on. The question that bothers those concerned with retaining national identities in Britain is, then what does London do?

The nation-state gave the people the identity of a political nation, an identity larger than the locality because power is associated with politics and power is closely associated with national sovereignty. It would be ridiculous to think of an independent republic of Mylapore. But even as globalization chips away at national identity and sovereignty, it only triggers fear and the determination to protect them. And so even as our horizons expand with globalization, they also shrink as people become more and more aware and protective of their cultural identity, which is derived from their being a nation. So these are contradictory and conflicting trends emerging simultaneously and in which direction they are headed is anybody's guess.

I am drawing attention to these trends and to the current thinking in the west with regard to nation-states because we are all concerned with the internationalizing of the Kashmir issue. To know what global decision makers are thinking, and the possible role they may play in effecting a solution to it, is therefore very necessary. And the current trends are not so simple as they are made out to be. Very complex issues concerning our existence as nation-states and the fallout these trends have on the culture, economy and polity of a people are therefore also very complex.

And there is a third trend that has emerged in the west which could impact upon the Government's right and responsibility to deal with Kashmir as a sovereign issue - the NGO culture. Everybody's business is my business. This manifests itself in the human rights industry, which campaigns for the rights of gun-wielding terrorists and criminals and is silent on the human rights of the victims and other normal, law-abiding citizens. It also busies itself in the environment industry and covers itself with the question of whether a dam should be built on the Narmada or the Yangtse, regardless of the needs and feelings of the local people, regardless of the local situation - a kind of ecological fundamentalism, you might say, some kind of an absolute vision and prescription of what a nation should do and not do, regardless of the specificities of the case.

And this kind of interference into national affairs has been made more dangerous by the United Nations under Boutros-Ghali and later under Kofi Annan, with its new penchant for intrusive diplomacy, and which has scant regard for national sovereignty. And this trend is rubbing off on the NATO. During the Cold War, the U.N. had governed itself with a set of norms, rules and checks and balances, and clear notions on what it should do and should not do. It could pass a resolution on Kashmir in the General Assembly but in concrete terms, beyond establishing an office in Srinagar and occasionally sending a few people to act as monitors, it did not exceed its mandate.

But then you had more than one example in the last decade and more, particularly after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, of U.N. Peace-keeping forces being sent; and when that didn't work in Somalia, we had the NATO forces making a forced entry into Serbia with the full backing of the U.N. All this is very alarming when we are forced to reckon with the possibility that these trends are not particularly in favour of India dealing with Pakistan and with terrorism in Kashmir, solely on the basis of national interests and national security.

But in stark contrast to this worldview where nation-states will wither away and a globalised economy will usher in a global culture and that all the world will be a small global village has been contested by Samuel Huntington who posited that the more the West asserted itself and thrust its worldview on the rest of the world, the more will other nations assert their cultural and civilizational identities, and this, he said will lead to a clash of civilizations. He also said, but with due apologies to Mr. Narasimhan because I cannot find another phrase, Islamic terrorism today constitutes a very major threat to the consciousness of all settled societies.

Samuel Huntington's theory that Islamic fundamentalism posed the biggest threat and challenge so far, to western values and worldview, was at first decried among some sections of the intellectual elite. But newer and newer technologies in mass media has contributed to putting Islamic terrorism on the center stage, and this is focussing world attention on this growing menace to civilized living. Osama bin-Laden is the most well known face of Islamic terrorism today. His name and face is known to every citizen whose country is faced with the problem of Islamic fundamentalism. Osama bin-Laden is now the symbol of Islamic fundamentalism and Islamic terrorism and world attention has been made to take notice of the growing terror posed by Islam through the figure of bin-Laden. Whether it is the American embassy being blown up at Nairobi or the Indian Airlines aircraft being hijacked, or the bombing of the World Trade Center, Islamic terrorism poses the biggest threat yet to nations and all civil societies. Afghanistan, France, Algeria, the U.S., Egypt, and every corner of the world is affected by this menace today.

The global network of Islamic terrorism is so pervasive and effective that anti-India elements could recruit a terrorist from Birmingham for carrying out suicide attacks in India. This makes it the business of the United Kingdom and of the police in Birmingham. When cocaine and other drugs land in the street corners of New York and the cocaine route begins in the catchment areas of Kandahar in Afghanistan, via Tadjikhstan and Turkmenistan , via Russia and into the U.S., the issue of one portion of Islamic terrorism being funded by drug money makes it the concern of all nations affected not only by drugs but also by Islamic terrorism. To the extent that drugs and Islamic terrorism pose a threat to western societies, the west and the U.S. are today willing to acknowledge that Islamic fundamentalism is a problem. But this the west did not concede when India voiced its concern over Pakistan's role in fomenting terrorism in Kashmir and other parts of India, or when India voiced concern over the U.S' and China's readiness to arm and equip Pakistan militarily in spite of producing incontrovertible proof that such arms and equipment are only being used to escalate Islamic terrorism in India. This, the U.S. and the rest of the world were not willing to concede until they themselves were made its target.

Western policy makers have been talking for quite some time now on how nation-states and nationalism are passé, and how the current trend is the inexorable move towards globalization and the melting of national boundaries. But globalization of terrorism, drugs and arms, particularly when these are in the hands of groups inimical to U.S. and western interests, is a big no-no.

The west is beginning to realize that like the WTO, Islamic terrorism too has no respect for national boundaries. The terrorist training camps in Kandahar, which is the center of the Taliban hierarchy and administration, and the focal point of all Taliban power (so it was no accident that the hijacked IA flight was taken to Kahdahar), these camps in Kandahar today are sending terrorists to Chechnya, the Xin Jiang province in China, to Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Egypt, Sudan and of course into Kashmir.

There are 80,000 Pakistanis by last estimates, who are fighting the civil war in Afghanistan on the side of the Taliban. The last time the Northern Alliance of Massud threatened the Taliban's control of Kabul, the madarasas of Pakistan, which are more powerful and influential than the state-run schools of the Pakistani government, emptied out so that its students could go out and fight alongside the Taliban. So, what the British had drawn up as the Durrand line, now no longer exists functionally. Pakistan and Afghanistan are no longer two separate entities. Which is why Pakistan is very alarmed over the U.N's recently imposed fresh sanctions against the Taliban regime of Afghanistan.

Maulana Azhar, one of the prisoners whom India traded off with the Taliban in exchange for the safe return of the hostages of the hijacked IA flight to Kandahar, is a very senior functionary of the Taliban and is also the head of the Jaish-e-Mohammad group of Islamic terrorists, and Mullah Omar the head of the Taliban considers himself to be a faithful disciple of Maulana Azhar.

So the links of this Islamic terror belt stretching far and wide, intrudes into Kashmir, and from thereon into other parts of India with reverberations, which echoed in the Coimbatore blasts only very recently.

So there is one section of the world opinion, which believes now that India is faced with the very real threat of Islamic terrorism, and which also believes that Kashmir may well be the flash point which may well extend the Taliban's boundaries farther into the east.

What is happening in Kashmir today is the realization of what Gen.Zia-ul-Huq had once wanted.

When Zia-ul-Huq extended his full support to the Afghan Mujahideen to fight against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, he had a very clear idea about creating an Islamic belt or crescent which included Afghanistan, the Central Asian republics, Iran, Iraq and even Kashmir. He wanted this Islamic crescent to be the powerful response to growing western political and economic power. His ambition was to make Islam the ultimate veto in world affairs. And he saw Islamabad as the center of this resurgent Islamic power. To him therefore the Jehad in Kashmir and the war in Afghanistan were all of a piece.

The question we now have to ask is, how does India deal with this problem and how do these contradictory trends emerging in the world help us to deal with Pakistan and with Islamic terrorism. Western opinion grudgingly concedes that yes, as far as the WTO regime is concerned, as far as globalization goes, it is necessary to have a stable nation-state in India if only because of the explosive potential of India to become a very major economic and military power in the region and also because the people of India constitute one-sixth of world population.

There is also the informed opinion in certain circles that India is the last refuge in this war against Islamic terrorism and should be extended full support for whatever measures India may take to effect an end to terrorism in Kashmir. Contrast this with how the Islamic world views the gestures that the present government has made to Pakistan, to the domestic terrorists. And here I am in complete agreement with Parameswaran-ji.

From whatever indications are available, including reports sent by our Mission in Islamabad to Delhi, it has been concluded that as far as Gen.Musharraf is concerned, the Prime Minister's new year's musings from Kerala, which has been projected as something very bold and path breaking by some sections at home and abroad, is only indicative that the Hindus of India, the Indian Government and the Indian security forces have finally lost the spirit and the will to fight.

The assumptions with which we go by and which we readily and at every opportunity share with the thinkers and policy makers in the West, are not the assumptions which motivate the people across the border. It is not only a different mindset, it is an entirely different civilization.

And I think understanding Islam and the worldview it fosters, and responding to it adequately, imaginatively, and most important, craftily, that should constitute the national agenda as far as Kashmir is concerned.

Thank You.

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