A year and half ago when I was in Pakistan - whenever I am in Pakistan I always make it a point to talk to former ISI people because they always give me an authentic account of what the real thinking is in the political echelons of Pakistan. One of my favourites is Gen. Hameed Gul. He combines the brutality of his policies and actions against India with brutal frankness. I asked him what the message was for Pakistan after Kargil, what lessons they had learnt. Gen.Hameed Gul has a formidable contact with what Raman called the Army of Islam.

Gen. Gul’s comments were very revealing. It was his observation that the Pakistan army was not defeated. I do not know whether it is a fact or a myth, which the Pakistanis would like to perpetuate. He said what they have realized is that international opinion supported India quite conclusively "because of your size, and the fact that you have such a large market made international opinion veer towards India. Therefore the long-term vision of Pakistan, which plans for the atomization of India, is imperative. This is for us an uncompromising State policy". I am very glad that Gen.Gul spoke with such a degree of firmness and such honest candour about Pakistan’s real and ultimate intentions towards India.

I raise this issue of Pakistan’s pathological hatred of India because, of late the question has arisen in the minds of some of us - is there a Kashmir policy or Pakistan policy, and the two at times are linked, which informs the Indian government’s strategy to deal with the problem in J&K and to deal with Pakistan. Over the past year, I am more than ever convinced like Raman that ad hocism has been elevated to the realms of philosophy. And to make matters worse, ad hocism is compounded with competitive one-upmanship.

What is happening in Delhi today, without going into any great detail, is that there is a tussle between various departments dealing with the problem and a clear lack of any focus. The home ministry is at loggerheads with the PMO. And there are certain sections of the PMO, which thinks that they are the ultimate determinants of what constitutes government policy. The ministry of external affairs, which has a significant role to play in shaping international opinion on Kashmir, is very busy with its own games of transfers and postings, totally impervious to the larger picture. It is a very, very dismal scenario, which presents itself.

There is no proactive anti-insurgency policy or a Kashmir policy. Yes, certain advances have been made. But these are more accidental rather than intentional. That brings us to the question of how exactly the question of Kashmir is being thought of. The Americans have not been quite so forthcoming or strident on the issue after Pokhran. But from what I gather from the number of people wooed and quoted by American think-tank organizations, one can come to an understanding that in the realms of U.S policy, the advisability of converting the LOC into the international border is being seriously proffered as one possible solution to the problem. It is not a solution, to be honest, to which I am opposed. It is not a solution, which in any way harms Indian interests if we can adopt a practical approach. Then the question arises, what is the modality of bringing about such a solution?

Obviously, it is not expected that the government of India will lay its cards on the table straight away. What will be the nature of international mediation, if as I see it, there is going to be international mediation sooner or later? The question of international mediation has come about now because after Shimla, Lahore, and then Kargil, there is a widespread belief in the Indian establishment that Pakistan cannot be trusted, that therefore to conduct any kind of negotiation with Pakistan it would have to be against the backdrop of some sort of international guarantee.

So it is in this context that a lot of these moves, which are being undertaken now, should be located.

The first real question that the government has had to deal with is the autonomy factor, its constitutional position etc. Farooq Abdullah submitted the Report of the State Autonomy Committee, which was passed by the state assembly of J&K, in this regard to the Government of India. Shri Raman remarked a while ago that no matter what the contents of the Report, the government of India ought not to have rejected it out of hand and that the government should have discussed it with Farooq Abdullah.

I can only tell you all that in the face of it, may be Mr. Raman did not think it deserves such a sharp reaction from the government but I would request him to read the fine print carefully. The fine print of it was inflammatory to say the least. Going by that report it would suggest that any action taken post 1953 by the Government of India with regard to the state of J&K w ould be declared null and void. It is inconceivable that such a situation would be acceptable to any government. Which is one of the reasons why very gently, Farooq Abdullah was told the implications of the report and which is why despite many rhetorical speeches to the contrary, he never withdrew from the NDA.

It must be mentioned to his credit that he acceded to the suggestion that the autonomy question be discreetly referred to the Constitutional Review Commission. The question before the Commission is how to make a package of Article 370 with all its implications, which is not only acceptable to J&K but also in a sense acceptable to the rest of India. In other words how do you devise an autonomy package, which deals equally with J&K and Tamil Nadu. It is not an impossible proposition.

The problem, which Article 370 created and which has been dealt with in great detail by Prof. Deshmukh, was the problem of emotional detachment. It institutionalized the notion of separateness.

There might have been compelling reasons why the so-called temporary Article 370 was put into the statute. The context for it in the Constituent Assembly debates clearly reveals that because India had referred the issue to the UN, the provision of Article 370 was put into the statutes. There is a certain move, which is going on at present, to tackle the issue of autonomy but in a manner which would take into account both the very serious and well-justified misgivings, which Article 370 is causing and the yearning of many of the states in the Indian Union for greater fiscal and administrative autonomy.

Regardless of the manner in which Farooq Abdullah has sought to project the question of autonomy for J&K, it is Farooq Abdullah who has been the standard-bearer of his state in the war against Pakistani terrorists. His various moves, counter moves, his various antics from time to time have exasperated people. If you really want to locate it, whatever larger positions Farooq Abdullah has assumed, locate it within the mainstream of national politics; whether he supported the opposition conclaves in the early ‘80s, whether he supported Rajiv Gandhi, or subsequently the United Front government and later when he joined the NDA government, it has all been located within the mainstream political process of this country with the clear understanding that the state government in Srinagar must have the active cooperation of the Center.

It is a political career, which really should be admired for several reasons despite our misgivings about the particular details of it.

It is therefore absolutely inexplicable as to why the Government is seeking to play various other cards, which seem to be intended towards weakening Farooq Abdullah’s position within J&K. Like when the Hizbul Mujahideen card was played, when Abdul Majid Dar unilaterally offerred ceasefire, and which actually turned out be rather brief, because Salahuddin from Islamabad, reneged on the assurances, which were given by the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. That step I could understand because here was a primarily domestic group of Kashmiri militants who wanted to talk and therefore some doors should have been open to them, in any meaningful way, using the Nagaland and the Mizoram formulae as the basic premises. That was done in the case of the Hizb-ul Mujahideen, a process, which was initiated by the central government itself.

The government’s willingness to consider the Hizb’s offer incidentally had the full knowledge and backing of Farooq Abdullah. He was kept informed at every stage of every move. Then we had the Hurriyat issue. It is one thing to release the leaders of the Hurriyat, just a few days after Clinton’s visit. But then you had the totally bizarre situation of the levels of contact with the Hurriyat, which was done by channels, that were completely unaccountable to the political process. It was a certain set of very, very private initiatives that went on and the calculation at the back of everyone’s mind was very obvious - it was primarily aimed, for reasons which are not clear at all, at upstaging Farooq Abdullah as the most widely accepted figure as representing all sections of people in the state.

It is one thing to talk to Abdul Ghani Lone, a person who has quite openly said that he finds the violence unleashed by foreign militants as being unacceptable. Now he is talking the language of his ‘sambdhi’ from across the border, Amanullah Khan who is talking of the so called third option - the independence option. But as far as the others are concerned there was no particular reason to involve them. And there was no rationale for the tripartite bait being thrown to the Hurriyat. And it was thrown to the Hurriyat at the highest level.

These are certain inexplicable features as to why India, when it was on a very strong ground, having kept up this consistent line since Kargil that we will not talk to Pakistan till cross border terrorism ceases in any meaningful way, should have blinked first in this war of nerves. What were the compulsions? This offer of tripartite talks is one of those steps set in motion, which nobody to date has been able to explain except in terms of proffering the suggestion that it is the larger international thing. If it is true that after one month the offer of ceasefire will be reviewed and that having made this gesture to the international community we can go back to our consistent stand of no talks with Pakistan now, then that would be understandable.

But in terms of the gains which Mr. Raman underlined I can assure you, and you can check up on this, many of those gains by way of a significant increase in the sources of human intelligence and its quality, I have been told, has been very severely affected in the last one month when the ceasefire has been in force. That to my mind is something very serious because it not only prevents any long-term solution, it also militates against the only political process in the valley we have had so far in the person and politics of Farooq Abdullah. And that is why I say, systematic attacks on the NC and its leaders and cadre cripples India’s interests.

SHRI V.MALAISAMY, M.P., AIADMK.

Sir, would you say if scrapping Article 370 from the Constitution were desirable? I know that such a constitutional amendment would have to be ratified by a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament as well as by one-thirds of the states in the Indian union. As I see it, if you want to withdraw a concession already provided, you may have to give something else before you make attempts to withdraw the original concession.

ANSWER

Very true. That is exactly what I am saying. You can scrap Article 370 only if you link it with the larger question of greater administrative and fiscal autonomy, which would apply not only to the state of J&K but also to all the states of the Indian union. We all know that all that Article 370 did was to create a psychological and emotional block in the minds of the Muslims of the state and this did not allow for the complete integration of the state into the union. The issue is before the Constitution Review Committee and I think the committee will go into the question of granting substantively more powers to the states. It will have to devise it in a way, which will make it acceptable to the political classes and these will then have to sell the idea to their constituencies.

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