Kashmiriyat, Jamhuriyat, Insaniat

On the early morning of November 16, Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed will be in Goa presenting a ‘special address’ at an ‘India Ideas Conclave’ on the much talked about but little understood subject of ‘Kashmiriyat, Jamhuriyat, Insaniat’. The conclave is host¬ed by India Foundation, a newly emerged powerful think tank run mainly by BJP members, including Ministers, and ideologues. Past its sell by date long ago, the ‘Kashmiriyat, Jamhuriyat, Insaniat’ slogan was coined in bits and pieces between 2000 and 2002 by the BJP veteran Atal Behari Vajpayee, hailed by many as the Prime Minister of India who brought Kashmir closest to a possible resolution. No one, however, knows any contours of that resolution or its ac¬ceptability among the key stakeholders. After two years of poll-time marketing that BJP GenNext is committed to pick up the threads from where Vajpayee had left, Prime Minis¬ter Narendera Modi, in his Srinagar speech of November 7, has presented his own interpretation of ‘Kashmiriyat, Jamhuriyat, Insaniat’ which is, though, thoughtful in itself but is completely far removed from what Vajpayee had meant by that. In this backdrop, Mufti’s presentation on the subject assumes immense significance.

What Modi said

The Opposition National Conference and many other shades of political opinion have picked up Prime Minister’s assertion that he ‘doesn’t need anyone’s advice or analysis on Kashmir’ to attack Mufti and make out a case of snub to the office of the Chief Minister. Reducing the issue to a person would be too simplistic to understand how Kashmir is seen from New Delhi when things, much critical than this, have happened before also. Not long ago the Vajpayee’s Cabinet almost threw in the trash can a resolution duly passed by Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly –a House of the collective will, power and pride of the people of whole state. Compared to that the latest ‘snub’ is of no consequence as from ‘advice’ the Prime Minister most likely meant the international community. However, what merits deeper analysis is what exactly the Prime Minister meant by the ‘Kashmiriyat, Jamhuriyat, Insaniat’ phrase. He has left very little for interpretations as the Prime Min¬ister went on to explain his understanding of all three ele¬ments. Here is transliteration which makes it abundantly clear that it had nothing to do with Vajpayee’s dictum:

Jamhuriyat: “When Vajpayee talked of Jamhuriat did anyone imagine that people in Kashmir would strengthen the democracy in such a way by massive participation in Lok Sabha and Assembly elections? Today when Mufti sahab talks of strengthening of Panchayats this really is Atal ji’s Jamhuriyat. Kashmiri people have fulfilled Vaj¬payee’s dream of democracy. Therefore I want to pay my tributes to the people of Kashmir for honouring the words of legendary Vajpayee”.

Kashmiriyat: “It is not only Kashmir but India is incom¬plete without Kashmiriyat. Kashmiriyat is pride of India. The voice of real inclusivity originated from here. Those Sufi traditions came from here which taught unity and relationships. Those traditions are our Kashmiriyat”.

Insaniat: “Technology has changed the world but nothing moves without humanity. Economic independence allows us to touch new heights. Our inner spirit is alive as long as we live for others.

So, Jamhuriyat in this case means a long held notion of elections as symbol of Kashmir’s proven faith in institu¬tions of India’s democracy; Kashmiriyat as something New Delhi has always meant in terms of Kashmir being showcase of Indian secularism as against Pakistan’s two-nation thing and, finally Insaniat as a philosophical sense woven around humanity.

What Vajpayee meant

As mentioned many times in this column that channels of dialogue have existed between India and Pakistan right since 1947 and, of course, much before discovery of frame¬works like Track II and Track III but a structure of dialogue was absent until 1997. It was after 50 years of talking here and there that Prime Ministers Inder Kumar Gujaral and Nawaz Sharif tasked their trusted and creative Foreign Secretaries Salman Haidar and Shamshad Ahmed to gener¬ate a framework which eventually came to be known as Composite Dialogue Process. It was in this framework that Kashmir formally became a recognized agenda item for a regular dialogue between two countries, mainly at the Foreign Secretary level but also at the technical levels on subjects delegated by the Foreign offices. Similarly, despite three accords –the Delhi Accord, 1952, the Indira-Sheikh Accord, 1974 and Rajiv-Farooq Accord, 1986 –a framework for dialogue between New Delhi and Kashmir, particularly to address the latter’s sentiment of dissent, has remained missing all along until Vajpayee took the big leap, after many failed small steps. In wake of moral decline of the mainstream “integrationalist” political culture the situa¬tion emerging post 1990s threw new challenges and de¬manded new approaches. The governments in New Delhi found almost every group in Kashmir too militant to talk to. No discussion outside the framework of constitution was the common refrain. When Centre rejected the Na¬tional Conference government’s piloted Autonomy pro¬posal duly passed as resolution by the legislative assembly, the dissidents groups in Kashmir first hardened their stance of not holding any talks under the ambit of Constitution of India. There were reasons for rejecting the Autonomy proposal as it didn’t address the political issues as they existed at that point in time. The grant of Autonomy as demanded by the National Conference would have neither brought militant groups back to mainstream, Hurriyat to the Assembly, nor would it have settled things with Pakistan. But there is an interesting analysis to be made here: Vaj¬payee proposed Insaniyat framework barely a month after rejecting a proposal (Autonomy) made within the ambit of Constitution. Isn’t it strange that three weeks after rejecting a discussion on something produced as constitutional pro¬cess you go on to let people imagine a solution outside the constitution. The Insaniyat framework was first used in context of talks with Hizbul Mujahideen in July 2000 and many people would know that around those times there were a lot of actors above and beyond the government, within and outside the country, influencing, nudging and advising the Vajpayee government on some creative solu¬tions. The Jamhuriyat thing came up in 2002 in context of promising free and fair elections as many conflict analyses suggested the electoral malpractices of 1987 as a trigger for what happened across 1990s. The third element, Kashmiri¬yat, has remained alive along to suggest an inclusive ap¬proach and most of times about return of the Kashmiri Pandits to their homes to restore secular fabric of the Val¬ley while moving towards final settlement.

Epilogue

Modi has perhaps been frank enough in telling the people what exactly he means by this much maligned catchphrase of ‘Kashmiriyat, Jamhuriyat, Insaniat’ but in the hindsight even Vajpayee’s dictum actually achieved very little on the ground. Early next week when Mufti speaks at the India Foundation’s conclave in Goa it will be very interesting to hear his version of ‘Kashmiriyat, Jamhuriyat, Insaniat’ and how it is being sought to be applied at this point in time.

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