Kashmir: A step forward, but not yet a tectonic move

Beginning with the visit of a senior officer of the Pakistan government's political department to Srinagar even before the Maharaja announced Kashmir's accession to India Pakistan was engaged with India, in a series of attempts to resolve the Kashmir dispute. Like many of the subsequent attempts this very first mission to Srinagar proved to be a failure.

The first major talk between the two countries within a formal framework, however took place in 1962-63 after India's defeat and humiliation at the hands of Chinese Communists. The talks were described as first intensive and long lasting ones and believed to have resulted from the combined efforts of Britain and the United States. Moscow sponsored the next round of talks between India and Pakistan and the Tashkent talks focused mainly on troops withdrawal following 1965 war and restoration of prewar status of both India and Pakistan. Kashmir figured prominently in talks between Indira Gandhi and ZA Bhutto at Shimla on 12 July 1972. Mr DP Dhar, a close aid of Indira Gandhi in his comprehensive study of Indo-Pak relations suggested that the two countries came closest to an understanding on Kashmir during this Gandhi-Bhutto meeting.

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There had been a little known but significant Indo-Pak meeting on Kashmir in 1994 at foreign secretary level -- duly prompted by an extraordinary letter by then Prime Minister of India, Narasimha Rao to Ms Benazir Bhutto when she came to power. Needless to say that this like all earlier efforts produced no result on Kashmir.

All these long years of efforts failed to break the logjam of Kashmir. It was not for nothing that those efforts were undertaken. Some of the efforts enumerated above came rather close to fruition before they collapsed. As the efforts lie buried under the avalanche of hostile events the new hopes build up and the optimism of humankind refuses to die down. There are also other imponderables of protocol and procedure which are likely to dog the progress of the dialogue. Only the other day Pakistanis were gravely offended when their prime minister was coldly received at Delhi without the presence of Manmohan Singh at the airport. Even in future such slips -- deliberate or otherwise -- can create new snags in the process rendering it constantly vulnerable.

There is also furor over the Kashmir options, a debate initiated by the Pakistani president who draws flak both internally and externally. From Indian point of view the initiation of such debate is procedurally wrong. Insisting that the ongoing composite dialogue process between the two countries is the only correct forum to raise such proposals or suggestions since Jammu and Kashmir is one of the subjects of the agenda. It is preposterous, according to many even in Pakistan to run a simultaneous debate on the subject.

After all wars, dialogues and diplomacies were tried in earnestness, at the end of the day the parties concerned with the dispute found themselves still in square one. Will just the renewal of one of the methods, the dialogue, resolve the 57 years' old dispute so easily and so soon? Yet the people concerned are irresistibly upbeat as if the resolution of the impasse is round the corner. Although the ongoing dialogue is just another effort at peace making and it does constitute a step forward, but the time has come for a giant leap -- a tectonic shift in the whole attitude and a flexibility to be able to stand away from the moribund traditional positions on each side.

The observers say that the Kashmir problem has already been stalemated if not deadlocked even in the midst of much touted composite dialogue. They fear that soon it may turn into a soulless exercise before it fizzles out. Only the brave action can save it from ultimate collapse. Pakistan's president has demonstrated one such action by foregoing demand of a plebiscite which has been the cornerstone of Pakistan's Kashmir policy. He echoes that bravery when he declares "Pakistan would like to meet India half way. Hopefully India too would realise the hazard inherent in a stalemated situation and travel its own half way."

It is not immediately known if India would be prepared to 'travel its own half way' and what really constitutes that half way. In the meantime one option to resolve Kashmir dispute that gained some currency is the division the state. Although India remained cool to such option debate in Pakistan, some Indian opinion makers are known to have suggested that it may be best for New Delhi to cede the valley to Pakistan and retain the rest of the territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

The wary millions of the region remain cross fingered in observing whether the leadership of India and Pakistan would make a tectonic shift by moving away from their stated position on Kashmir and ushering in an era of peace and harmony in this 'heaven on the earth' by finally burying the hatchet in conflict-torn Kashmir.

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.