Kashmir: four possibilities

The Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan offers four possible solutions. For one either side gives up their part of the Kashmir as a means of resolving the dispute and getting on in life; or it could happen as a consequence of a promised plebiscite under the UNSC Resolutions of 1949 where the Kashmiris choose one over the other. 

Such recourse would be legally correct and as per the existing conventions. It will also conform to the principles of Independence in 1947; and it will qualify the oft-repeated policy held by officials on both sides. Such a course will also pose the least political risk to either side on the domestic front. It is this safety of a kosher political stance that a talk of a ‘third option’ to officialdom on either side becomes akin to waving a red flag at a bull. There are other reasons too of such revulsion.

The difficulty though is that time has marched on since 1947, and the Kashmiris have proven to be an irrepressible lot. They have also developed a home-grown sentiment of azaadi (independence) of their own during the course, and have sacrificed at least some 100,000 men and women in the cause. And, though no one has asked them to elaborate on their philosophy of independence – for fear of discovering an unpalatable truth – chances are their independence doesn’t only mean being away from the Indians who occupy the more substantive part of Kashmir; their call for independence into a separate state of their own means keeping away from both India and Pakistan. They are also unlikely to give it up as their most preferred option because of the blood and suffering invested into their cause. The problems with this approach are also multifarious and will need elaboration.

Since neither Pakistan nor India are likely to give up the part of Kashmir under them, and an independent Kashmir in the midst of South Asia may become a destabilising tectonic tumult with serious strategic reverberations – geopolitically unsustainable for an already tenuous region – the third option is to find a via-media to the two/three stark choices above. 

The chance of an agreed solution between India and Pakistan is more likely to develop around the creation of an autonomous Kashmir region which satisfies the strategic sensitivities of the two principals and ‘somewhat’ gives meaning to the aspirations of the Kashmiris. Such an autonomous region will consist of the ‘separable’ parts of the larger territories of Jammu and Kashmir that may not constitute the dream boundaries of the Kashmiris but will be sufficient to give them a sense of self rule under the joint protection of both India and Pakistan. This too needs elaboration.

A proposal on the above lines has been toyed around under various formulations between India and Pakistan, including the more recent four-point formula by Musharraf, but clearly a lot will need to be done politically before such consensus can be achieved between the two. The two sides will need to paradigmatically move from a confrontational to a cooperative approach in dispute resolution; that seems hugely impossible in prevalent circumstances. The extended advantage for taking this route to the resolution of the dispute is for both sides to continue to retain their strategic control of the resources like the water and power heads that lie in these territories. 

Can both countries breach that barrier of distrust to begin to jointly own and preserve and share what in time will become critical resource for their sustenance? Though such a solution seems to be the most practical way forward out of a complex and intricate political legacy, India will resort to such recourse only as a last option. This emerges from a recently acquired belief system that suggests that India may have other options to exercise before acceding to such fait accompli.

The fourth possible solution is what is famously touted as the ‘status quo’ option – formalising the LoC as a permanent border. This may appear the easiest but is the unlikeliest for the political cost it may bring to the leadership on both sides. Just a few years back the Indians would have jumped onto any such mention. But not now; under Modi their designs are different, and with a different set of tools they hope to romp home with the same results without the feared cost. 

A more detailed analysis of each option beckons.

Despite the acute divergence in the relative power potentials of both India and Pakistan, neither is likely to give up on their part of the Kashmir to the other. The three-and-a-half wars fought between the two have failed to resolve the dispute militarily – and there is little by way of a significant operational gain that can be made in the more difficult reaches of the Kashmir region that can give either side a roll-over momentum of physical occupation. Incremental gains are of little significance to yield a military solution. Also, under a nuclear overhang, conventional military application lies in the bygone era. Use of the military is thus neither an option, nor can it deliver a solution on Kashmir. A political process then remains the only option to seek a resolution of the dispute.

Autonomy, more than independence, is a realistic and workable goal. Over the years, both sides have fragmented their respective parts of Kashmir to suit their own strategic, political and administrative ends. India holds an acute sensitivity to Ladakh in the north-east for its proximity to Tibet, a disputed region between China and India over which the two fought a war in 1962, and will hold on to it for strategic relevance in any final solution on Kashmir. 

Jammu in the south of Kashmir is not only an administrative division of the larger Jammu and Kashmir region, it also has a unique demographic identity with a Hindu majority. Its separation from any arrangement for a territorially autonomous Kashmir is a likely possibility. Thus what will be available for a territorial concession will only be the larger Valley region of J&K. What the Kashmiris will lose in a compromised territorial concession must be compensated to them with assured, legally constituted and fully supported autonomy.

Similarly, the Pakistani part of Kashmir has also seen an administrative division, with Gilgit-Baltistan a separate entity. For its contiguity with China in the north-east and the routes joining the two neighbours that run through the G-B region, for Pakistan the sensitivity of G-B is high. Pakistan too will, therefore, only put up a truncated Kashmir for a territorial solution. 

When formalisation of the status quo first began to be mentioned by some Pakistani commentators as a possible option, given that other choices on the table were either unattainable or needed resolute political will – difficult to come by under weak political dispensations – the Indian strategic community quickly moved to a tactical rebuff from an initially excited disbelief on the offer (which had always been India’s dream option towards the resolution). Instead, they now say all of Kashmir is an inalienable part of India. Without such tactical game-playing South Asia would not be the ‘tinderbox’ that it is. 

But why doesn’t India move forward on the probable solutions to the problem? 

To be continued

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