The idea of trifurcating Jammu and Kashmir as a solution to the Kashmir tangle has insidiously entered the discussion circuits in the capital. Officially, the BJP has stated that vivisection of the state is not part of the party's agenda. But the RSS leader who publicly advocated the idea weeks ago was obviously floating a trial balloon.
There is a growing feeling in the Sangh Parivar that one way out could be to give Jammu statehood and Ladakh Union Territory status. Once they are integrated more strongly with the rest of India, negotiations can be held more effectively with the Valley to confer it a more acceptable autonomous status within the Indian Union.
Underlying this view is the belief that Kashmir has cost India dearly and the time has come to settle the issue. The J&K Government's report on regional autonomy, as opposed to the one on greater autonomy for the state which has stirred a hornet's nest, is one more incarnation of the same idea. Farooq Abdullah has used it to play the Muslim card, keeping in mind the 2002 polls.
The report makes a case for a 'Vishal' Valley, recommending the creation of eight regions, ostensibly on the grounds of ethnicity, six of which will be Muslim-dominated. Three of them will be in the Valley, two in Jammu (by clubbing together Rajouri and Poonch and Doda and Mahore tehsils), and the sixth will be Kargil to be carved out of Ladakh. Only Jammu, Udhampur (minus Mahore) and Kathua are to be constituted as a region. Leh will be Hindu or Buddhist-dominated.
The seeds of the trifurcation idea are also present in the February 2000 report on Kashmir prepared by the Kashmir Study Group in the US, which ... manyl in the Hurriyat are inclined to consider. It too talks about reorganising "a portion" of the former princely state of J&K, without spelling out which portion. But the arrangement it advocates - either one "sovereign" Kashmir "without an international personality", or two such states on either side of the LOC, with soft borders between them, looking after everything barring foreign affairs and defence and having a special relationship with India and Pakistan - will not be acceptable to Jammu or Ladakh.
The idea of creating a state on the basis of religion, which reinforces the two-nation theory rejected by India at the time of independence, goes against the very fundamentals of the Indian nation - that it is possible for people of different faiths, tongues, regions and ethnicity to live alongside each other in harmony, respecting each others' beliefs. From that tolerance of each others' differences flows India's secularism, and its unity in diversity ... Therein lies the secret also of its democracy, of a consensual approach, which for all its imperfections has lasted 50 years.
An extension of the argument of conceding the Valley as a separate state because it has a Muslim majority has horrifying consequences for India. It has the potential to encourage Hindu fundamentalists. They may turn around and say that if religion is the basis of statehood or nationhood, why should 150 million Muslims continue to live in India as they are doing today. Throw them out or create ghettoes for them. It will spell the end of everything India has stood for. If differences become the basis for separation, there is no end to this process. It could lead to the country breaking up into hundreds of Bosnia’s ...
What has happened in J&K in the last 50 years is all the more painful because the state represented the pluralistic ethos of India better than many others ..
The Sangh Parivar, and others, may flirt with the idea of amputation as a solution, but it will jeopardise the very logic of India. For India is not fighting in Kashmir just to retain a piece of territory. It is fighting to retain its heritage, its beliefs, and its multi-religious mosaic welded by history. India is not fighting in Kashmir just to retain a piece of territory. (Source: The Indian Express, 24 July, 2000)
Shahabuddin's Response - Letter to The Indian Express, 28 July, 2000
Much as I find myself in tune with the ideological wave length of Neerja Chowdhury's "At Stake is the Idea of India" (Indian Express, 24 July), 1 feel compelled to point out the omission and exaggeration in her analysis.
The US-based Kashmir Study Group Reort does demarcate the part of the State which should have 'sovereignty without international personality'. Basically it is the same as the Vishal Valley propounded by the Regional Autonomy Report. Of course, there is another version which tags on a part of the POK to 'Kashmir'. All this is supposed to be based on Kashmiriyat i.e. Kashmiri language and Culture i.e. ethnicity. Of course, 90% of the Kashmiris are Muslim. So there is a religious dimension.
But the same applies to Punjabiyat and Bengaliyat on the basis of which Punjab and Bengal were also partitioned in 1947 so tliat parts thereof with Hindu-Sikh majority may be incorporated in the Union. Secondly, as a Muslim Indian, let me assure Neerja Chowdhury that whatever may happen to Kashmir, no one can throw us out or force us into ghettos. Stop.
As for trifurcation, this idea is as old as the Kashmir dispute, the Dixon Plan sowed the seeds and India was prepared to go along. For inexplicable reasons Pakistan backed out. Even now, the three regions are unable to get along. It is for the Kashmiri leadership and the J&K Government to offer reasonable and generous terms for Jammu and Ladakh to stay in but if no modus vivendi can be found, can they be harnessed to the demographic and, therefore, political and administrative dominance of the Valley, by force? Exactly in the same way, can the Valley be forced to accept us? Today, an average Kashmir, whatever we might say, feels that the Union wants land, not the people.
Ethnicity will decide the future map and political contours of the world in the coming century. But multi-ethnic states will emerge because it alone shall serve the interest of the contiguous or inter-penetrating ethnicities.
This is why I do not share the doomsday prophecy of Balkanization of the Sub-continent. Indeed I dream of a United States of South Asia!
