The breakdown of talks between the Congress (I) and the National Conference for an electoral alliance in Jammu and Kashmir, however unfortunate and risky, is not wholly unexpected. In fact, it would have been rather surprising if the talks had succeeded.
To begin with, it should be appreciated that Dr. Farooq Abdullah wants to succeed his father, the late Sheikh, not only as chief minister of the state but also as the leader of the people in the valley. As such he cannot seek accommodation with, or give accommodation to, the Congress (I), still the only truly national party. This is the logic of the situation which cannot easily be reversed.
This is not the end of the matter. For Dr. Abdullah cannot limit his ambition even if he was so inclined. He cannot be just another chief minister. Either he tries and becomes the undisputed leader of the Kashmiri people as the Sheikh was for four decades or he will be devoured by other ambitious men waiting for the opportunity. He may not be able to make it. He lacks the necessary stature and perhaps also the necessary toughness of character. He is known to act rashly and change his mind too frequently.
As chief minister, Dr. Abdullah can cooperate with the Centre on the same basis as other non-Congress (I) chief ministers such as Mr. MG Ramachandran and Mr. NT Rama Rao who, too, claim to speak for distinct cultural-linguistic entities. But there is a difference between Kashmir and Tamil Nadu or Andhra Pradesh. The difference is the product of a number of factors. Religion is certainly one of them and it is an important factor. But it is only one of the factors at work. For a Muslim majority state in the interior of India would have been a different proposition from one on the border.
The other factors are well known – partition of the country, Pakistan’s bid to seize the state by force and its continuing claim that the status of Jammu and Kashmir has not been settled. These together with the religious factor have produced among the Kashmiri people an ambivalence towards the Indian Union which the Sheikh embodied and which Dr. Farooq Abdullah is now trying to represent and use to his advantage.
Central Aid Huge
This ambivalence has suited the Kashmiris remarkably well. The Union government has not only protected the state from being gobbled up by Pakistan but also poured in enormous sums of money. Only Nagaland, Mizoram and Arunachal (formerly known as NEFA) have received an equally generous treatment at the hands of the Centre. The reason for it is obvious in all these cases. While the Kashmiri people are highly skilled and would have done well on their own, they owe a great deal of their present prosperity to the enormous investment by the Centre.
Sheikh Abdullah often reminded us that the Kashmiri people had cast their lot with the Indian Union under his leadership because the Gandhi-Nehru philosophy of secular nationalism and democracy appealed to them. In private discussions with Indians he also never failed to say that if he did not espouse the cause of Kashmiri particularism – he used the word qauh which means nations – he would be outflanked by communal elements to India’s detriment. There was an element of truth in both these propositions. But there was more to them than that.
The Sheikh resisted Mr. Jinnah’s two-nation theory not because he was an Indian nationalist, which he was not despite his ties (friendship would be an inappropriate description though it has often been used) with Mr. Nehru, but because he was a Kashmiri nationalist and he knew that there could be no place for Kashmiri nationalism in Mr. Jinnah’s concept of the Muslim nation. And while it cannot be denied that he was not a communalist in the vulgar sense of the term, it is equally undeniable that he could not have retained Jammu within the state if he was one and that the detachment of Jammu and Kashmir would have increased the vulnerability of the valley to pressures from Pakistan and from within. In other words, his stance and his convictions served his interests well.
So dramatic has been the change in the past decade or so in the valley that it is today difficult to recall the tensions of the fifties and the sixties. This has obviously been the result of various developments; the high level of prosperity in the valley, for instance. But above all it has been the product of the spectacular shift in the power balance in the sub-continent, arising out of Pakistan’s military defeat and break-up in 1971.
Ambivalent Stance
This ended the possibility of Pakistan being able to seize the state by force of arms and this in turn weakened the power of Sheikh Abdullah to blackmail India. By the same token this development enabled Mrs. Gandhi to be more accommodating towards him. All in all, it is inconceivable that he would have settled with Mrs. Gandhi on the terms that he did and that Mrs. Gandhi would have agreed to install him in power if there had been no 1971. But having got back in 1975 into the office of chief minister, the Sheikh had to revert to his earlier ambivalent, though not hostile, stance and undermine the Congress. Mrs. Gandhi’s defeat in 1977 greatly facilitated his task. The Janata leaders were no match to him.
With Mrs. Gandhi’s return to power in 1980, the state Congress (I) leaders, with the exception of Mir Qasim, found their reduced position galling. Apparently, Mrs. Gandhi, too, regarded the existing situation as being unacceptable because it denied her a leverage which she could use to persuade the Sheikh to respect the sensitivities of her partymen in the state. This was the basic source of the conflict between her and the Sheikh to respect the sensitivities of her partymen in the state. This was the basic source of the conflict between her and the Sheikh.
The Prime Minister fretted and fumed. She paid a couple of visits to the state and publicly expressed her displeasure with the Sheikh. But her options were severely limited. She could have dismissed the Sheikh’s government only at the risk of a return to the position of uncertainty which prevailed in the state before she put him back into office in 1975. This time she was suffering from an additional disadvantage in that she did not have men of the stature of Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed, Mr. Sadiq and Mir Qasim to put in his place, the Mir being wholly unwilling to oppose the Sheikh.
Dr. Abdullah is not as well placed as his father was. He lacks the deceased leader’s charisma. He has a powerful adversary in his brother-in-law, Mr. GM Shah. He has alienated many of the Sheikh’s colleagues whom he dismissed as ministers on the ground that they were corrupt. His links with the National Conference Organisation, such as it is, are tenuous because in the past he did not take much interest in its affairs. But his is what may be called the strength of weakness. He has to assert himself precisely because he cannot afford to be seen to be weak; he has to rely on demagogy because he does not have much else to depend on besides, of course, money. And, surprising though it may appear on a surface view of recent developments, Mrs. Gandhi, too, cannot afford to push him into a corner lest he collapses and either make common cause with the Jamaat-e- Islami or give way to it.
Appeal To Sentiments
Demagogy in the valley must involve an appeal to the particularist sentiments of the Kashmiri people just as in Jammu it must involve resort to an anti-Srinagar platform. This appeal would appear to many of us as being communal. But it would appear as something quite legitimate to Dr. Abdullah and his colleagues. What would appear as Muslim communalism to many of us would be Kashmiri nationalism to him.
It used to be said of the Sheikh that he was a communalist in the valley and a nationalist outside of it. But he saw no contradiction between his stance in the valley and his stance in Delhi. The same is true of Dr. Abdullah. He too speaks two different languages, one in the valley and the other elsewhere and he too sees no contradiction between the two. Both serve a specific purpose and each purpose is valid in its own context.
On the face of it, this is plain duplicity. In reality it is nothing of the kind. The Hindus, who have been accused of similar doublespeak and double-think for centuries, should have no great difficulty in appreciating this fact. Unlike the Christians and the Muslims, the Hindus do not believe in absolute values which would apply to every situation. Their value system is what has been aptly described as being context-sensitive, that is, each value system is the product of a specific environment and is valid mainly in that environment.
The Kashmiri Muslims are basically a mild and non-violent people who are quick to see the validity of the other points of view even if it is unacceptable to them because it does not suit them. Their weaknesses are well known. They have been well advertised for centuries. But these are the weaknesses of a people who have had to depend on their wits for their very survival. We have no right to judge them harshly.
No one ever accused the Sheikh of being a Hamlet. He could be and not be at the same time. But this is true of most of us in India. Indeed, it was thus even of Mr. Nehru.
Dr. Farooq Abdullah belongs to the same tradition. He can be a Kashmiri Muslim nationalist and an Indian secular nationalist at the same time. We have not much reason to be alarmed so long as we can maintain the present power balance in the sub-continent. That has been and remains the most critical element in the Kashmir situation.
The Times of India, 4 May 1983