So the country has been confronted with another crisis in another border state even as the one in Punjab continues to cause the gravest anxiety and engage a substantial part of the army. And as in the case of Punjab, the argument will once again centre on Mrs Gandhi’s culpability or otherwise. While her detractors will not entertain the slightest doubt that she has brought on another trouble on the country, her supporters will argue that, as in Punjab, she has averted a catastrophe in the nick of time.
The Congress leadership in New Delhi might take the stand that the drama as it has unfolded in Srinagar is wholly local and that the change of government should be treated as being the result of a split in the National Conference. Not many people are likely to buy this proposition. The general view will be that the moves have been planned in New Delhi with Mrs Gandhi’s endorsement and that the decision to get rid of Dr Farooq Abdullah and install Mr GM Shah in his place as chief minister has been taken in New Delhi with her consent. For, ever since the election to the Jammu and Kashmir state legislature last summer when Dr Abdullah refused to enter into an alliance with the Congress party and instead went in for a deal with the avowedly communalist and once secessionist Mir Waiz and his Awami Action Committee, she has been openly critical of Dr Abdullah, not in the routine partisan sense in which she has been critical of other non-Congress chief ministers but in the disturbing sense of doubting his own secular and nationalist credentials. Indeed, on the eve and in the wake of the army action in Punjab, her officials let it be known that the Jammu and Kashmir government had enabled Sikh extremists to hold training camps in the state. Since the government has also said more than once that Pakistan and some external agencies, a euphemism for the CIA, have been involved in Akali extremism, it would be logical for it to take the stand that Dr Abdullah has had links with external forces ill-disposed towards this country.
Thus the issue turns essentially on the question of Dr Abdullah’s links with the Akali extremists and the foreign agencies. As would be known to the readers of this newspaper, we have not been inclined to share the Congress party’s charges against him. We did not do so even when its leaders produced a picture of Dr Abdullah in the company of leaders of the so-called Kashmir Liberation Army which was responsible for kidnapping and killing the Indian diplomat, Mr Mhatre, in Britain earlier this year. But we find it inconceivable that Mrs Gandhi would have let things go as far as she now has unless she was in possession of sufficiently clear and reliable evidence of Dr Abdullah’s connections with the Akali extremists, Pakistan and others. She has not presented this evidence. So we either take her bona fides, or do not and hold her guilty of having precipitated a potentially most serious conflict in a state the status of which as a member of the Indian Union Pakistan continues to dispute. In the absence of the necessary evidence, it would be wiser to suspend judgment than to jump to conclusions.
We have been apprehending unsettling developments of some kind in Srinagar for some days, though we were in no position to anticipate the form these took on Monday morning when 12 legislators announced the withdrawal of support to Dr Abdullah’s government. In fact, when the agency flashes started arriving, we hoped that the governor would concede Dr Abdullah’s demand either to convene the legislature soon to enable him to prove that he still enjoyed the support of the majority, or dissolve it. This is an indication of our desperate wish that a situation which could develop into a confrontation between the Centre and the supporters of Dr Abdullah would still be avoided.
One reason for this desperate wish is past experience. Sheikh Abdullah’s removal in 1953, let us face it, produced a level of alienation among the Kashmiri people which was not easy to live with, though the state then had such stalwarts as Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed, Mr GM Sadiq and Mr Mir Qasim to fall back on. The other reason is the fear that dismissal of Dr Abdullah might produce an active alliance between the Akali extremists and a sizeable section of the Kashmiri Muslims and thus make the task of coping with the former much more difficult than it already is. On top of it all is the indisputable fact that the army would be greatly stretched and strained if it has to cope with turbulence or even sullenness on a big scale in Punjab and Kashmir at the same time and that this would hamper it in the performance of its normal task of safeguarding the country’s frontiers. All this at a time when Pakistan is known to have stepped up its military preparedness and its buildup on our borders and when Bangladesh is far from friendly. But it would be sheer arrogance and worse on our part to think that the Prime Minister would be insensitive to these factors and would lightheartedly allow a fresh crisis to be precipitated in so sensitive a state. In any case, the die is cast. The government will have to cope with the consequences as best it can and the country will have to live with the situation as best it can.
It is too early to say whether or not Dr Abdullah and his supporters will challenge in a court of law the legality of the governor’s action. But they well might. For the Jammu and Kashmir Representation of the People’s Act, as amended in 1979 following the adoption of an anti-defection bill, disqualifies an individual from remaining a member of either House if he or she gives up membership of the political party on the ticket of which he or she had been elected. Thus under the law as it stands, the defectors can be said to have ceased to be members of the legislature. In that case, Dr Abdullah could claim that he continued to enjoy the support of the majority in the assembly and that his dismissal was illegal. On the other hand, the law involves a rather cumbersome and protracted procedure for disqualifying a defector, which could not possibly have been gone through quickly enough to avoid confusion and even a vacuum. But while the legality or otherwise of the governor’s action is not the crux of the matter, it is not an unimportant issue which can easily be brushed aside. It is bound to figure in the furious debate that will now rage in the country. Legality is important in India. While defending her action in proclaiming internal emergency in 1975, Mrs Gandhi herself had relied on the letter of the fundamental law which permitted the President to do so on the Prime Minister’s advice. In the present case, the governor can be said to have stretched the law if not ignored it, just as Mr. Dharma Vira had done in West Bengal in November 1967 while dismissing the ministry headed by Mr. Ajoy Mukherjee. This obliges us to return to the question of Mrs Gandhi’s compulsions. We wish things had not come to such a sorry pass at this critical juncture in the nation’s life. But as the saying goes, trouble never comes alone.