Hemant Joshi's Jan. 15 column in The Dartmouth, "India-Pakistan: At a Standstill," is an exercise in simplistic and uninformed commentary. Apart from the serious factual and interpretive inconsistencies in the piece (which, if I attempted to point out would take up the entire column), the most egregious assertion is that which reduces the Kashmir conflict to nothing more than an expensive and deadly pastime. The reader is left with a confused and distorted picture of the nature of the conflict. An informed and balanced understanding of the issue of Kashmir is vital to the prospects for peace in South Asia -- a region whose geostrategic importance in the war on terrorism necessitates our attention.
Recent events in South Asian military posturing, war hysteria and fiery nationalist rhetoric are not by any means unprecedented. Two of the three wars fought by India and Pakistan were directly tied to the issue of Kashmir and it is the cause of incessant low-level skirmishes across the Line Of Control (LOC), which divides the two rival forces in the Himalayan region. Joshi is correct in his assertion that the conflict is as old as the Indian and Pakistani states themselves and is rooted in the turmoil of partition. Indeed, the current distribution of Kashmiri territory (roughly one half with India, one third with Pakistan and the rest with China) was mainly determined by the first war over Kashmir in 1948, erupting only months after independence. To understand the significance of the conflict, we must understand the history of the Indian and Pakistani states.
The Pakistan movement emerged in the 1930s; as a secular nationalist movement, it proclaimed that the Muslims of India constituted a civilization and community distinct from that of the Hindus of India, who according to this view were a separate nation and civilization. Thus, being Muslim was taken to connote more than a theological orientation but necessarily implied nationality: here lies one of several interesting parallels with Zionism, or Jewish Nationalism. If the Muslims of India were a distinct nationality with their own customs, traditions, views on government, society and economy, then it would be only natural that they should demand the amalgamation of the contiguous Muslim-majority areas of India into a single state wherein they could conduct their own social experiment consistent with their ideals: Pakistan. Kashmir, a Muslim-majority but Hindu-ruled territory would fall in this category. Herein lies the fundamental importance of Kashmir to Pakistan: it is central to the ideology of the country and the claim to this territory is organically linked to the very state-building process. A renunciation of Pakistan's claim to Kashmir would be seen as nothing less than a rejection of the raison d'tre of the state itself. According to this logic, at least conceptually, the fate of Kashmir and Pakistan are linked.
Diametrically opposed to this position is that of India. The Indian state was founded on the idea that a pluralistic, secular, multi-ethnic and multi-religious state was viable in South Asia. The leaders of India's independence movement vigorously rejected the conception of Pakistan and argued that Muslims had a place in a united India and that their minority-status would be inconsequential in a genuinely secular republic. Thus as the ideology of Pakistan necessitates the claim to Kashmir, so too does India's. Being the only Muslim-majority state in the Indian union, it was and is vital that India retain control of Kashmir. To allow it to slip away would not only be to concede legitimacy on the theory of Muslims as a distinct nation, thus jeopardizing the future of millions of Indian Muslims, but would also be interpreted as a failure of the avowedly pluralistic Indian state.
On top of this state conflict, there is a legitimate Kashmiri movement for Independence. In this historical and political context, the issue of terrorism in Kashmir is not as clear-cut as it was in the case of the Taliban and al-Qaida, and thus the question becomes: what distinguishes terrorism from the legitimate use of violence for political ends? Certainly, we are not ready to declare that all forms of armed resistance are synonymous with terrorism. A reasonable conclusion would be to adopt the same definition that many policy analysts have: that the distinction between terrorism and legitimate armed struggles lies in the deliberate targeting of civilians. According to this definition, the attack on the Indian parliament was a terrorist act, but attacks on soldiers in Indian-occupied Kashmir (estimates of their numbers on the ground in the territory range from between 400,000 to 600,000) by armed separatists cannot be considered as wholly illegitimate given the long-standing struggle by numerous Kashmiri groups for the right to self-determination. Indeed, there is a long history of Kashmiri separatists engaging in political discussion with the Indian government in order to arrive at a negotiated settlement. This process met with failure as a result of the Indian government's ideological refusal to seriously entertain suggestions of Kashmiri independence, despite United Nations resolutions demanding that a referendum be conducted in Kashmir to ascertain the wishes of the people in this regard. Many would argue that the movement turned to militancy only as a result of frustration with the lack of progress on the political front around 1988.
The danger in simplistic analysis, such as that which appeared in Joshi's column, is that it blurs this distinction, perhaps deliberately, and projects Kashmiri opposition as illegitimate, and this is clearly not the case. The actions of militants in Kashmir must be viewed as distinct from the mainstream struggle for Kashmiri independence. And even with respect to the armed separatists, the label "terrorist" is inherently problematic.
Thus, even a cursory examination affords us the view that the Kashmir conflict is more than a simple matter of territory, and holds more meaning for India and Pakistan than commentators would have us believe. It is this harsh reality that has made peace so illusive and transitory in South Asia. It is not a matter of having "nothing better to do," but at its most fundamental is a conflict of antithetical state identities juxtaposed on a legitimate struggle for self-determination.
