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Comment
Coming into its own
THERE is a vast amount of good to say about the Constitution and Indian achievements under
it. Regrettably, there is also much to say about Indian sins of omission.
The great achievement is keeping the Constitution alive, maintaining its stature as the lodestar
for so many millions of citizens in their search for economic and social justice through the
courts and the vote which is being extended through panchayats. The paucity of improvement
in the well-being of the mass of citizens, particularly among the tribals and the lower castes
among agriculturists in the countryside, is the great undone, to borrow Upendra Baxis phrase.
Here, public figures in government and among the upper castes and intellectuals have defaulted
in their responsibility to the mass of their fellow citizens who they, in general, have blissfully
ignored. It continues to amaze me that so many Indians speak of India as a great power,
globally, when the core of the population is poverty-stricken and denied economic and social
justice and meaningful political representation in legislative bodies and executive branches in
the states and in New Delhi.
The promises in the Constitution the Preamble, the Fundamental Rights, and the Directive
Principles and, plentifully elsewhere in the text have found reality with the judiciary rather
than in legislatures. Public speech, gossip if you will, focuses on corruption and ethical lapses
among politicians, when it is not devoted to the size of an individuals income.
The question is still asked: Why does the Constitution continue to fail us? The answer: We have
ourselves to blame, is seldom heard. That sober critic, Madhu Limaye, warned of this years ago.
I take no comfort in the awareness that American government, politics and economy are in a
similarly parlous condition. It seems that human beings construct temples called democracies,
but then pay insufficient attention to those who become the clergy.
Yet, temples survive after the clergy has died. And a fresh lot of officials replaces them. The
major change comes in the energy of the worshippers in the temple. They are taking the
Constitutions promises seriously. They are organizing themselves in voluntary organizations,
led by individuals whose purpose is the defence of citizens liberties and rights. In villages, the
people have sensed the power that panchyats offer, now and in the future. Women are
increasingly active in them, even escaping the patronizing attitudes of their husbands and
attempts by sarpanches to dictate outcomes of meetings.
The scent of political influence is a powerful perfume wafting across the country, even affecting
tribal areas in western and eastern Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh. Reform comes slowly,
however, and for it to arrive citizens and activists must win bitter struggles against big
corporations, big money, and politicians local and central who are indifferent to citizens
interests and hungry to line their own pockets. For there to be real change the perfume must
enter the Lok Sabha and the cabinet in New Delhi.

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The character of Centre-State relations has altered greatly since the adoption of the Constitution.
The Centre began with the firm belief that it knew best and that villagers were incapable of
self-governance, and that local and state governments were impossibly inept. Over the years the
leopard of New Delhi has changed its spots. The home ministry tempered its dictatorial ways;
state governments, especially in the South, the Deccan and Kashmir exerted great pressure on
New Delhi to loosen its political reins; the Congress Party except during Indira Gandhis
tenure had diminished influence in the states; and state political parties began to fill these
vacuums.
The Constitution came into its own. Its provisions allowed the migration to the states of political
influence, and the exercise of initiative for economic development. State and regional political
parties appeared in New Delhi in Lok Sabha representation and eventually in national coalition
governments. The nation jumped ahead. The Sarkaria Commission, established in 1983,
produced the first, exhaustive, authoritative study of Centre-State relations. New Delhi awoke to
the reality that Indian unity was a national matter, that maximum participation among citizens
and political forces was unifying, not divisive. Exceptions to this rule were manageable,
although the manifestations of the moment could be disgraceful, even ugly.
As a result, India has become united politically and more prosperous economically. The
constituencies for the Constitution have become firm the armed forces, the media, the
minorities, the state governments, and the political classes, which have found that their interests
can best be served through the Constitution.
Democracys temple, in the process, occasionally lost chips and statuary while representative
government, despite its blemishes, remained sturdy.
Granville Austin

The biographer of the Indian constitution
Granville Austin must surely feature in any retrospective of Indias Constitution at sixty. As the
Republics Boswell, Austin provides us with an authoritative account of its founding. As a
chronicler of subsequent constitutional developments, he has taught us a great deal about Indias
post-independence rulers, their choices and failures. A charming man with sparkling eyes and a
semi-Bernard Shaw-style beard, he insists on being called Red. His hair, the source of that
nickname, has long grown white. Yet, Austin, now an octogenarian living in Washington DC,
still remains constructively engaged with India, as his contribution to this issue demonstrates.
Growing up in Vermont, Austin studied American literature at Dartmouth College. He later
obtained his doctorate in Indian history from Oxford. Curiously, though, he has never held a
fulltime academic position. He describes himself as an independent scholar, having been a
fellow or consultant with entities as diverse as the U.S. State Department and the Rajiv Gandhi
Foundation. Austins tryst with India began more than fifty years ago. His attempt at archival
research was quickly stonewalled by unobliging bureaucrats. So, he wrote to Nehru, who
reportedly interceded on his behalf. To immerse himself fully in the project, Austin moved his

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family to New Delhi in the early 1960s. He travelled across the country interviewing surviving
members of the Constituent Assembly, and reviewed thousands of documents, including several
unpublished personal papers. He even managed to persuade President Rajendra Prasad to share
his most valuable files on the Assemblys deliberations.
In The Indian Constitution: A Cornerstone of a Nation (1966) Austin describes how the
Assembly conceived, debated, and adopted the worlds longest national charter. It was, he says,
the greatest political venture since the adoption of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. The book is a
fascinating narrative skillfully weaving together debates in the Assemblys plenary sessions with
committee deliberations and other behind-the-scenes confabulations. Austins reconstruction of
events is so compelling that it is difficult to imagine that he wasnt himself present at the scene.
Cornerstone received glowing reviews from the very beginning, although one British reviewer
accused Austin of a silly petty anti-British animus. Perhaps the greatest praise for Austin,
mixed with critical insights, came from Upendra Baxi, then a junior law professor. In an
extraordinary review of over 150 pages, Baxi declared that as the most definitive study of Indian
constitution making, Cornerstone had displaced all existing pseudo-literature on the subject.
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Austin credits an oligarchy comprising Nehru, Patel, Prasad and Azad for the Assemblys
success in finalizing the Constitution. As heroes of the freedom movement, the oligarchs
commanded great political capital and shrewdly enlisted several non-Congressmen like B.R.
Ambedkar and K.M. Munshi to expand the Assemblys representative character. In an appendix
to Cornerstone, Austin provides a list of the Assemblys leading lights. With exceptions like
Ambedkar and Azad, they were mostly upper-caste Hindu lawyers. But there are some major
omissions too, like Jerome DSouza, the Jesuit who played a key role in the discussions on
religious freedom and minority rights. And the list includes only one woman, Durgabai
Deshmukh, a prominent social activist. Although Cornerstone acknowledges the contributions
of Deshmukh and other women members (there were nine in all), it has not stopped scholars and
commentators from continuing to freely use that patently erroneous term founding fathers.
Unlike the American constitutional debates, Austin asserts, the Assemblys proceedings
revealed no deep seated conflicts of interest. But, as Austin himself acknowledges, language
was a particularly divisive issue. Much to the irritation of members from the South, the Hindi
wallahs insisted that their mother tongue, to the exclusion of all others, become Indias official
language. This resulted in what I believe was a very significant constitutional birth
defect. Cornerstone does not critically analyze the Assemblys social composition or its
pathologies, including its patriarchal impulses and class prejudices. It would be unfair to expect
Austin to have undertaken such an inquiry at a time when it was far from the mainstream in
political historiography to do so. Yet, this task is now an urgent and pressing one. Although our
founders were probably our greatest generation, it is, nonetheless, important to acknowledge
their shortcomings and examine the long-term impact of their biases.
Cornerstones most controversial and pregnant sentence is that the Indian Constitution is first
and foremost a social document. The Constitution, Austin emphasizes, embodies the
Assemblys desire for a social and economic revolution through the Directive Principles of State
Policy. Austin does not comment on the wisdom of this unorthodox approach. Revolutions, even
when peaceful, are typically messy affairs. By contrast, constitutions are primarily concerned

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with establishing political stability and legal order. What were the founders thinking when they
placed radical economic and social reform objectives alongside sweeping protections for
individual and group rights? Did they not foresee the potential for constitutional gridlock by
making the Directive Principles fundamental in governance, even while insisting that all state
action must remain consistent with the Fundamental Rights?
Austin points out that by adopting parliamentary democracy, the Assembly voted to retain a
system that was both familiar and progressive. In so doing, he believes that it wisely and
decisively rejected Gandhian ideas for village-based government. It is true
that Cornerstone went to press during the high era of Nehruvian parliamentarianism. Still, one
wishes that he had speculated how India might have fared under a different system.
Furthermore, as Baxi points out, it may be that the so-called Gandhian proposals were
principally concerned with securing greater decentralization in decision-making, rather than
with offering an alternative blueprint for a panchayat republic.
Cornerstone is studded with elegant turns of phrase: Fundamental Rights were to be framed
among the carnage of fundamental wrongs. Nehru, speaking thoughtfully, rambled typically to
the heart of the matter. If the beacon of the judiciary was to remain bright, the courts must be
above reproach.
This contributed to its runaway success, especially with the legal profession. Barely a few
months after Cornerstone hit the bookshelves, the Supreme Court referred to it in its 1967
watershed decision, Golak Nath. In 1973, Cornerstone was repeatedly cited before the thirteen-
judge Kesavananda Bharati bench, which reconsidered, and then overruled,Golak Nath. Austin
was so persuasive that twelve judges mentioned Cornerstone in their opinions. The Court also
relied on Austin in three other leading cases: Indira Gandhi (the prime ministers election
appeal); Rajasthan (validity of presidents rule in Congress-led states) and Menaka Gandhi (the
scope of the Constitutions life and liberty protections).
A divided Supreme Court relied on Austin when examining key provisions of the Forty Second
Amendment in the 1980 Minerva Mills Case. Sprinkling its opinion with Cornerstonequotes, the
majority struck down the amendment for disturbing the constitutional harmony between
Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles. Dissenting, Justice Bhagwati also
used Cornerstone to reach a different conclusion. He chose to uphold the amendment, expressly
citing Austins thesis holding the Constitution as a social document. This provoked a sharp
rebuke from H.M. Seervai, the eminence grise of Indian constitutional law. Seervai complained
that Bhagwati had overlooked Cornerstones disclaimer that it was a political history rather than
a legal treatise. Notwithstanding Seervais admonition, Cornerstone continued to embellish the
courts opinions: Bhim Singhji (endorsing the books revealing summary of the Assembly
debates on property and compensation), S.P. Gupta (Austins views on judicial independence),
and Ashoka Kumar Thakur (Cornerstone on separate electorates). Its quotations have also been
included in dozens of High Court decisions, including the historic 2009 Naz Foundation case.
Austin wrote a magisterial sequel to Cornerstone in 1999. Working A Democratic Constitution:
The Indian Experience was published just as the NDA government appointed a so-called
constitutional review commission. In it, Austin describes the Constitutions working life from
its inauguration until Indira Gandhis assassination. The book is filled with many interesting

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nuggets ferreted out from dusty files and livened with vignettes from a large number of personal
interviews with politicians, lawyers and judges.
Indias constitutional life is as vast and sprawling as its excessively long constitutional text.
Consequently, Austin has to, and does, cover several diverse subjects: federalism, free speech,
preventive detention, the Emergency, elections, and the role of governors. Yet he maintains a
firm grip on his subject matter, supported by forensic research and extensive reading.
Unfortunately, because the book stops at 1984, Austin is not able to address Ayodhya,
secularism, and reservations, issues that dominated the national discourse when his book was
released.
Democratic Constitutions analytical framework is based on the so-called seamless web of
unity, democracy, and social reform. Indias founders and its subsequent rulers, Austin argues,
understood that social revolution could not be pursued without democracy, but also that
democracy would be meaningless in the formers absence. Similarly, without national unity,
neither social reform nor democracy would be feasible. Attractive as this metaphor might seem,
it is difficult to imagine that it was the underlying operational basis for Indian constitutional
politics.
Austin furnishes a detailed account of the contests between the courts and the legislature over
constitutional freedoms. (He covers, among things, the Crossroads case involving this journals
founders). Nehru was frustrated by judges who resisted his redistributionist socio-economic
agenda. But rather than tampering with the judiciarys independence, Nehru piloted
constitutional amendments to overcome adverse verdicts. Abandoning her fathers reticence,
Indira Gandhi directly targeted the courts. Yet, as Austin approvingly recounts, despite Indira
Gandhis repeated attempts to create a committed judiciary and restrict judicial powers, the
Supreme Court erected the basic structure firewall to protect the Constitution from partisan
abuse.
Reviving his role as Austins chief admirer and critic, Baxi produced a shorter but far more
scathing review of Democratic Constitution.
2
Noting Austins canonization by bar and bench, he
set out to unpack the Gospel according to St Granville. Baxi praises the book for seeking to
restore constitutional practice to the centre of Indian development, but criticizes it for ignoring
state-building in India and subaltern and Dalit perspectives.
Baxi accuses Austin of diminishing the Emergencys trauma by suggesting that New Delhi in
1976 was not Berlin under Hitler. In fact, Austins principal motivation for writingDemocratic
Constitution was his deep concern that the Emergency had desecrated the Assemblys shining
legacy. He does India a great national service by investigating and revealing the identities of
those who carried out the Emergencys greatest act of vandalism, the Forty-Second Amendment.
It is with obvious relief that Austin describes how a post-Emergency Parliament and Supreme
Court helped neutralize the amendments most pernicious provisions.
In Cornerstone, Austin laments the difficulties of pursuing historical and legal research in India.
Sadly, more than four decades later, those difficulties remain. In a remarkable bibliographic
coda, Austin painstakingly describes the unpublished materials that he utilized, and generously
supplies leads for future researchers. Some of these materials are now freely accessible through

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Shiva Raos Framing of Indias Constitution and the edited papers of Prasad, Nehru, Patel, and
Munshi. More rich and inviting information is available in the Transfer of Power and
the Towards Freedom volumes. Taken together, all this data could occupy a lifetime of
profitable research for an Indian Gordon Wood or Joseph Ellis. Yet it is an abiding mystery why
few, if any, authors or researchers have followed Austin in studying Indias constitutional past
and its relationship with the present.
Vikram Raghavan

* I am deeply grateful to Ramachandra Guha, Tarunabh Khaitan, Sunil Khilnani, Arun Thiruvengadam and Benjamin Yong, for
their comments on an earlier draft. I write this article in my personal capacity, and my opinion should not be attributed to my
employer, the World Bank.

Footnotes:
1. Upendra Baxi, The Little Done, The Vast Undone: Reflection on Reading Granville Austins The Indian Constitution, Journal
of the Indian Law Institute 9, 1967, p. 323.
2. Upendra Baxi, Saint Granvilles Gospel: Reflections (review of Granville Austins, Working a Democratic Constitution: The
Indian Experience), Economic and Political Weekly 36(11), 17 March 2001, pp. 921-30.


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Kashmir conundrum year 63
2010 marked the third continuous summer of passionate, resolute and unarmed protests in
Kashmir. Each round of resistance defined by huge numbers of its citizens pouring out onto
the streets in protest was cemented by acts that betrayed a common attitudinal thread: that of
taking the Kashmiris for granted. In 2008, it was the accusation of a land-grab that challenged
the special land-rights prevalent in Jammu & Kashmir. In 2009, it was the murder and alleged
rape of two young women, Asiya and Nilofer of Tukroo in Shopian. (The conclusion of
investigations on the deaths is still awaited.) In 2010, the protests were sparked off by the
killing, on 11 June, of 17-year-old innocent bystander, Tufail Ahmad of Srinagar by
paramilitary action. The response of the security forces since then has resulted, so far, in 110
innocent civilian deaths and a full-blown crisis. Delhi took almost four months to respond to the
crisis and, when it did, unveiled an eight-point package which barely addressed the
problem in Kashmir (the symptom) while yet again ignoring the problem ofKashmir (the cause).
The Jammu and Kashmir dispute is sixty-three years old this October. It has seen the peoples of
the state geographically divided, culturally fragmented, economically confounded and politically
sequestered. It has retarded the ability of both India and Pakistan, and arguably the whole of
South Asia, to play any significant role in the emerging world order. What are the causes of this
near-intractability and how ought we to reference it? In response to these questions, there is a
need to confront the dispute without sweeping its complexities under the carpet. This essay
suggests some immediate steps in the journey to a lasting, practicable and just resolution.
Not least among these suggestions is a more neutral use of terminology in the discourse on the
subject, because one symptom of suppression is a loss of name. Since the 1 January 1949
ceasefire, the peoples of the erstwhile princely state have been forced to qualify their citizenship
by referring to themselves as citizens of Azad Jammu and Kashmir in Pakistan and Jammu
and Kashmir State in India. In politically partisan parlance, the term Indian or Pakistan
Occupied Kashmir is also deployed. Another tag with some currency is the short-hand
Kashmir (in this essay it is used to signify only the valley of Kashmir) deployed to denote the
entire former state. But this usage tends to attenuate the problem to the Valley, which is lazy
opportunism at best. At any rate, all these terms prejudice the actual political status of the
peoples of the region.
In this context, the following template of nomenclature may prove more neutral: State of
Jammu and Kashmir, to denote the historical territory of the state in its entirety consisting of
Kashmir (including Muzaffarabad), Jammu (including Mirpur), Ladakh, Baltistan and Gilgit.
The 1972 Simla Agreement is a pact tacitly precluding any active participation of the peoples of
the state on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC). So the terminology spawned by it, Pakistan
Occupied Kashmir and Indian Occupied Kashmir ought to be amended to reflect merely the
two spheres of influence over this region and the forced divide of the peoples of the state
between them. Thus, for instance, we may use LoC West to denote the J&K territories in
Pakistan and LoC East to denote the J&K territories in India.
There are many dimensions to the Jammu and Kashmir dispute; historical, legal and political. A
key obstacle in the discourse on the Kashmir conundrum, reflected in part by the confused
partisan terminology just discussed, has been a lack of agreement on a definition of the legal and

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political dimensions the problem. Speaking politically: India, unrealistically, denies that there is
a dispute; Pakistan, anachronistically, hankers after the state to prove the efficacy of the two-
nation theory; and within the state of Jammu and Kashmir, a not insignificant portion of the
resistance has unwittingly allowed its political cause to be gradually and insidiously usurped by
a pan-Islamism that not only produces red-herrings but does more damage to Islam than all the
combined bigotry of post-colonial politics.
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In the meantime, the peoples of the state on both
sides of the divide brought about by the war between India and Pakistan in 1948-49 continue to
remain in limbo.
Legally and constitutionally, Pakistan defines the problem as the unfinished business of
partition and so uses the term Azad Jammu and Kashmir for LoC West (somewhat
disingenuously excluding Gilgit Baltistan from the argument) theoretically stating that it is
Azad or free from Pakistan per se. India refers to LoC East as Jammu and Kashmir State
reflecting its position that the question of accession is closed, the only unfinished part being
the retrieval of LoC West. Indias interpretation of the relationship of the [former princely] state
of Jammu and Kashmir in relation to the Union of India is thus more nuanced. It argues that
whereas the other princely states of undivided sub-continent acceded to and merged with the
Republic of India and adopted its constitution, Jammu and Kashmir State did not do so and so
its relationship with the Union is different from that of the other states.
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The diplomatic lore of the discourse between India and Pakistan on J&K tells how, prior to the
1989 insurgency, the officials of the two countries, even as they postured belligerently in public,
scoffed at their own countries positions during cocktail parties and, in a patronizing stance,
referred to the Kashmir dispute as a simple one, easily solved provided theirrespective
governments got down to it. To cite just one example, even as early as the 1960s there was a
flurry of backroom activity which, however, came to nought.
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The reason for this and many other failed attempts is that the problem, of course, is not simple.
A lack of understanding of its historical idiosyncrasies, legal ambiguities and political denials
have marred the lives of millions of J&Ks citizens over the last six decades and more. Despite
admonishments not to drag history into political disputes originating from the colonial
experience and to look to the future admonishments, significantly, from past colonial powers
history and law are best held up as candles rather than snuffed out by tactical opportunism.
Otherwise, solutions so determined will continue to haunt us and generations to follow.
Complexities must be confronted and then unknotted in the light of present-day realities;
denying them is to risk still-born solutions.
The first complexity that must be taken into consideration is that J&K is a state that was created
at an historical cusp at which traditional monarchy, colonial realpolitik and an autochthonous
instinct for survival converged to give birth to a sovereign state between 1835 and 1846 in
response to imperial expansion. Like the other states along the pan-Himalayan massif, Jammu &
Kashmir was also alternately, an ally, an irritant and an adversary of British interests. After
independence, India and Pakistan both inherited this ambivalent relationship to J&K.
4
Unique in
the case of J&K was that it became an enviable entity and very quickly a critical player in the
Great Game of the 19th century because of its contiguity with Central Asia. Today too this
contiguity, due to the large reserves of gas and oil in Central Asia and the relatively weak post-
Cold War states of the region, highlights the urgency of resolving the J&K dispute.

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Culturally, the creation of the state has accentuated the serendipitous convergence of Hindu,
Buddhist and Muslim civilizations within its borders. This has resulted in multiple identity
contestations in which all the three parties involved the states constituent parts, India and
Pakistan have a valid and vested stake. The seeming desire of the United States, in its own
interest, to assign India a larger role in the quickly hardening Pakistan and Afghanistan
quagmire is yet another indication of the political significance of J&K. It is these geographical,
cultural and political realities that have made J&K a difficult bone of contention.
Another complexity that asserts itself is the legal one having to do with the peculiar
circumstances of the end of British rule in South Asia. The colonial power structure was as
elaborate as it was deep-rooted in its use of modern and traditional political institutions to
consolidate British rule. Its exit from the subcontinent left behind a trail of legal issues in the
former princely states, all of which were addressed conclusively in 1947 or soon thereafter, with
the exception of the State of Jammu and Kashmir. To ignore these legal ambiguities, or explain
them away through political opportunism, is to further complicate the problem; witness the 1972
Simla Agreement which attempts to transform the dispute into a bilateral one and the 1975
Accord which presumed to resolve it unilaterally. The convulsions of the last twenty years urge
us to learn the lessons of good law.
In the regional political arena, which is the third complexity that informs this vexed conundrum,
it has to be acknowledged that the peoples of J&K, under the cover of its status of uncertainty,
have been deprived of their political rights in their fullness in all five constituent parts Gilgit,
Baltistan, Ladakh, Kashmir and Jammu over the last six decades. Delhi and Islamabad took
these steps to bolster their own positions, to the detriment of the inhabitants of J&K, following
the Simla Agreement. And if carefully examined, the real problem today is that of all five
regions, in one form or another, demanding these political rights and thereby civic amenities,
economic benefits and a predictable vision for their futures be restored to them legally and
transparently. Both India and Pakistan, during the last six decades, have qualified these rights in
drawing their arguments from territorial acquisitiveness. Pakistan has done this by perpetrating
wars and a proxy insurgency,
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and India through bracketed elections and proxy governance.
All these political deceptions too will have to be confronted. Matters have reached a head.
The status quo ante is no longer acceptable in 2010. Concurrently, the politics of manipulation,
denial and non-J&K centric (or exclusively Delhi-Islamabad centric) responses also do not
work. The parties to the dispute must begin a dialogue that will be substantive, uninterrupted
and have the future of all the peoples of J&K at its core.
What then are the minimum terms of reference for any solution-oriented discourse on Jammu
and Kashmir? The first of these is that any discussion must take into account Jammu and
Kashmir in its entirety. This stipulation of considering all of the state is often interpreted to be
the romanticized euphemism of independentists
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in support of their agenda. Nevertheless, it is a
demand necessitated by historical and legal realities. Unless the whole of the state is discussed,
neither India nor Pakistan can justify the limbo, and its attendant misery, that has been forced on
the peoples of the states constituent parts for the last six decades. It is this that gives
the political definition of the conundrum its locus standi.

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Should the terms of reference be conceded on ethno-cultural grounds, its legal resolution would
have to be based on a pre-1840 premise, by which time Baltistan and Ladakh had come within
the ambit of South Asia through the Dogra military invasion, followed by Kashmir a little over a
half a decade later through an Anglo-Dogra mercantile conquest. So it cannot be emphasized
enough that the whole of the state must be put on the table for discussion if there is to be a
comprehensive resolution.
Clearly, the journey towards the resolution of the J&K problem is a long one. Despite the
temptation to leapfrog over thorny issues, it is imperative that it not be rushed. This too is an
important term of reference: take it slow. All long journeys begin with a single step. Today there
are reasons to quickly shift the status quo by side-stepping complexities. The United States may
be looking for a proxy partner, in India, to clean up its Pakistan-Afghanistan mess. Indias
salience on the world-stage has increased significantly enough to make its permanent
membership in the United Nations Security Council a realistic goal. And Pakistan sees the law
of diminishing returns asserting itself in the propaganda war against India that drives its
Kashmir policy.
All these global actors, it appears, would prefer a quick decision. Meanwhile, in an intra-state
context, the peoples of Jammu and Kashmir stand fragmented and alienated. Add to this the
geographical location of Jammu and Kashmir in relation to a fermenting Central Asia and an
ambiguously evolving South Asia. It is clear that the peoples of J&K cannot afford an instant
decision about their future. They will understand that the decision cannot be made solely in the
interests of competing powers but must be an organic resolution that takes the present-day
realities into account. And resolutions take time.
If an important point of reference for dialogue on J&K is not to rush into sudden decisions about
its future, the lesson of the last three summers is that it is time to take it head on; and, critically,
that the problem will not go away.
Soon after he was sworn in as chief minister, Omar Abdullah called for a start to the dialogue on
the resolution of the political dispute of Jammu and Kashmir, an unusual step for a sitting chief
minister. But he went on during a speech in the October 2010 session of the state Legislative
Assembly by stating, accurately, that while J&K had acceded to India, it had not merged with it.
It was a statement implying the classic definition of the radically federal status of the state in
relation to Delhi: namely, an association defined by its voluntary surrender of sovereignty in
only three areas of activity: foreign affairs, defence and communications.
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New Delhi responded to the three-summer crisis with an eight-point package, which was met
with scepticism in Kashmir, even as its political factions clung to one clause in this package
with some hope: that of the appointment of a group of interlocutors between them and Delhi.
However, the absence of any politician in the group of interlocutors, seen as a necessity if the
dialogue is to be serious, soon turned the mood cynical. Meanwhile Pakistan, which could have
made constructive suggestions, has reacted with little more than canned calls for resolution and
jingoistic rebuttals of India.
Be that as it may, there is no alternative but to begin talks. Both Delhi and Islamabad must
accept that the statements of the heads of government on the two sides of the LoC reflect the

11

mood of the people. In the two statements, the status quo powers must see an opportunity to
make a beginning. The first step will have to be taken between Delhi and Srinagar, the epicentre
of this near-intractable dispute, even if it be with the announced interlocutors and with
scepticism as a hand-maiden. This must be closely followed by the inclusion of Islamabad in the
dialogue.
Four specifications must inform this initial dialogue. First, the talks must begin unconditionally.
Pre-conditions are often an indication of a pre-conceived end-game. Delhis discernable end-
game has been a legalistic reference to accession. Islamabad has invoked the emotive topic of
religious identity. Meanwhile the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious diversity of J&K, not
to speak of the manipulation of these entities, has resulted in its voices being a virtual Babel of
opinion. Dialogue with any pre-conditions is to ensure that it does not begin.
Next, the talks must address the political dispute and not be subsumed by the economic and
social symptoms of its non-resolution. In the last year, Delhi has arguably been at its most active
in addressing the Delhi Srinagar axis of the problem. However, this has been neutralized by a
basic assumption that the problem can be resolved by packages, be it economic, social or even
political. A dialogic interface assumes a negotiated settlement. A package implies a one-sided
appeasement that could range from funding for development to gift to bribe. Jammu and
Kashmirs various parts have been recipients of endless packages, be they from Delhi or from
Islamabad.
The talks, thirdly, must be transparent but without prejudice to reasonable confidentiality. In the
past, the lack of transparency has resulted in back-room deals that presented the peoples of J&K
with a fait accompli. It did not work with the Simla Agreement of 1972, the Beg-Parthasarathy
Accord of 1975 or the Agra Summit of 2001. It has even less of a chance of working todays
atmosphere of acute distrust and when the peoples of J&K are arguably amongst the most
politically conscious in all of South Asia. Confidentiality will need to be tempered by an
incremental inclusion of all the peoples of the state in its entirety being informed about the
structure, the basic assumptions and the arguments being proffered in any dialogue.
Finally, the dialogue must quickly include representation of and from the other constituent parts
of J&K: Gilgit, Baltistan, Ladakh and Jammu. Over the decades, Delhi and Islamabad have
steadily colluded to isolate the problem to take into account their interests and to Kashmir, the
Valley. And the latter being the most coveted, albeit territorially the smallest part of J&K, has
unwittingly allowed itself to be boxed in and contained. This has resulted in a truncated view of
the problem and, if solved on that premise, will result in a truncated solution. To allow this to
play itself out would be to ghettoise Kashmir. This is dangerous because it permits an ethno-
religious interpretation of the dispute, which it is not. Moreover, it has allowed entry to
puritanical, literalist, radical and alien interpretations of Islam into a region sensitive not just in
the context of India and Pakistan but also in the Central and South Asian milieu.
Siddiq Wahid

Footnotes:

12

1. One such, for example, is for the disaggregation of the former princely state based on the arguments of the religious right in
India, Pakistan and the State of Jammu and Kashmir.
2. See A.S. Anand, Development of the Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir, 1980, New Delhi, p. 172
3. Cf. Lars Blinkenberg, India Pakistan: The History of Unsolved Conflicts, (2 Vols.), 1998, Odense University Press, Denmark,
Vol. I, pp. 186-198
4. A doctoral dissertation treatment of the Himalayan states after the decolonization of South Asia would make a valuable
contribution to the study of South Asian politics. Whereas the British Empire discussed this in an energetic debate between
proponents of a forward policy and the opposite of it to secure its empire, both India and Pakistan appear to have ignored the
importance of this natural security wall to place before the world a de-stabilized subcontinent. (See below)
5. This must be accepted, albeit without prejudice to the by now well-accepted fact that the 1989 insurgency was indigenously
inspired in Kashmir as an immediate and spontaneous reaction to rigging in the 1987 LoC East elections, with Pakistan rushing in
to fish in trouble waters, adding yet another dimension aggravated violence and cross-border small arms proliferation to the
problem of J&K. For a comprehensive scholarly treatment of this phase in the history of J&K, see Sumantra Bose, Kashmir:
Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2003.
6. The discourse on the status of the state has become acutely factionalized in its six-decade history, especially in Kashmir but
also in Gilgit-Baltistan and the Mirpur-Muzaffarabad stretch in LoC West. For a good summary of the various factions and their
genesis, especially in Kashmir, see Sumantra Bose, op cit., as also his Contested Lands. Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
MA, 2007, pp. 154-203.
7. It is precisely Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that defines this mechanism which makes a distinction between acceding
to India and merging with it. Incidentally, Abdullahs counterpart, the prime minister of Azad Jammu Kashmir, had made a
similar statement a few months earlier, implying that his constituency had options other than accession to Pakistan available to it.
He quickly became a former prime minister.