The state government has found a new obsession -
talking about round table conference as an
election gimmick. Peace process is pass’. The
latest trend is talking about this bonanza of
round table conferences that the people of Jammu
and Kashmir are constrained to watch. The prime
minister’s sincerity to the Kashmir issue is
being measured by the number of hours he spent at
the round table conference in Delhi in February
and the amount of time he would be spending
sometime in May in Srinagar.
To sell the round table conference as a marketable branded product
of the ongoing peace process, the Jammu and
Kashmir chief minister has now begun to state
that the second round table would focus on
’quality and quantity’. Already, several people
have begun interpreting it in several ways and
there is a common belief that unlike the huge
mela that the first round table conference turned
out to be, the second one in Srinagar would see
the participation of only select group of
mainstream leaders. Should that be considered as
a meaty bait for the separatist leaders to join
the event? Or would it actually turn out to be
another futile and unscientific exercise in
pursuit of peace and solution to Kashmir dispute?
The basic question to be addressed before
organizing this event, which is expected to build
up a hype with the presence of the Indian prime
minister in Srinagar, is not who all should
participate in the conference but the very
semantics of the round table conference. Has a
dialogue process reached a stage where inclusion
of all ethnic and religious groups becomes
imperative? Secondly, can mainstream leaders, who
have no reason to disagree with India and have
simply been engaged in their vote bank politics
for last several decades of turmoil in the state,
be given a space at the dialogue table in the
name of representing the ethnic and religious or
regional minorities of a pluralistic Jammu and
Kashmir? The answer to both these questions is an
emphatic no.
A dialogue process is a continued mechanism of
negotiations between state and the parties who do
not agree with the former. By that definition,
the dialogue process, which New Delhi claims to
have been set into motion, is yet to begin. India
may have had two round of talks with one faction
of Hurriyat and two separate rounds of talks with
two other separatist leaders of reckoning but the
entire process lacked consistency. Besides, the
key issues taken up during these talks, which are
in principle not quite a dialogue but meetings,
have not even been followed. The confidence
building measures talked about have not been
implemented to enable the dialogue process to
actually take off. Where is the bid to
de-militarise the state? Where is the withdrawal
and repeal of draconian laws or release of
political and innocent prisoners? Besides, there
has been no serious efforts to cobble together
the divided and fractured separatist groups for
talks. All these are important ingredients for an
actual dialogue to begin.
It is a fact, that Hurriyat or any other
separatist group, singularly, or together, cannot
claim to be the sole representatives of the
entire state; and that apart from Kashmir Valley,
there are other regions of the state including
Jammu with its different sub-regions, Ladakh and
other parts of the state under Pakistan control
that have an equal right to talk about the future
of the state and take a final decision. Jammu and
Kashmir is a complex state, not only by virtue of
the complexity of the Kashmir dispute, but also
by virtue of its demographic balance and its
ethnic and religious diversity that is
overlapping and inter-dependent and cannot be
disturbed by any division formula. Therefore,
wishes of people of all regions need to be
accommodated in the final solution. But it is
also a truism that this is not the juncture for
involving all other groups.
Process of talks must
first begin with the most alienated sections of
the society and gradually involve the rest. And
before this rest begins, is it not important to
also include Jammu and Kashmir based militant
organizations in a dialogue. Certainly, the
so-called dialogue process between India and
people of Jammu and Kashmir has not reached that
stage - not without existence of genuine
confidence building measures, not without
consistency and continuity in talking and
certainly not without the clarity it deserves.
Talks are successful only when they begin to
remove layers of mutual suspicion and build up a
level of trust between two parties who do not
agree with each other.
It is at this juncture
that other groups can be invited to participate
in a dialogue. But then, the moot question is who
are these others who should be involved? Should
they be the representatives elected for the
assembly elections, which are already seen as
rigged and at least lopsided, in view of the poor
participation of the people, and the known
reality of coercive voting patterns? Can their
inclusion be justified on grounds of ensuring
there are no regional disparities while talking?
Certainly not. In fact, the same people who have
been responsible for creating these regional
disparities and causing alienation of the people
cannot be expected to solve the Kashmir dispute
or talk of an egalitarian society.
There is a tendency to compare the talks
facilitated by non government organizations and
talks between government and representatives of
Jammu and Kashmir and question why separatist and
mainstream leaders cannot sit together for talks
with New Delhi. There is a serious flaw in this
argument, since talks organized at non-official
level have a different concept, scope, range and
ramifications from the official one. At the
official level, talks require clarity and this
clarity needs to be guided by logic that paves
way for peace process, not a cosmetic arrangement
where peace and solution as per wishes of the
people remains elusive.