What is Radha Kumar up to?

EARTH NEWS SERVICE Jammu, Nov 30|15: Renowned strategic thinker and former interlocutor of Government of India on issues related to Jammu and Kashmir, Prof Radha Kumar has made a unique but fearsome prediction about the future of Kashmir in next ten years but one fails to understand what is exactly that experts like her want New Delhi to do or what is it that they think is going wrong. Radha Kumar has said ‘India could conceivably lose the Kashmir valley in the next 10 years unless a serious effort is made to resolve the situation’. Now the problem is what is the ‘serious effort’ that Radha Kumar or many other ‘experts’ want to be made to keep Kashmir intact as part of India. Currently the president of Delhi Policy Work, which is doing enormous work on creating close ties between India and Afghanistan, Radha Kumar has further said that ‘situation in Kashmir had progressively deteriora
ted. “It hasn’t been as bad as this in a long time,” she maintained. “The government doesn’t seem to be working, and little of the common minimum program has been implemented.” One could mention here that since way back in 1947 many experts not only from India but also the world over started warning that Kashmir could fall if India doesn’t not engage itself in dialogue with Pakistan.

Since 1947 wars have happened as has been the 25 year long Pakistan sponsored militancy but no power on earth could sever Kashmir from India. Similarly, nothing is expected to happen in next years. Radha Kumar made these references at the Times LitFest while participating session ‘Kashmir Today: Towards an Indian Future?’ Other members of the panel included Rakesh Sood, former Indian ambassador to Afghanistan, France and Nepal, and A S Dulat, former RAW chief and Kashmir advisor in A B Vajpayee’s administration. Dulat, whose book recently created flutters, said Kashmiris had not been made to feel a part of the country. He describedthe coming together of the BJP and Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s PDP as “imaginative”, and hoped it would bring Jammu and Kashmir together. “The election threw up a result that satisfied no one, and the coalition was the best option. But the partners have drifted apart.” Kumar said the only time there has been any forward movement in Kashmir is when both Pakistan and the Kashmiris have been involved in negotiations. This was the case when General Musharraf was in office in Pakistan. “There were civil society discussions between Indian and Kashmiris, through the back channel, and this put pressure on Gen. Musharraf.” Dulat too felt that no forward movement is possible without the involvement of Pakistan. Sood queried whether normalizing the situation in Kashmir should be linked to normalizing relations between India and Pakistan. “Should one depend on the other? If they are linked, then dialogue between India and Pakistan assumes criticality. If normalizing Kashmir is going to be dependent on normalizing Indo-Pak relations, then we’re giving Pakistan a veto over how we manage Kashmir,” said Sood. He added that the two issues need to be separated, which would necessitate a change of thinking.”To take that veto away, we have to have a well-crafted and well-thought out policy towards Kashmir.” Delhi, Kumar lamented, has tended to take two steps back after taking a step forward. And there has been little effort to keep the process going, even when a breakthrough has appeared imminent. She also pronounced Delhi’s Kashmir strategy as too “fragmented”, and too concentrated on the Valley. “We have tended to focus too much on the Valley, often to the detriment of the Valley,” she said. Sood agreed, saying that this “exclusive” focus on the Valley has meant less attention given to Jammu or Ladakh. Add to that the central government’s proclivity to step in only to douse the flames but not to do so when real progress is visible, and no wonder little headway has been made.