Kashmir Re: second-wave attacks

[Michael McIntyre]

Let me hazard some rough answers:
(1) It's very hard to answer this question while the population of Kashmir is under military occupation, on both sides of the line of control.  People I know who had done work in Kashmir a decade or more ago are unanimously of the view that what people in Kashmir really wanted was de facto, if not de jure, independence from both India and Pakistan.  After the brutality of India's occupation, and a decade of Pakistan's efforts to marginalize the pro-independence wing of the Kashmiri liberation struggle, it's hard to say with certainty that that is still the majority opinion.  A complicating factor is that the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir includes three regions: Muslim-majority Kashmir, Hindu-majority Jammu, and Buddhist-majority Ladakh (partially occupied by China).  It may well be that the people in these three areas want very different things.

(2) As I understand it, most of the left parties endorse in principal the right to Kashmiri self-determination.  In practice, I believe that most of them support a version of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that would give Kashmir very substantial autonomy, but not independence.  (Under Article 370, Kashmir has always had a degree of independence from the central government greater than that of other states - at least on paper).

(3) So the answer here, I guess, is a definite maybe.  Maybe if opinion in Kashmir has not swung so far away from any kind of political union with India, and maybe if the left parties are willing to sign on to a very strong version of Article 370, some kind of negotiated settlement might be reached.  So it's iffy, even if a Left Front government could come to power in New Delhi - a more than iffy proposition.  Right now, it looks like Sonia Gandhi and Congress ae best placed to unseat the BJP.

Michael McIntyre


>>> furuhashi.1 at osu.edu 05/19/02 20:34 PM >>>
>India's Kashmir policy is
>largely bi-partisan, if we ignore the rhetoric from the Right, the
>Centre and the Left of the political spectrum.
>
>Ulhas

Three questions:

(1)  What do the majority of people in Kashimir want?  What political 
settlement do they desire at this point in history?

(2)  What are positions on Kashmir held by those to the left of the 
Congress Party in India?

(3)  Are (1) and (2) compatible?  If so, how do we achieve the shared 
objective?  If (1) and (2) are incompatible, what is to be done?
-- 
Yoshie

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