Kashmir - Territory and People: An American Perspective -

Stephen Philip Cohen  

                These different sub-regions have very different ethnic and religious composition. Jammu is about 60 percent Hindu and 40 percent Muslim; Ladakh is about 50-55 percent Buddhist, and culturally linked to Tibetan Buddhism (although the Kargil district contains a substantial number of Shi’ite Muslims as do the Northern Territories). The Valley is overwhelmingly (about ninety percent) Sunni Muslim, but the Hindu minority includes one of the most important of Indian castes: the Kashmiri Brahmins (to which the Nehru family and many other senior Indian politicians and bureaucrats belong). There is also a significant non-Kashmiri Gujjar Muslim population in and near the Valley. Finally, Mirpur and Muzaffarabad are entirely Sunni Muslim, albeit with a strong Punjabi cultural influence.4

                The physical or territorial Kashmir has contributed to the overall dispute between India and Pakistan in several ways.5 The military establishments on both sides of the border insist that control over Kashmir is critical to the defense of their respective countries. The Indian army, echoing nineteenth century British geopolitics, claims that giving up the mountainous Kashmir would expose the plains of Punjab and Haryana, and even Delhi, to foreign (in this case, Pakistani) attack. The Valley is strategically important because of the communication links that run through it to Ladakh and to Siachin, where the Indians and Pakistanis remain frozen in conflict. The threat to Kargil, in 1999, was more serious than Siachin, because it overlooked the already perilous road from Srinagar to Siachin and Leh.

                Pakistan has a quite different view of Kashmir’s geopolitics. Its strategists point out that for years the major access roads to Kashmir led through what is now Pakistan, and that the proximity of the capital, Islamabad, to Kashmir makes it vulnerable to an Indian offensive along the Jhelum river. Further, Pakistanis argue that the inclusion of Kashmir would give it a strategic depth that Pakistan otherwise lacks.6 While both countries are now nuclear, Pakistan is “thinner.” On the whole, however, Pakistan’s choice of proxy war tactics since the late 1980s is dictated as much by the political hope of a Kashmiri uprising as it is the result of military necessity.

                Finally, Kashmir is the source of many vital South Asian rivers, including the Indus and the famous five rivers of the Punjab: Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej. In one of their major agreements, brokered by the World Bank in 1960, India and Pakistan agreed to a permanent division of the water through a series of dams and canals. This costly project left the land on both sides of the new international border more poorly irrigated than before, but at least the Indus Water Treaty has been peacefully implemented.

                The second “Kashmir,” found in the minds of politicians, strategists, and scholars, is a place where national and sub-national identities are ranged against each other.7 The conflict in this Kashmir is as much a clash between identities, imagination, and history, as it is a conflict over territory, resources and peoples. Competing histories, strategies, and policies spring from these different images of self and other.

                Pakistanis have long argued that the Kashmir problem stems from India’s denial of justice to the Kashmiri people (by not allowing them to join Pakistan), and by not accepting Pakistan’s own legitimacy. Once New Delhi were to pursue a just policy, then a peaceful solution to the Kashmir problem could be found.8 For the Pakistanis, Kashmir remains the “unfinished business” of the 1947 partition. Pakistan, the self-professed homeland for an oppressed and threatened Muslim minority in the Subcontinent, finds it difficult to leave a Muslim majority region to a Hindu-majority state.

                Indians, however, argue that Pakistan, a state defined and driven by its religion, is given to irredentist aspirations in Kashmir because it is unwilling to accept the fact of a secular India. India, a nominally secular state, finds it difficult to turn over a Muslim majority region to a Muslim neighbor just because it is Muslim. The presence of this minority belies the need for Pakistan to exist at all (giving rise to the Pakistani assertion that Indians have never reconciled themselves to Pakistan).9 Indians also point to Bangladesh as proof that Jinnah’s call for a separate religion-based homeland for the Subcontinent’s Muslims was untenable. In contrast, India’s secularism, strengthened by the presence of a Muslim-majority state of Kashmir within India, proves that religion alone does not make a nation. Indians maintain that Kashmir cannot be resolved until Pakistanis alter their views on secularism. Of course, this would also mean a change in the identity of Pakistan, a contentious subject in both states.

                These same themes of dominance, hegemony, and identity are replicated within the state itself. The minority Buddhist Ladakhis would prefer to be governed directly from New Delhi, and (like their Shi’ia neighbours) fear being ruled from a Sunni Muslim dominated government in Srinagar. In Jammu, much of the majority Hindu population has long been discontented with the special status lavished upon the Valley by the Union Government in New Delhi. Finally, the small Kashmiri Pandit Brahmin community in the Valley is especially fearful. It has lost its privileged position within the administration of the state and much of its dominance in academia and the professions. After the onset of militant Islamic protests, most of the Pandit community fled the Valley for Jammu and several Indian cities (especially New Delhi), where they live in wretched exile. Some of their representatives have demanded Panum Kashmir, a homeland for the tiny Brahmin community within Kashmir.  

Underlying Causes  

                The original Kashmir dispute arose because of British failings at the time they divided and quit India in 1947. There were two failures, one of imagination, and one of will. The failure of imagination was expressed in the mechanism by which the princely states were divided between India and Pakistan. The ruler was to decide on accession to India or Pakistan. While British, Indians, and Pakistanis, agreed that a “third way,” independence, was to be ruled out, there was no way to ensure that each ruler would make a fair or reasonable decision even though the British, the Indians, and the Pakistanis opposed the further partition of the Subcontinent. In the case of Kashmir, a Hindu ruler governed a largely Muslim populations, but was also considering independence.

                The failure of will evident in the hasty retreat from India by the British, who took their army with them, leaving the bewildered Indian and Pakistan armies behind. Had the date not been rushed forward, the partition of India could have been  managed in a more orderly fashion. Instead, it was accompanied by horrific bloodshed, which embittered at least one generation on both sides of the new border, leaving a seemingly permanent legacy of hatred and revenge for further generations. While Indians and Pakistanis from regions distant from the frontier were less affected, the Pakistan army was particularly traumatized. Most of its officers came from the newly-divided Punjab or were migrants from north India, and their desire to build a new army was partly motivated by the desire to settle scores. Further, they defined the purpose of the Pakistan army as primarily India-oriented, a doctrine that has been passed down through four generations of Pakistani officers.

                Leaders in both countries compounded the original problem when they turned Kashmir into a badge of their respective national identities. For Pakistan, which defined itself as a homeland for Indian Muslims, the existence of a Muslim majority area under “Hindu” Indian rule was grating; the purpose of creating Pakistan was to free Muslims from the tyranny of majority rule (and hence, of rule by the majority Hindu population). For Indians, their country had to include such predominantly Muslim regions to demonstrate the secular nature of the new Indian state; since neither India nor Pakistan, so-defined, could be complete without Kashmir, this enormously raised the stakes involved for both.

                Subsequently, Kashmir came to play a role in the respective domestic politics of both states. For Pakistani leaders, both civilian and military, Kashmir was a helpful diversion from the daunting task of nation building. There are also powerful Kashmiri-dominated constituencies in major Pakistani cities. On the Indian side the small, but influential Kashmiri Hindu community was over‑represented in the higher reaches of the Indian government, not least in the presence of the Nehru family, a Kashmiri Pandit clan that had migrated to Uttar Pradesh from the Valley.

Kashmir also acquired an unexpected military dimension. After Pakistan crossed the cease‑fire line to set off the 1965 war, it became a strategic extension of the international border to the south. In addition, China holds substantial territory (in Ladakh) claimed by India, and New Delhi itself has made claims on regions which, historically, had been subordinated to the rulers of Kashmir (Gilgit and Hunza) but which are now administered by Pakistan. From 1984 onward, advances in training and high altitude warfare have turned the most inaccessible part of Kashmir–the Siachin Glacier-in–to a battleground, although more soldiers were cruelly killed by frostbite than bullets.10 The recent limited war in Kargil raised the stakes considerably, as it was the first time that offensive airpower has been used between Indian and Pakistani forces since 1971.

Kashmir was also indirectly linked to the Cold War. The Kashmir issue was born at about the same time the Cold War got underway. Washington and Moscow armed India and Pakistan (often both at the same time), they supported one side or the other in various international for a and the Soviets wielded the veto threat on behalf of India in the UN Security Council. However, they ultimately reached an understanding that they would not let the Kashmir conflict (or India‑Pakistan tensions) affect their core strategic relationship.11 Ironically, the process by which the Cold War ended had an impact on Kashmir itself because the forces of democracy and nationalism that destroyed the Soviet Union and freed Eastern Europe were at work in Kashmir.12 Other models were the liberation and revolutionary movements in the Islamic world – Iran, Afghanistan, and most strikingly (since it was extensively covered by Indian and Pakistani television services), the Palestinian Intifada.

Finally, there is a contemporary dimension to Kashmir: the stirrings of a national self‑determination movement among Kashmiri Muslims. Encouraged by neither India nor Pakistan, it had been present but muted for decades, and burst into view in late 1989 after a spell of particularly bad Indian governance in the state. Angry and resentful at their treatment by New Delhi and not attracted to even a democratic Pakistan, younger Kashmiris especially looked to Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe for models, and to emigres in America, Britain, and Canada for support. In an era when the international economy is fast‑changing (including the advent of self‑sustaining tourist destinations), and the prospect of the direct linkage of Central Asia to Kashmir, the old argument that Kashmir is not economically self‑sufficient unless it is attached to a major state has lost credibility. This emergence of a movement for self‑rule by a younger generation of Kashmiris was the result of decades of mismanagement, but more specifically the manipulation of Kashmiri politics in the 1980s, first by Indira Gandhi and then by Rajiv Gandhi. They alternatively opposed and coopted Dr. Farooq Abdullah, a weak carbon copy of his father, Sheikh Abdullah. By joining with Congress in 1987, Farooq provoked his own followers, and after the rigged election of 1988, they turned to Pakistan for assistance.

Sumit Ganguly's overview of the onset of the Kashmir crisis concludes that a combination of the slow and imperfect growth of political mobilization of the valley Kashmiris, especially among the younger generations, plus the decay of Indian political institutions, or at least those dealing directly with Kashmir, were the twin forces that explain the rise of the ethno‑religious separatist movement in Kashmir.13 Kashmiris were mobilized too late, too quickly and therefore, imperfectly. "Kashmiriyat" (the refined amalgam of Hindu‑Muslim culture that characterizes the Valley and surrounding areas) remains, but is not the rallying point for this mobilization.

This social revolution took India and Pakistan by surprise. Except for a few scholar and some administrators, it was neither examined nor were its political implications understood.14 Undoubtedly Pakistani support was provided–it was never hidden–and Pakistanis speak proudly of their assistance to the Kashmiris and their right to help the latter free themselves from an oppressive Indian state. However, Pakistan's role was not the decisive factor in starting the uprising, although it has been a critical factor in sustaining it.  

Strategic Implications  

As a strategic and diplomatic issue, Kashmir has waxed and waned. While it was the central objective of the first two India‑Pakistan wars (1948, 1965), it was not an issue of high priority for either state from 1965 war until late 1989. Kashmir played no role in the 1971 war fought over the status of the separation of East Bengal from Pakistan. However, the Simla agreement seemed to offer a solution: defer a formal settlement and in the meantime improve India‑Pakistan relations. Kashmir was not a major issue for nearly twenty years until the 1989 uprising.

Since then, both regional instability and regional nuclear programmes have increased. Both are inextricably linked to Kashmir. Many Indian policy makers believe that Pakistan intends to use its new nuclear capability to make a grab for Kashmir, since escalation to conventional war would be risky. They also point to the connections between the Afghan war and the training of Kashmiri militants, and thus American responsibility for India's Kashmir problem. The Indian logic is that if Washington had not lavishly supported extremist Muslim elements in Afghanistan, then Kashmir would not have been radicalized. This ignores the large‑scale supplies of weapons by both Iran and China, and, above all India’s own mismanagement of Kashmiri politics, especially the imposition of corrupt governments and the absence of free elections.

The failure of diplomacy to resolve the Kashmir dispute is remarkable, given the amount of international as well as regional attention paid to it. After the 1948, 1962 and 1965 wars, there were concerted efforts to resolve Kashmir. In 1948, the United Nations became deeply involved–Kashmir is the oldest conflict inscribed in the body of UN resolutions and is certainly one of the most serious.15 After the 1962 India‑China war there were intensive but fruitless American and British efforts to bridge the gap between Delhi and Islamabad. The end of the 1965 war saw the Soviet Union as a regional peacemaker.16 The Soviets did manage to promote a general peace treaty at Tashkent, but this could not prevent a civil and international war in 1970‑71 over East Pakistan/Bangladesh.

The most consistent feature of great power influence on the Kashmir problem has been its ineffectiveness. Beyond their regional Cold War patronage, both the United States and the Soviet Union have played significant, often parallel and cooperative roles in the subcontinent.17 Over the years, the United States had considerable influence with both India and Pakistan; at one point the Soviet Union, generally regarded as pro‑Indian, moved closer to Pakistan even providing military assistance to Islamabad and brokering the 1966 Tashkent agreement. Yet neither superpower seemed to be able to make a difference. This suggests that any outside power should step carefully if it seeks to end or even moderate this conflict.

Kashmir was important only insofar as it concerned their respective regional partners, yet both resisted being dragged into the Kashmir issue by those same partners. While Indians and Pakistanis often based their regional calculation on the assistance of outside support for their position on Kashmir, this support has been limited and constrained. For years the Soviets provided India with an automatic veto in the United Nations on Kashmir‑related resolutions, and otherwise backed New Delhi diplomatically. The Pakistanis became more dependent on the United States for political and military support, but could never get the United States to commit itself to firm security assurances against India, precisely because Washington was afraid of being sucked into a Kashmir conflict. Both Washington and Moscow made several inconclusive efforts to mediate the dispute or bring about its peaceful resolution, but were wary of anything more. It took the 1990 crisis with its nuclear dimension, to bring the United States back to the region, and then only briefly.

After India defeated Pakistan in 1971, India kept outsiders at a distance as it sought to reach a bilateral understanding with Pakistan. Mrs. Gandhi and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto met in the Indian hill station of Simla in late June and early July 1972. There, after a long and complicated negotiation they committed their countries to a bilateral settlement of all outstanding disputes. Presumably, this included Kashmir (which was mentioned only in the last paragraph of the text). The Simla Agreement did not rule out mediation or multilateral diplomacy, if both sides agreed.

Ironically, divergent interpretations of Simla added another layer of India‑Pakistan distrust. While there is a formal text, there may have been verbal agreements between the two leaders that have never been made public. According to most Indian accounts, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto told Mrs. Gandhi that he was willing to settle the Kashmir dispute along the Line of Control, but could not do so for a while because he was still weak politically. Pakistani accounts claim that Bhutto did no such thing, and that in any case the written agreement is what matters. For India, Simla had supplanted the UN resolutions as a point of reference for resolving the Kashmir dispute. After all, Indian leaders reasoned, the two parties had pledged to work directly with one another, implicitly abandoning extra‑regional diplomacy. For Pakistan, Simla supplemented but did not replace the operative UN resolutions on Kashmir.

After the Simla Agreement, the Kashmir dispute seemed to subside. The Indian government began to view the LOC as a more or less permanent border, which did not prevent them from nibbling away at the Pakistani positions as in Siachin. For Pakistani diplomats the Simla Agreement neither replaced the UN resolutions nor did the conversion of the ceasefire line into a LOC produce a permanent international border. Guided by these varied interpretations both sides continued to press their respective claims whenever the opportunity arose, but for seventeen years Kashmir was widely regarded outside the region as either solved or on the way to resolution. Other regional issues displaced Kashmir–the 1974 Indian nuclear test, Pakistan’s covert nuclear weapons programme, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. Between 1972 and 1994 India and Pakistan held forty‑five bilateral meetings, only one was fully devoted to Kashmir.18

Since the uprising of 1989, the situation in Kashmir has become a bloody stalemate. India continues to apply a mixture of pressure and inducement, organizing its own counter terrorist squads made up of ex‑terrorists and sent by them against the Pakistan‑sponsored "freedom fighters." Numerous bomb blasts in major Indian and Pakistani cities, several unexplained railway wrecks, the occasional air high-jacking, and miscellaneous acts of sabotage seem to be evidence of organized attempts to exploit local grievances and extract revenge. While Indian officials claim a decline in "militancy," international human rights groups and independent observers report little change, and within Kashmir the death toll mounts. Most of the Kashmiri population remains alienated, whether they are the Pandits (many of whom have fled their homes), or the Valley Muslims, bitterly divided and increasingly terrorized by radical Islamic groups.          

Towards a Solution?  

Over the years many solutions have been proposed for the Kashmir problem. These included partition along the Line of Control, ‘soft borders’ between the two parts of Kashmir (pending a solution to the entire problem), a region‑by‑region plebiscite of Kashmiris, referendum, UN trusteeship, the ‘Trieste’ and ‘Andorra’ models (whereby the same territory is shared by two states, or a nominally sovereign territory in fact is controlled jointly by two states), revolutionary warfare, depopulation of Muslim Kashmiris and repopulation by Hindus from India, patience, good government, a revival of ‘human values,’ and doing nothing.19 The dispute has not been resolved because of at least three factors.

First, over the long run, the existence of the Cold War led both Americans and the Soviets to see this regional dispute not for what it was but as part of the systemic East-West struggle.

Second, both states have been inflexible over the years. India's strategy has been to gradually erode Kashmir's special status under Article 370 of the Constitution of India, which grants the state a special status in the Indian Union. It also pretended that the problem was ‘solved’ by the Simla Agreement. This dual strategy of no‑change within Kashmir, and no‑discussion of it with Pakistan failed to prepare New Delhi for the events of the late 1980s. India rejected the political option, it rejected a strategy of accommodating Kashmiri demands, it excluded Pakistan from its Kashmir policy, and it has stubbornly opposed outside efforts to mediate the dispute. Yet, New Delhi lacks the resources, the will or a strategy to deal with the Kashmir problem unilaterally. Pakistan, on the other hand, has often resorted to force in attempting to wrest Kashmir from India, further alienating the Kashmiris themselves in 1947‑48 and in 1965, and providing the Indian government with the perfect excuse to avoid negotiations.

Third, it must be said that the Kashmiris, while patently victims, have not been reluctant to exploit the situation. A significant number of Kashmiris have always sought independence from India and Pakistan. The two states disagree as to which should control Kashmir and the mechanism for determining Kashmiri sentiment, but they are unified in their opposition to an independent state. Thus the seemingly well‑intentioned proposal, heard frequently from Americans and other outsiders, that Kashmiris be ‘consulted’ or have a voice in determining their own fate is threatening to both Islamabad and Delhi.

The Kashmir problem is so complicated, that it is hard to say how its resolution might begin. Like the Middle East peace process, there are degrees of contentiousness. While the Valley Muslims feel aggrieved that they are dominated by Indians, other Kashmiri groups, especially the Pandits, and the largely Buddhist population of Ladakh, fear the dominance of the state by Muslims. Thus, a number of proposals have suggested the possibility of separating the Valley from other regions (Azad Kashmir, Ladakh, Jammu), and allocating parts of Jammu and Kashmir to India and Pakistan, leaving to the end the intensely disputed Valley.

Further complicating the situation, ‘Kashmir’ is not a homogeneous issue in India and Pakistan. During the height of the 1990 Kashmir crisis, it was clear that the further one was from Delhi and Islamabad the less passion there was about Kashmir. In Madras, Calcutta, Hyderabad (Deccan) and Bombay, Kashmir was, and is seen as New Delhi's obsession; in Karachi, Quetta, Peshawar, and Hyderabad (Sindh), it is seen as a secondary issue, for these provinces relations with Islamabad and the Punjab come first. However, the enormous television coverage given to the Kargil episode in 1999 created a shared image of the Kashmir issue for the Indian public, an image in direct contradiction to that created over many years for a Pakistani public by Pakistan's government‑controlled media.

Like proposals to resolve other complex disputes, such as those in the Middle East or China‑Taiwan and the two Koreas, "solutions” to the Kashmir problem must operate at many levels. The examples of the Middle East, South Africa, and Ireland, indicate that seemingly intractable disputes can be resolved, or ameliorated, by patience, outside encouragement, and, above all, a strategy that will address the many dimensions of these complex disputes. If a strategy for Kashmir had begun in the early or mid‑1980s, then some of the crises that arose later in that decade might have been averted, and it would not now be seen as one of the world's nuclear flash‑points.

Any comprehensive solution to the Kashmir problem would involve many concessions, and changes in relations between India and Pakistan (and within each state). It would require a change in India's federal system; it might require changes within Kashmir between its constituent parts; it would necessitate a re‑examination of the military balance between India and Pakistan and provisions that would prevent the two states from again turning to arms in Kashmir. Above all, it would require major concessions on the part of Pakistan–and India might have to accept a Pakistani locus standi in Kashmir itself. There also would have to be incentives for Pakistan to cooperate in such ameliorative measures, since its basic strategy is to draw outsiders into the region and to pressure India. In brief, India has to demonstrate to Pakistan that it would be willing to make significant concessions, but also pledge that if Pakistan ceased its support for Kashmiri separatists Delhi would not change its mind once the situation in the Valley had become more normal.

Doing nothing is likely to be the default option for Kashmir. At best, there might be an arrangement that would ensure that the state does not trigger a larger war between the two countries. However, this does little to address Kashmiri grievances or the widespread human rights violations in the state, nor does it address the deeper conflict between India and Pakistan.

One of the major obstacles to reaching a solution of the Kashmir tangle is the belief, on all sides of the dispute, that "time is on our side." Since the Kashmir problem has been mismanaged by two generations of Indians and Pakistanis (and Kashmiris have contributed their own share of errors of omission and commission), there is no age group, except perhaps among the youngest generation of South Asians, who believe that the time has come for a solution. As they briefly pass through an equilibrium point when the time may be right for talks, neither side wants to negotiate since both believe that time is on their side, and that they are just about to, or will after some time, regain the advantage. Moreover, both sides seem to assume that the other will not compromise unless confronted by superior force. ‘Punjab rules’–a zero‑sum game with a club behind the back–seem to dominate India‑Pakistan relations. The greater Kashmir problem is persuading both sides‑and now the Kashmiris themselves (whose perception of how time will bring about an acceptable solution is not clear at all) to examine their own deeper assumptions about how to bring the other to the bargaining table and reach an agreement. Kashmir needs a "peace process," defined as a routine, systematic engagement of the key parties (in this case, India and Pakistan, with participation by Kashmiris of all political stripes), assisted or encouraged by the international community. All parties must have some incentive to keep the process moving forward, and there must be benefits associated with continuing the process. There is as yet no such peace process in place, but the forthcoming summit between Prime Minister Vajpayee and President Musharraf, and the fact that all parties now refer to such a "peace process" offers some small ray of hope.