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Gen. Musharraf’s prescription for achieving the Kashmir breakthrough comprises four points: Kashmir should have the same borders but people be allowed to move freely across the region; the region should have self-governance or autonomy ,but not independence; troops should be withdrawn from the region in a phased manner; and a joint mechanism comprising the representatives from India, Pakistan and Kashmir be set up to supervise the implementation of such a roadmap to solve the Kashmir problem.

President Musharraf’s book, ‘In the Line of Fire’, was launched in New York on 22 September 2006.General Musharraf declares: “The West rejects militant freedom struggles too broadly. The US and Europe too often equate all militancy with terrorism, in particular equating Kashmir’s struggle for freedom in Held Kashmir with terrorism. Pakistan has always rejected this broad-brush treatment. My efforts towards rapprochement with India and the significant thaw in our relations have saved Pakistan to a large extent from the blame of abetting what the world calls terrorism and what we call freedom struggle in Held Kashmir.”

President Mussaraf has summarized his plan for peace between India and Pakistan: identify the areas in ‘Indian-held’ Jammu and Kashmir where the majority are Muslim; establish joint rule of India, Pakistan and Kashmiri's all over the place; organize referendum for the self rule at a later date. India also wants to start discussions, but the important question is on what basis the discussion can take place.

It is essential to understand the mind of the Pakistanis. All Pakistanis, whether they are intellectuals or military men have exactly the same opinion on Kashmir. They want the whole of Kashmir and the occupied areas of Gilgit, Hunza, Baltistan and Skardhu, which is now absorbed into Pakistan as the Northern Area and some parts of Jammu and Ladakh, which have Muslim majority. Their justification is that these are Muslim majority area and with that virtue these areas must be in Pakistan. At the same time they will not accept any Indian Muslims from outside Kashmir into Pakistan. They also think, the non-Muslims who were expelled from Pakistan, east or west, were only migrated on their free will.

Given these views, any peace process or face-to-face contacts with the Pakistanis would be useless. If India wants to compromise, given the attitude of the present government, it will face a refugee crisis of at least 3 million people, the non-Muslim population of the state of Jammu & Kashmir. That is obvious if one would try to dissect the latest proposal of Mussaraf. Free flows of people between Indian Kashmir and ‘Azad Kashmir’ of Pakistan would mean uninterrupted flows of Pakistanis including Taliban and every type of terrorists into Jammu & Kashmir to drive out Hindus and Buddhists. When that would be achieved the whole of Jammu & Kashmir may declare independence like Bosnia or Kosovo or Chechnya. Withdrawal of Indian troops will facilitate that process, when Pakistani army would only change their dress and become just tribal, as they did during 1948 invasion of Kashmir, or in invasions of Afghanistan in 1988, 1992 and 1995 and during the invasion of Kargil in 1999.

As Pakistan (and China) does not want to give up the occupied areas of the State of Jammu & Kashmir, Mussaraf said recently that Pakistan is no longer interested in the U. N Resolution; it was repeated by the Hurriat group, the political face of the insurgents, who wants Kashmir to be either independence or merge with Pakistan.

The U. N Resolution does not contain any reference to independence. Thus, the U. N Resolution no longer satisfies the ambitions of either Pakistan or the Hurriat, to turn Kashmir first as an independent Muslim country which would subsequently join Pakistan informally as the Taliban administered Afghanistan did. That is the reason they are prepared to ignore the U.N resolution, which should not be considered as a good gesture towards the peace-process, as India may think.

The U.N Resolution presupposes that Pakistan is only for the Muslims, India is only for the non-Muslims, which is normal after a partition of a country. Otherwise, there is no justification for any referendum. India, currently the home of 135 million Muslims as opposed to 140 million Muslims in Pakistan, can very well claim the whole of the state of J&K. If the UN and the Western countries accept the demand of Pakistan and of the Hurriat, it would mean accepting the ‘Two-Nation’ theory that Muslims and Hindus are two different nations and must live separately. In that case there would be no justification for the presence of another 129 millions of Muslims in the rest of India outside Jammu & Kashmir, who according to the principle of the partition in 1947 should have gone to Pakistan long ago, but are allowed to stay in India only because India is a secular country.

Religion was the reason for the partition of India and Mussaraf want to divide Jammu & Kashmir along the religious line. U.N is consistent with the basic premises of the partition of India that was to separate out Muslims and non-Muslims. However, India has so far refused to accept that fundamental premise of the partition.

Mussaraf is repeating the solution originally proposed by the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front(JKLF) in different words. Mussaraf’s recent proposal in his book supports independence for the whole area of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The plan suggests, armies from both India and Pakistan should vacate the area, the UN would take over and run the administration for the next fifteen years and organize the referendum afterwards to decide whether the area will join India or Pakistan or to stay independent. It is silent about the area occupied by China. Both the United States and Britain originally thought about this plan of Kashmir during the early 50’s and Sheikh Abdullah, the then prime minister of Kashmir, was also interested. The subsequent arrest and imprisonment of Sheikh Abdullah had put an end to this plan. However, the Western analysts now revive it as the basis for any future negotiations. Farooq Abdullah is now demanding autonomy for the Jammu & Kashmir in a similar fashion. The plan is popular in Pakistan as it implies Pakistan will have Kashmir eventually, as it had turned Afghanistan during the reign of Taliban as a virtual province of Pakistan.

The problem of the ‘most favored’ solution of the Western countries and Pakistan, i.e., the eventual independence of Kashmir would have exactly the same implication as the solution in terms of ‘the exchange of population’, as demanded by The Muslim League in 1946. Independence of Kashmir, from where all the non-Muslims would be evicted, would initiate violent reactions in India, in which, ultimately an extremely violent exchange of population would take place, as it has happened in the former Yugoslavia recently. Like Yugoslavia, it will provoke other religious and ethnic groups in India to demand similar independence and India will be ‘Balkanized’ into several smaller countries.

Options for India:
Facing these problems there are three options left for India:

Option 1: India should ask Pakistan to shut up about Kashmir and be happy with what it already has. India should also ask both USA and UK to shut up if they want to put pressure to start the wasteful peace-process once again. However Pakistan will never accept that and would carry on terrorist activities in India.

Option 2: This option should be packaged with the following items:(1) Pakistan and Bangladesh will take all Muslims living in India (including Kashmir) while India will accept all non-Muslim from Pakistan and Bangladesh;(2)India will give up the Kashmir valley excepting the link road to Ladakh and will keep only the Ladakh and Jammu valley. The Pakistan-occupied Skardhu, Hunza, Baltistan, and Gilgit, where very few Muslims used to live in 1947, should come to India;(3)the Chittagong Hill District, which was 97 per cent Buddhist in 1947,will have a referendum, to join either Burma or India or to stay independent. Muslim population there will go back to Bangladesh;(4)Migrants will be allowed to take away their assets and destitute should be compensated by the government of the country displacing them;(5)In order to avoid the holocaust that took place in 1947-48,the whole of the subcontinent should be under the jurisdiction of the UN, for about one year, during which this exchange of population would take place. If India make a serious diplomatic efforts it is possible that the Western countries would accept this option as the exchange of population took place in every other cases of partition of a country. The cases of Greece-Turkey, Germany-Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria-Turkey, Poland-Germany, Bosnia-Serbia and Croatia-Serbia are recent examples where full-scale exchange of population was organized, sometimes by the UN and the League of Nations. Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf during his July 2001 visit to India spoke of Kashmir as an unfinished agenda of Partition. Exchange of population was the “unfinished agenda” of the Muslim League. At a press conference in Karachi on 25 November 1946, Jinnah had appealed to the central as well as provincial governments to take up the question of population exchange. The purpose of the partition in 1947 was to create a homeland for Muslims of undivided India. When it was done, the logical question is: why are Muslims still in India and if they really want to stay in India, why should Pakistan or Bangladesh exist at all? As it is not acceptable for Pakistan or Bangladesh to merge all three countries together to create a United India, exchange of population is the only realistic option.

Option 3: Another option is for India to give total military supports to the freedom fighters in Balochistan, Sindh, NWFP and to the Afghan government to shrink Pakistan and force it accept the Option 1.It may work given some supports from the USA if it would see that to eliminate Taliban and to provide safety to Afghanistan, it is essential to reduce Pakistan to Punjab only. The problem of Kashmir remains because India today cannot see the reality. If Pakistan insists that it has the right to absorb the rest of the Kashmir because of religion and if India insists on secularism and as a result refuses to consider any alternative solution, there is no common ground.

Analysis:
If Pakistan insists that it has the right to absorb the rest of the Kashmir in one way or another because of religion and if India insists on the ‘line of control’ and secularism, there is no common ground where the two sides will meet. Thus, any future discussions between the leaders of the two countries, just like those before, will be futile. The problem of Kashmir is religious, thus, there is no secular solution. British India is now partitioned into three nations; however, the shifting of the population is still incomplete and one-sided, when only the non-Muslims, all most all, were evicted from Pakistan (and Bangladesh). Pakistan now need time to regain strength after its set back in Afghanistan, when the United States has destroyed the ‘Taliban’ government and Pakistan was forced to control her ‘fundamentalist terrorists’. That is the reason it is interested in the ‘peace-process’ to buy time. The newly acquired “NATO Ally” will help Pakistan to regain strength within a short time. The Karzai government already made a serious mistake by accepting the Afghan ‘Muzzahadin’group in the newly installed parliament in Afghanistan. Pakistan is now using this ‘Muzzahiddin’ group, which it had created since 1978, as the "Trojan’ horse’ in Afghanistan to destroy the Karzai government and retake Afghanistan. Then it may start a full-scale assault on Kashmir by sending thousands of terrorists. India, through its policy of the ‘peace-process’ ,is actively helping Pakistan in her strategy.

Dr.Dipak Basu

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Reference:
Ambedkar, B. R.,1945,Pakistan or Partition of India, AMS Press,New Delhi.
Instrument of Accession (The Treaty between the Maharaja of J&K and Lord Mountbatten),26th October 1947

UN Resolution on Kashmir, DOCUMENT NO. S/726, 21st APRIL 1948.

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