Riyaz Ahmad
Over the past one month, moderate Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar has launched an exuberant campaign for the resumption of dialogue on Kashmir. He has talked of talks not only between India and Pakistan but also between Hurriyat and New Delhi.
The tenor of his statements has only grown louder and even created a perception of a Kashmir solution in progress. Mirwaiz has gone on stressing the dialogue as the only credible mechanism for the resolution of Kashmir and talked of sending a peace mission to New Delhi and Islamabad to “ease tensions between the two countries”.
He has also exuded optimism about the prospects of Kashmir resolution, saying he found a “facilitating international climate” for a settlement between India and Pakistan during his recent trip to New York – with Hurriyat poised to play an important role in the effort.
Besides, Mirwaiz also flaunted the appointment of Kashmir envoy by OIC as an achievement and deplored New Delhi’s response to it.
Once again he has outlined a “diplomatic role” for the Hurriyat, saying it plans to activate its centres in Brussels, Washington and the UK to create awareness about Kashmir. Incidentally, Mirwaiz for good measure also brought China into the picture, saying Beijing, New Delhi and Islamabad could coordinate for a peaceful settlement of Kashmir.
This sudden resurgence in the moderate separatist activity has followed the summer turmoil over the Shopian double rape and murder, which was led chiefly by the Chairman of the hardline Hurriyat faction Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Mirwaiz seems to have followed it up with a kind of Autumn initiative, thereby switching the discourse to talks, reconciliation and a broader, consensus-based settlement of Kashmir.
However, all seemed well if it wasn’t for this queer inexplicability of it all. Mirwaiz’s overtures are part of a month-long deliberate orchestration of a chorus that seems to be coming from nowhere. One is at a loss to anchor it in the prevailing context of Kashmir.
Is there really a movement towards some kind of a discussion on Kashmir? From the look of it doesn’t seem so, at least in foreseeable future. With Pakistan bogged down in a mess at home, India in no mood to even talk and US not interested in involving itself in a vexatious conflict, Kashmir seems to be headed nowhere.
And in a situation, where even Pakistan is struggling to retain its influence in the affairs of the sub-continent – and particularly when Islamabad’s leverage with India seems to have gone for a toss – how does Hurriyat become important for New Delhi. Why would New Delhi engage Hurriyat?
Besides, there are some more factors that have come decisively into play over the past some years. Militant violence which ironically in one of incidental spin-offs shored up Hurriyat’s stock in Kashmir has come down drastically – its new moderate resurrection shall have a long way to go before it breaks the threshold of Kashmir’s own minimum tolerable violence.
Hurriyat on its own has so far miserably failed to compensate this loss by building an alternative reserviour of political influence rooted in public support. So far, its massive rallies have been an outcome of some resonant public issue like Amarnath land transfer or more recently Shopian murders.
In the ordinary course of events, both Hurriyats have struggled to mobilize people. The reason: Separatist leadership in valley has refused to see their struggle as a long, evolving process which needs to be worked at a regular, day-to-day basis on the ground among the people.
On the other hand, silently undercutting Hurriyat is the politics of PDP which over the years has perfected the art of appropriating the broader features of the Hurriyat agenda and its prominent semantics like self rule and demilitarization.
Where does this leave Hurriyat’s recent political posturing as a major player in a non-existent Indo-Pak engagement? Doesn’t one get an inescapable feeling of all of this existing in a vacuum?
