Kashmir’s uneasy relationship with the New Delhi has many dimensions. Principal among these are constitutional, political and economic. But the most pervasive and enduring aspect of India’s interface with J&K has been the operational politics.
The manner and method in which India has conducted its politics in managing the environment has been extensively discussed and analyzed by political theorists and historians as the politics of betrayal. This is a convenient explanation of a fairly complex history and historical situations.
As our cover story shows, the latest casualty in the renegade and regressive politics of India and its various state apparatus, are the renegade militants. A creation of the intelligence agencies, these people were used extensively to counter and negate the ethno-national movement of Kashmir. No sooner was that done, even if in a half baked manner, they were totally ignored by their creators. Graceless and unbecoming it is of New Delhi, it is more than that as well. It reflects an enduring policy of politics in India.
No matter on which part of the political spectrum of J&K you stand, there are instances galore of deceit and drama. It, of course, starts with the justifiably famous exit of Sheikh Abdullah in 1953. So strong was the system then that a friend and the Prime Minster couldn’t stop it from being done. A coup was engineered; Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed was prepared and propped up. He in turn was tactfully disowned, after he innocently fell prey to the Kamraj Plan. In the eighties, Farooq Abdullah was disowned by the system and had to suffer the same fate. Shah, who played Brutus in his case, could not remain in favour for much longer. And many more instances at lower levels can be counted.
The larger point is that this kind of renegade politics emerges not from a mind set of betrayal but from politics of short-termism. This short-termism is linked to the timeframe of the bureaucracy, who are at that point of time running the Home ministry and its associated coercive or detective wings. In such a system there can be no goodwill. The only way or hope is that politicians and not bureaucrats of sleuths frame and run the policy on Kashmir.
