"Ibne Maryam Hua Kare Koi" - The solution to the Kashmir problem
- In Current Affairs
- 10:21 PM, Sep 20, 2016
- Sandeep Koul
This is a humble attempt at unraveling the Kashmir issue – trying to analyze it from various perspectives. If this comes across as a biased narrative, I have failed abysmally in my efforts. If the perspectives shared here do not agree with your political philosophy, request you to please ignore this, please do not try to argue just for the sake of argument (a quintessential Kashmiri trait)
The thought started with the question: “What is wrong with Kashmiri Muslims? Wanting Pakistan in 1947 might have been explicable, but now? Pakistan with 60 odd years of bigoted, blighted history? Indian Muslims, who they still call muhajirs, still want to come back. The East Pakistanis were so fed up of the Punjabi hegemony that they had their own "partition". Balochs and Sindhis might soon follow suit. As for "Azaadi", that's a ruse. We don’t see a similar "movement" in POK, do we? And it would be politically naïve to even imagine that an independent Kashmir, flanked by three powers who each had to give up a piece (assuming Pakistan parts with POK, and China with Aksai Chin, a precondition for the much maligned plebiscite) would have a shelf life of more than a couple of months. The Indian part of Kashmir is arguably the best off among the three – or was before 1990. Just one heavily rigged assembly election, the others seldom get an assembly, or even a national legislature. So what are they dying (and killing) for? Or do I miss something here? (My firm belief - try to understand the problem, before endeavoring to find a solution!)
Then the thought became a bit more inclusive, and developed to which I feel is the biggest tragedy of the Kashmir issue - that neither side is willing to acknowledge the suffering of the other. Be it insistence of Kashmiri Muslims that Kashmiri Pandits were lured out of Kashmir by Jagmohan, with the lucrative offers of a princely sum of 6000 Rupees relief & palatial one room hovels / tenements - or the insistence that we are all well settled elsewhere now as if a tree can ever be settled without roots - or the Kashmiri Pandit insistence that Muslims are having fun in Kashmir after kicking him out, conveniently forgetting the Gawkadal massacre, the Kunan Poshpora rapes, the countless violent deaths etc. True, one may say that they called it upon themselves, but it is suffering nonetheless.
Then, I concluded that post mortems or going over land already trudged by many tired feet was going to be no help. It will only lead to endless cross-recriminations and a vicious spiral of bitterness. Instead, I decided to move ahead – try to think of a solution to this conundrum that has baffled generations across borders. I feel the problem appears insoluble from India’s perspective today because of the inability to change the population demographics of Kashmir in any meaningful way. Till this happens, the respected CM’s claim of 95%-5% will sound hollow especially in view of the prolonged failure to deal with the current upheaval. With just a few hundred terrorists in the valley, and a miniscule 5% trouble makers to support them, one would have thought that the thousands of army and para-military troops would have succeeded in establishing peace, something supposedly desired by an overwhelming 95%. But analyzing the veracity of the CM’s claim is not the objective of this piece. So let’s move on to what is.
They tell me that outsiders cannot buy property in J&K. Section 4 of the J&K Alienation of Land Act, (1938), Section 20 of the Big Landed Estates Abolition Act, (1950), Section 4 of the Land Grants Act and Section 95 of the J&K Cooperative Societies Act and Section 17 of the Jammu and Kashmir Agrarian Reforms Act, 1976 all impose a complete ban on the acquisition of immovable property by the nonpermanent residents of the State. Section 12(b) of the J&K Representation of the People Act declares that a non-resident of the State is disqualified for registration in the electoral roll as a voter. Similarly, a nonresident of the State is disqualified to hold any government job in the state. So, how can such a powerful array of legalese be overcome / worked around? I feel overcoming is impossible, since a majority of the local law making body will never agree to it. I strongly feel that this change in demographics may reshape the history of Kashmir, but the only way to achieve this is by working around, not overcoming (which various electoral combines may promise from time to time, but all will struggle to deliver). So how to work around? I present one possible workaround. Wiser heads can doubtless come up with several better ones, if they accept the truth that overcoming may never be a workable solution here and workarounds, though maybe sub-optimal, are the only realistic option.
What are the two main issues here? One, ownership of property, and two, disqualification from government employment (presuming for the moment that the inability to vote, at least in the state elections is not a major issue – and postal ballot can always work for parliamentary elections I guess. ) Can these two issues be circumvented? Most definitely I feel. I propose the following workarounds:
- The Non Kashmiris do not own properties in Kashmir. They instead get properties for 99 year lease, at a fixed rental of Rs. 1 per month.
- The Non Kashmiris do not get government employment in Kashmir. They instead get a monthly stipend ~Rs. 10000/- per month per individual from the government for a period of say 20 years.
While obviously, all sides will raise multiple objections to these suggestions, the objections lose steam when viewed over a slightly longer term. Kashmiris will object, but they have little ground of objection against India not playing fair, when they have already labeled India as the despotic occupier who kills and maims millions of “innocent” Kashmiris. India will object because of the obviously immense cost involved in successfully carrying out these suggestions. But if one compares this cost to the cost of tackling the Kashmir problem in perpetuity, I think this might well be the better deal over just the next couple of decades. One party of the issue who will have no fiduciary concerns regarding my suggestions is the vast majority of the “below poverty line” guys from the Indian heartlands. They might have rightful security concerns though, which will need to be addressed. So the government will have to guarantee safety for, say, a period of 10 years, by when the plan should be carried out completely, and Kashmir becomes as safe / unsafe as the rest of India.
Let us look at the detailed numbers now – to see how viable this suggestion really is.
According to http://www.censusindia.gov.in/2011census/C-01.html, the total population of Kashmir is around 7,000,000, out of which I will be radically opposed the what the respected CM said, and will work on the assumption that 95% are troublemakers, not 5% (although I think such an extreme figure may be as far-fetched as the CM’s figure and in actual fact, the figure will lie somewhere between these two extremes – I feel closer to my extreme than hers, taking an extreme figure and proving the scheme workable for that should mean that it can work much better for smaller numbers, I feel.) So, we are talking about a population of 6,650,000, which needs to be reduced to a 5% minority. This will mean an influx of 126,350,000 people. While such a huge influx will multiply population density, I still fail to see a major concern there, as J&K will still struggle to break into the top ten list of states and union territories pan India. (According to http://www.census2011.co.in/density.php, the density of population in 2011 in Kashmir was 56, for an area of 222,236 square km. in the same year, the overall population density of India as a whole was 382). The main concern will be the cost involved – a one-time property cost near Rs 300,000,000,000,000 (presuming urban real estate rates and first acquisition of land and then building residences therein) and a recurring monthly expense of Rs 1,263,500,000,000 for the next 20 years. On first sight, these numbers boggle the mind, but just a cold blooded number comparison with the current defense expenditure on Kashmir, ignoring the human factor for the moment, which looks like a cost stretching to perpetuity, may make policy makers rethink here, and find this proposition the cheaper in the long term. To give some perspective to the numbers, the defense budget for this financial year is Rs. 2,580,000,000,000.
I am told that it is now or never – when a right of centre (although some say these leanings are visible on issues which don’t really matter, like anti-beef legislation, not on issues that really do like rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits) government rules with a decisive majority in India – something that may never happen again in our lifetime.
“Ibne-Maryam hua kare koi” – If there is a Messiah somewhere let him come and cure my grief.
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