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Jethmalani's hollow proclamations

He set out to be a hero, humbugging everybody else -- as is his style. He got two senior English language editors into his camp -- to pre-empt criticism of his effort, presumably. And he went about Delhi and Jammu and Srinagar, meeting a motley of people, giving interviews freely to the media, ensuring that the two top journos flanked him in front of television cameras. He asked the government to tell the Election Commission to defer the J&K polls, admonished the nation's deputy prime minister for not meeting those whom he himself had hugged, and did much else besides. All of it, conspicuously enough, without any visible security that surrounds the area of contact with terrorists in J&K territory.

At the end of it all, he has turned up with a big zero. Ram Jethmalani's 'Kashmir Committee' has failed. The separatists have shied away from the ballot box -- whatever the pretence offered. The Hurriyat, in fact, is set on an anti-election campaign. The J&K situation remains where it was, where it has been for long. And all the hedging and hawing and hoping of Jethmalani's legal brain cannot alter that conclusion.

It was bound to be so what with those separatist groups remaining obdurate in wanting a voice in decision making without participating in India's democratic process -- verily like wanting to make an omelette without breaking an egg. It was also bound to be so what with Jethmalani arrogating to himself the supreme knowledge of all the contours of the problem and all the wisdom for its solution.

The signs were there at the start itself. Jethmalani's interview published in The Indian Express, Mumbai, on August 8 was reeking with arrogance. Examples:

• 'All moves by the Government were doomed to fail because a lot of homework must be done before you start.'
  
• 'Pant (K C Pant, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission) shouldn't have gone into the venture without making sure he did some spadework.'
  
• 'I'm not sure about the nature of Dulat's mission' (A S Dulat, former director, RAW, was the PMO's man handling J&K)
  
• 'As for Arun (Jaitley), his mission was a fiasco before it ever began. And the fiasco was created by the president of his own party who said he can't talk autonomy, only devolution. The statement was based on total ignorance of the English language. It's obvious the more you devolve, the more autonomy you give.'

Questions arise. How did Jethmalani presume that the government hadn't done its homework? How did he assume that Pant hadn't done 'some spadework'? Had he done any cross-examination to arrive at his conclusion? About Dulat, if Jethmalani didn't know his mission itself, how could he dub it as a failure? And then there's Jaitley in a tangle with the English language.

Jethmalani believes he is the master of that language, and that autonomy = devolution. Well, well, 'devolution of powers' in federal India is subject to constitutional checks and balances, while among the synonyms for 'Freedom' in Roget's Thesaurus are 'autonomy,' 'self-governance,' 'home rule,' 'liberation' and 'non-interference.' And autonomy, more autonomy, is what the Abdullahs want, like designating their chief minister as prime minister, like not wanting President's rule to be ever imposed on them by Delhi. That's not 'devolution' in any language.

Finally, there's that homily on 'homework.' In his interview with Sheela Bhatt and Onkar Singh on rediff on August 14, Jethmalani said, 'On the one hand, we have the extreme position of the BJP that you scrap Article 370, which gives special status to the state of Jammu & Kashmir, and bring the state at par with other states of the Indian Union. On the other, we have secession. The solution has to be somewhere in between.'

Ooh-lala! The BJP's battle against the separatists like the Hurriyat is not, repeat not, over Article 370; rather, it is with the separatists' unwillingness, nay hostility, to accept that the J&K state we know is and shall be an integral part of the Union of India. The BJP's battle over Article 370, may it be stated here, is against the rest of India. That is, for entirely partisan reasons, blind to the emotional and economic isolation of J&K state caused by the only Article that enables constitutional alterations while bypassing Parliament, the supreme will of the people. So where is your own homework, Mr Jethmalani?

The A B C of that homework should have been to remember that, as Karan Singh told The Times of India (July 15, 2001), 'There is no such thing as Kashmir. It is the state of Jammu and Kashmir.' Hence, the 'Kashmir Committee' was an unhappy misnomer. It should have been made clear to the media at the outset that the committee should be referred to as 'The J&K Committee;' if an ego needed massaging, it could have been labelled as the 'JJK Committee' -- 'Jethmalani's J&K Committee.'

If the learned counsel had done the needed homework, he would not have told the separatists what he did: '…if you want to secede, then all you will get is the valley' (The Indian Express interview.) Any Indian who holds out the possibility of secession to fellow Indians reminds one of the criminal offence of sedition. Moreover, a veteran counsel should know that:
i. the United Nations does not authorise 'any action which could dismember or impair the territorial integrity of sovereign states' (Rahul Shivshankar in his edit page article in The Times of India of June 26, 2001) and
ii. the state of J&K (or even a part of it) cannot secede from the Union of India without the abrogation of the J&K state constitution 1957. (Page 85 of Dr A S Anand's The Constitution of Jammu & Kashmir, Universal Law Publishing Co Pvt Ltd, third edition, 1998).

Anyone who has done the minimal homework on the J&K situation knows that the Hurriyat has its lord and master Pakistan, and that it has a Paki arm. He knows Shabir Shah is but a small player in the J&K scenario and that he too is in the separatist camp. Yet, the JJK Committee endorsed the following among the several confidence-building measures suggested by Shah as pre-condition for participation in the coming polls:

• release of those who have been illegally/unfairly jailed
  
• greater accountability of the Special Operations Group and other anti-insurgency groups
  
• end to custodial killings
  
• formation of a commission to probe custodial killings and disappearance of persons

The above must be the most audacious and absurd demand of any entity as condition for its participation in a democratic election. Each of its contents is something that only a representative state government can do in a federation. To compel a state government in power to do that requires creation of a political platform or one that is backed by a large public. If Shabir Shah wanted that package implemented, his outfit ought to have contested the election with a manifesto comprising that package and more. Incidentally, why doesn't he, here and now, drop everything else and lead a public agitation against the Abdullah regime for the release of those 'illegally/unfairly jailed'? And since Jethmalani saw it fit to endorse the above conditions set by Shah, why doesn't the learned counsel immediately take up the brief of those 'illegally/unfairly jailed'?

The JJK Committee has proved -- if ever proof were needed -- that the Shahs, Lones, Geelanis and Bhats of J&K have been needlessly pampered as holding the key to the resolution of the J&K impasse. For quite some time now, the BJP-led Vajpayee government has projected separatists of various hues as VVIPS to be cajoled and coddled. The media has followed suit by interviewing one or the other of these separatists ever so regularly and by airing their views as front-page news without ever questioning or probing their bonafides.

It's been the wrong strategy. These separatists must be left alone, insulated and isolated. They must be clearly told if they have problems with the way the people of J&K are being governed, they must be ready to form a government of their own in Srinagar. And if their activities are shady or if they are suspected of having a hand in the terrorism that prevails in J&K, they must be hounded, exposed and tried in super special courts. Remember, lung cancer cannot be cured by smoking another pack of cigarettes.

The real battle over J&K is with Pakistan. An important weapon in that battle is to tell the world loudly and clearly, over and over again, that we are the ones who have been wronged, right from 1947 -- from when Pakistan has refused to vacate the chunk of our legally acquired territory which they had seized with a bloody invasion.

Another mini-battle is within J&K -- with those who rule the state without any accountability worth the name. By respecting legitimate political opposition at all times, by encouraging the local people to demand their rights from the state government without fear, and by other means at its command, Delhi must bring home to Srinagar the critical fact that progressive and good governance alone will silence the separatists once and for all. The people's voice recorded by the recent MORI poll is a pointer to that. Committees of the JJK type are simply so much hot air and waste of time.

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The J&K election

Arvind Lavakare