CHAPTER 4 INDIA AND PAKISTAN
‘There is no solution other than peaceful negotiations to issues, including problems in our region … Whosoever is in power in Pakistan, we’re interested in unity and peace.’
Manmohan Singh, June 2007
ON FRIDAY 1 June, 2007, Islamic militants ran towards an Indian paramilitary post in the Kashmiri village of Nihama and lobbed in a hand grenade, killing 3 Indian soldiers, and wounding 22 more. Elsewhere in Kashmir the same day, Kashmiri separatists opened fire on a police post in the village of Sheeri, killing a policeman. And in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, that morning, a bomb went off as an army vehicle passed by, wounding 15 soldiers.
Days like these are not rare in Kashmir. Low-level conflicts have been going on here since 1989, when Kashmiri separatist insurgency erupted. Over 68,000 people have died in the conflict, mostly civilians, and the Indian portion of Kashmir is the most heavily militarised state in the world, with over 700,000 Indian troops stationed here pretty much permanently, looking after a population of barely 8 million. There are military guard posts dotted along every major road at quite short intervals, and it feels very much like an occupied country – even though it is, actually, a part of India.
The weary soldiers, very few of whom want to be here, have to deal with the continual small-scale attacks of more than a dozen different rebel groups – some Kashmiri separatist groups, fighting for an independent Kashmir, some cross-border Islamic raiders from Pakistan campaigning for Kashmir to be brought within Pakistan. But that’s not why they’re here. This massive troop presence is because this is the flashpoint with Pakistan – sometimes said to be the most dangerous nuclear flashpoint in the world, since both India and Pakistan are armed to the teeth with nuclear missiles whose prime target is each other.
The Muslim problem
It all dates back to days of the Raj, like so many problems in the subcontinent. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, as the Congress party campaigned for a better deal from the British, the British did their best to separate out the Muslims, on the principle of divide and rule. Afterwards, the British claimed that the divisions between Muslims and Hindus were always there, but at the very least they did nothing to heal the wounds. The British did their best to discourage Muslims from joining the Congress party and to encourage them to join the Muslim League led by Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Jinnah never had the support of more than a minority of elite Muslims, but the British treated him as if he was a spokesperson for all India’s Muslims. When in 1939, Britain declared war on India’s behalf – not giving them the chance to make the choice for themselves as they probably would have done – all the Congress state governments resigned in protest. Soon after, Jinnah, who was with the British on the war, proclaimed a separate Pakistan in Lahore.
Conflict between Congress and the Muslim League simmered away throughout the Second World War, and while Congress campaigned for Britain to ‘Quit India’, Jinnah campaigned for his idea of ‘two nations’ – India and Pakistan. By the time Independence came after the war, the idea of Pakistan, a separate country for India’s Muslim minority, was well into the mix. As tensions mounted and clashes between Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus in northern India became violent, the British began to see along with Jinnah that it was in the interests of the Muslims to have a Partition of this kind. While Gandhi argued desperately for India to remain united, Nehru became persuaded that to accept Partition might be the only way to halt the dreadful and escalating violence. So India was to be split into Hindu dominated India and Muslim dominated Pakistan.
Scattered faith
The problem was, of course that less than half of India’s Muslims actually lived in Pakistan. They were scattered widely throughout India, more numerous in some places, less in others. So which states would belong to Pakistan and which to India? Jinnah had anticipated a Pakistan stretching right across northern India, through the Panjab, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar into Bengal. But Muslims were in a minority in both Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and they were very quickly taken out of the mix. More contentious still were Panjab and Bengal. Bengal’s eastern half was Muslim dominated; in Panjab, it was the western half that was predominantly Muslim. Bengal was simply split in two, and a massive exodus of refugees soon began to flow both ways – Muslims into East Bengal and Hindus into the West, which included Calcutta. It was a terrible event that ruined many lives, but yet more tragic was what happened in Panjab, where the west was 60 per cent Muslim, and the east was over 60 per cent Hindu and Sikh. Here, Muslims were driven out from the east or simply murdered to make room for the incoming Sikhs and Hindus, and Hindus and Sikhs were driven out or murdered in the west to make way for the east’s Muslims. East to west and west to east some ten million people were harried, beaten and killed, and some half a million or maybe more died as the joy of Independence very quickly became replaced by the pain of Partition.
Even with Panjab and Bengal divided, there remained regions to allocate. Britain’s last viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, persuaded Nehru that the princes – the maharajahs and nizams – of these regions should be allowed to decide for themselves which way they would go. Mostly, the decision was easy, but in some places a Muslim prince ruled over a majority Hindu population, and vice versa. Muslim princes in Hindu-majority Junagadh and Hyderabad were on the horns of a dilemma. The nizam of Hyderabad, right in the heart of southern India, hesitated until Indian troops marched into help him make his decision. The maharajah of Junagadh was similarly persuaded. Pakistan was not so happy to accept the loss of Junagadh, and it remains disputed territory today, though not one that either side has thought worth fighting for.
THE CREATION OF BANGLADESH
When East Pakistan was created in 1947 out of East Bengal, Bengalis believed they were due a certain degree of representation, status and investment in the new Pakistan. They had at least expected their language to be respected. East Bengal had, after all, a huge population compared with most Pakistani states, and in Dacca they had a city to compare with any in the West. But when the Hindu Bengali administrators left East Bengal, Muslim Panjabis from West Pakistan simply moved in to take their place, and East Pakistan began to be treated, essentially, as a colony of West Pakistan, and Bengali language was omitted from all official documents. Riots broke out as Bengalis protested, and in the 1954 elections, the Muslim League, the ruling party from West Pakistan, was booted out in favour of a Bengali alliance headed by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League.
The Pakistan government in Islamabad immediately suspended the Bengali government and General Ayub Khan took over direct rule in what was effectively a dictatorship. After the embarrassment of the 1965 IndoPak war, however, Ali Bhutto in the West and Sheikh Mujibur in the East gained enough momentum to launch democratic programmes that would effectively separate West and East. Bhutto and Sheikh Mujibur were immediately thrown in jail, and as protesters took to the streets Ayub Khan’s successor General Yahya Khan imposed martial law. Then the US began to apply pressure and Yahya Khan was forced to agree to an end to military control and a return to civilian rule. Elections brought Bhutto a majority in the West; and Sheikh Mujibur’s Awami League a thumping win in the East. At once, Mujibur declared the independence of Bangladesh, and Yahya Khan sent the Pakistani army in to bring the Bangladeshis into line by force. But the enthusiasm of the Pakistani troops was low, and with the help of a few Indian divisions, the Bangladeshi people brought them to surrender in just a few days. In January 1972, Sheikh Mujibur became the first prime minister of Bangladesh.
Kashmir divided
The flashpoint was Kashmir. In Kashmir, there was a Hindu maharajah and a Muslim majority over much of the state – though there were some Hindu areas, and some, like Ladakh, that were essentially Buddhist. Kashmir is right next to Pakistan, so could easily have been joined on. But this mountainous state towers over the northern Indian plain so dominantly that India would have felt deeply vulnerable if it had become part of Pakistan. Moreover, Nehru had a deep personal commitment to Kashmir, since his family came from there. Here, too, the maharajah prevaricated over which way to swing, until both India and Pakistan suspected that what he really wanted was to keep Kashmir completely separate. Then, in October 1947, as Pakistani Islamic guerrillas advanced on Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar, he made his decision and joined India. Immediately, Nehru sent in troops to defend Srinagar. The first IndoPak war began as thousands of Pakistan volunteers poured into Kashmir to do battle.
As the conflict escalated, the United Nations (UN) negotiated a ceasefire in 1948 and set up a dividing line right across Kashmir, called the Line of Control or LOC, with Pakistan controlling one side and India the other. The LOC has been in place now for almost 60 years, yet it remains simply a ceasefire line. Neither side accepts it as a legal border – and so neither side has any qualms about overstepping it every now and then. India’s case for holding all of Kashmir rests on the Maharajah’s agreement, and also the endorsement of Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah, the leader of a Kashmiri populist movement; Pakistan’s on the fact that the majority of Kashmiris are Muslim. In the UN agreement of 1948, India agreed to put the decision over Kashmir’s future to a plebiscite of its people – but on condition that Pakistan should withdraw entirely from Kashmir first. Pakistan won’t do this, and India won’t hold the plebiscite until it does.
What do they want?
There is no doubt that India, in many ways, is happy with the status quo. It would be quite happy to see the LOC made into a permanent border. Pakistan, on the other hand, would not, for it would mean leaving a majority Muslim population trapped, as they see it, inside India – and an artificial border that makes no sense geographically, culturally or politically. As for the Kashmiris, many would undoubtedly like independence. The Pakistan side of Kashmir is referred to as Azad (Free) Kashmir, but that does not necessarily mean that all Kashmiris want to merge with Pakistan.
Kashmiris on the Indian side have undoubtedly been upset by the often heavy-handed approach of the Indians. In the late 1980s, for instance, the all too-obvious rigging of the Kashmiri state assembly by New Delhi coming on the back of a long trail of abuse by Indian troops on local people spurred a number of separatist groups into a violent campaign for independence. Very soon, however, many of these separatist groups were infiltrated and supplanted by radical Islamicists flooding in from Pakistan, from Afghanistan and even from Chechnya and Saudi Arabia. Throughout the 1990s, militant separatist and Islamic insurgents made frequent forays across the LOC from Azad Pakistan to harry the Indian troops.
THE INDOPAK WARS
Since the first in 1947 over Kashmir, which ended with the UN ruling, there have been two other IndoPak wars, in 1965 and 1971, and one major skirmish, in 1999. In the first of these wars, in 1965, Pakistan’s leader General Ayub Khan, emboldened both by potential support from Mao’s China and by the death of Nehru, sent Pakistani tanks scuttering across the Rann of Kutch salt flats to lay claim to some disputed territory on the Sind–Gujarat border. Although a ceasefire was quickly arranged, Ayub Khan was so chuffed with himself that as soon as the monsoon finished that year he launched a major offensive against the Indian border. His units made real progress in the Rajasthan desert, but the main push up the Jammu–Srinagar road into Kashmir met with stiff opposition from the Indians – so stiff that Indian tanks drove them back almost to Lahore. As both sides claimed victory, the Soviet Union negotiated some kind of settlement, and things simmered down for a few years, though the Kashmir situation burned in Pakistan’s imagination.
The third IndoPak war, in 1971, erupted over East Pakistan (see here). The fourth skirmish was when a large Pakistani ‘guerilla’ force occupied the Kargil heights on the Indian side of the LOC in 1999 – and was only driven out after four weeks of bloody fighting when Indian infantry stormed the mountain.
KASHMIR’S REBELS
In most troubled areas of the world, there are perhaps a half a dozen militant groups at most. In Kashmir there are dozens, and they are changing all the time. Amid this bewildering array of insurgents, it is difficult to be sure who is who and what exactly they are fighting for. Back in 1987, the most prominent groups were simply Kashmiri militants, protesting against Indian rule, and campaigning for the release of Kashmir from Indian rule. Some used terrorist and guerilla tactics, while others were more peaceful activists. But the withdrawal of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in 1989 left a phalanx of mujahideen fighters in search of a new cause – and many of them came to Kashmir to wage jihad (holy war) here. Other Islamic groups came from Pakistan. So on top of separatist groups such as the Jammu-Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) were layered hardline Islamic terrorist groups such as Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. It was Lashkar-e-Toiba whom the Indians believe were responsible for the bombing of the parliament building in New Delhi in 2001, and Jaish-e-Mohammad who were thought to have attacked the Kashmiri state assembly in October 2002. Lashkar is now thought to have split into two factions, al-Mansurin and al-Nasirin.
Many of the separatist groups come together occasionally under the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), but the APHC covers a wide range of different opinions and strategies, and there is considerable in-fighting. The Islamic groups, meanwhile, often come together under the banner of the United Jihad Council (UJC). The separatist groups tend to be much less extreme in their aims than the Islamic groups. Separatist groups want, essentially, some degree of self-rule for Kashmir. Lashkar-e-Toiba’s professed aim, on the other hand, was to impose Islamic rule over all India. Many of the militant groups are now beginning to distance themselves from the hardliners, and it is perhaps significant that Kashmiris call the more extreme militants ‘foreigners’ and ‘terrorists’, whereas in the past they might have called them ‘freedom fighters’. Groups who totally oppose the peace process between India and Pakistan, such as Syeed Gelani’s Jamaat-e-Islami, are beginning to be seen by many as slightly out of touch with the general feeling – but that hasn’t stopped them sustaining their attacks.
On the brink
Just how actively involved in any of these groups the Pakistani government was remains uncertain, but the Indians were convinced they were deeply implicated. On 13 December 2001, four suicide bombers crashed a car through the gates of New Delhi’s parliament building. Security guards managed to bring the car to a halt just a few metres short of the chamber, where the Lok Sabha was in session, but the bombers blew themselves up, killing 14 people and causing devastation. Prime Minister Vajpayee was incensed and demanded the extradition from Pakistan of terrorist suspects, a halt to the crossing of insurgents over the LOC and the closure of Pakistan-backed terrorist training camps in Azad Kashmir. In response, Pakistani leader General Musharraf was equally incandescent, denying any involvement.
Without hesitation, Vajpayee mobilised India’s gigantic 1.2 million-strong army and deployed almost all of it to Kashmir with a massive movement of soldiers through India on trains on a scale barely matched since the First World War. As the Indians moved in, so Pakistan went on to a military footing, and the two opponents glared at each other over the LOC. The tension mounted as it was rumoured that both sides were arming their nuclear weapons. At any moment, it seemed, a devastating conflict could break out. Frantic diplomatic pressure from the USA, though, finally diffused the crisis, the armies were stood down and hundreds of thousands of Indian troops climbed aboard the trains for the long trek home.
The Kashmir Road Map
Extraordinarily, the episode seemed to have frightened both sides into the need for some kind of accommodation. Peace talks have been going on ever since, though with interruptions. In May 2003, Vajpayee released hundreds of Pakistani detainees and announced that buses would be allowed to cross the border between Delhi and Lahore so that people on both sides could, at long last, visit relatives. Pakistan, in return, agreed to curtail incursions along the LOC and renew sporting links – with the first cricket game in years between the two countries taking place in Karachi in April 2004. Early that year, Vajpayee and Musharraf arranged a summit in the full glare of publicity and were shown smiling together and shaking hands on the world’s TV screens. Meanwhile, Indian government officials began to hold behind the scenes talks with Kashmiri separatist movements.
Progress on the talks is slow, though, and any headway is hard to discern, despite the change from the Hindu hardliner Vajpayee to the more moderate, less involved Sikh Manmohan Singh as India’s prime minister. Indeed, in 2006, the talks were almost derailed altogether by the terrible bomb blasts on trains in Mumbai, which killed 259 people. Interestingly, though, Musharraf was happy to join the general condemnation of the bombing, and peace talks resumed in December 2006.
There are some people who say the Kashmir dispute cannot ever be solved. Pakistan, according to many Indians, has its whole credibility staked on Kashmir. It spends 54 per cent of its gross national product (GNP) on defence (compared with India’s 15 per cent) essentially to counter the threat from India. While Pakistan is under military rule, it will never agree with giving any of Kashmir to India. But if a democratic government took over in Pakistan, its hands would be tied. If a democratic Pakistani government negotiated any real settlement with India, it would be seen by the army as a sign of weakness and so trigger another coup. This is exactly what happened in 1999 when Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s democratic prime minister, agreed to pull back Pakistani troops that were on India’s side of the LOC on the Kargil heights. This concession was the trigger for General Musharraf’s coup, which drove Sharif out.
THE KASHMIR BUS
One of the hard things about the division between the two halves of Kashmir has been the way it has cut across family lines, stranding close relations on either side of the LOC with no possibility of ever meeting. The relaxation in controls following the 2005 earthquake allowed many people to cross to give succour or gain relief, and there were many tearful, happy greetings. Such a welcome initiative it seemed could not be forgotten about altogether once the crisis past. In February 2007, to great excitement, a bus service opened to carry people across the ceasefire line between Srinagar in Indian-controlled Kashmir and Muzaffarabad on the Pakistan side. The bus runs only fortnightly, and seats are limited, but it is seen as a very positive sign. To open the historic Jhelum highway between Srinagar in Indian- controlled Kashmir and Muzaffarabad in the Pakistan- controlled region for the bus to run, Indian and Pakistani soldiers worked together to clear mines and rebuild the damaged bridge over Jhelum.
The way forward?
Nevertheless, there are signs of movement. It is beginning to become apparent that while the hardline elite on both sides of the border see the situation as fearful, and do their best to paint the other side as darkly as can be, the same is not true of ordinary Indians and Pakistanis. As cross-border journeys begin to increase, people are beginning to make friends and find families in both countries, with a cordiality that would sometimes shock their political masters. Moreover, India’s economic progress is beginning to make the country seem a less unattractive place to both Kashmiris and other Pakistanis. Some of this feeling is undoubtedly getting back to the politicians, and there seems some real substance to the rumours that both countries may be willing to let Kashmir go, just a little bit.
When Musharraf and Manmohan Singh met to resume the peace talks in January 2007, Musharraf suggested that Pakistan would give up its claim to Kashmir if India withdrew its troops from Kashmir and give Kashmir independence. Manmohan Singh responded by saying that borders could not be changed – but might be made irrelevant. Just what this means remains to be seen. Manmohan Singh made it clear that he wants barriers between the two countries to dissolve. ‘I dream of a day when one can have breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul. This is how my forefathers lived. That is how I want our grandchildren to live.’
Despite the turbulence in Pakistan after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the election and arrival in office of the Pakistan’s People Party actually signalled a resumption in the peace talks. Soon after Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani took office in March 2008, Manmohan Singh congratulated him and expressed the hope that India– Pakistan relations could be their best ever. Then, in early April, Pakistan’s new PPP foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi insisted that, ‘Pakistan is a sovereign country and we wish the just and equitable resolution of the Kashmir issue.’ Peace talks were scheduled to begin again towards the end of April.