The successful completion of free and fair elections gives India a powerful weapon to counter Pakistan’s propaganda on Kashmir.
NEW DELHI: It matters little to the world which parties form the government in Jammu & Kashmir. But the successful completion of free and fair elections with record participation from the citizenry gives India a powerful weapon to counter Pakistan’s propaganda on Kashmir.
This will be specially important when US president-elect Barak Obama takes over next month and Islamabad tries to push Kashmir onto his agenda. The Pakistani Army’s decision to move troops from the Afghan border to the frontier with India is a way of telling the incoming US administration that Kashmir cannot be put on the backburner as India and president Asif Ali Zardari would like to.
India, however, can use the election numbers effectively to prove that despite the claims of the separatists, the ordinary Kashmiri is concerned more about good governance than azadi. “We have a tremendous instrument at our disposal and if we use it effectively the gains will be enormous,” strategic affairs analyst Ajai Sahni said. “The question is how we use it. India has always been defensive on Kashmir when we have no need to be so.”
Sahni said India should use the positive outcome of the election “constantly and aggressively” by juxtaposing it against Pakistan’s own dismal record. “Democracy in Kashmir is much more real and transparent than in any part of Pakistan, where elected governments are not in control and the army continues to call the shots even when a military dictator is no longer in control,” Sahni said.
Analysts warn, however, that it would be a mistake to get carried away by the euphoria of the election. That people have come out and voted in large numbers does not mean the dreams of azadi have vanished. But the elections do give the Centre a great opportunity to begin a dialogue with the Kashmiris.
The fact remains that the elections were largely violence-free because Pakistan under Pervez Musharraf had turned off the terrorist tap. Pakistan had started feeling that its involvement in Kashmir was not paying the dividends it had expected. Moreover, the international community was focused on Kashmir and realised that most of the terrorist attacks could be traced back to groups supported by and based in Pakistan. That is when Musharraf decided to look for out-of-the-box solutions. The back-channel diplomacy progressed well, but prime minister Manmohan Singh did not believe it was politically feasible at the time to seize the opportunity. The election result may give New Delhi the chance to look at it afresh.
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