The Kashmir discourse in the West always takes the form of an Indian discourse and a Pakistani discourse. Both are mainstream statist narratives.  A true independent Kashmiri narrative, a Kashmiri perspective has yet to take root and this is lamentable. Recognising the importance of such a discourse to the world, eight scholars in the US formed an ad hoc working group at New York University’s Institute of Public Knowledge to formulate a policy paper for the Obama administration. This working group while trying to cultivate contacts in Washington DC to pursue policy is also meeting US senators.

Today, Kashmir a nuclear flashpoint, is being watched by all those who matter in the East and the West. Many newspapers, those published in Kashmir and elsewhere focusing on the Kashmir issue are read globally. The younger generation of Kashmiris in particular need to revive the independent cultural discourse which many state sponsored agencies have tried to snuff out. Looking back on my growing years for in Kashmir I recall I was well protected and had little perspective of the ground realities. In later years and while working on my manuscript I gained a proper perspective thanks to meeting people from all walks of life. A great deal of literature on Kashmir was available, though much of the published works usually explore the “official elitist” history which is devoid of the true perspective. On the other hand non Kashmiri scholars have the tendency to give an ethno-religious touch to Kashmiri identity, which is also unfortunate.

 The roots of the present turmoil go back to the alienation of people towards democratic institutions after developments on the political landscape of the region that began in the late 1980s gave them the feeling that their democratic aspirations were not being respected. The world knows what happened in 1953 with Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah being deposed, while in 1984 a successful coup was engineered against the then Chief Minister Farook Abdullah. Regrettably these challenges failed to enrich the ideological content of the National Conference which has been left bereft of proper direction since 1987.

 Yet those critical of Sheikh Abdullah over his apparent caving in to India following the 1975 accord with Indira Gandhi would do well to remember that his action was in the context of a weakened Pakistan after the fall of Dhaka when its stand vis a vis Kashmir had changed. Pakistan viewed India as a mighty military power that could manage intervention into that country and slice it into two, thus creating Bangladesh. If Zulficar Bhutto was unwilling to support any demand for self determination, there was no way one could expect Sheikh Abdullah to withstand this pressure. Later one even saw Pakistan surrendering before India at the Simla conference agreeing to convert the Ceasefire Line into the Line of Control.

 Going back to the roots of the conflict, the torch of cultural pride and political awakening in the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir was lit by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, a prominent member of the Fateh Kadal Reading Room Party in 1931. For the first time in decades the Kashmiri people, particularly the Muslim population, acknowledged the leadership of a man who overtly challenged the hitherto impregnable authority of the Maharaja. They responded to his revolutionary politics with a zeal that was previously unknown. Abdullah’s inspirational speeches, concern for the well-being of the masses, commitment to the cause of freedom, and charisma motivated the Kashmiri people to throw off the yoke of oppression and docility. Despite the persecution, Abdullah continued to vociferously fight for the political, economic, and religious rights of the Kashmiri people.

Regardless of the ongoing political manoeuvrings, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah created a legitimate forum for himself and the State’s Muslim population by founding the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference in 1932.

In order to redress the grievances aired by Kashmiri Muslims the British government sent the Glancy Commission to Srinagar. The investigations made by the Commission led it to ask the Maharaja for an elected legislative assembly in order to redress the alienation of the Muslim population. But the Maharaja’s devious policies and unwillingness to deploy quasi-democratic measures caused the uprising of 1933, which was quenched with unwarranted violence. Subsequently, a civil disobedience movement was organized by Abdullah and his ally, Chaudhri Ghulam Abbas, but the Maharaja was adamant in his refusal to relent. The flames of revolution, however couldn’t be doused and the first democratic election was held in the State in 1934.

The era of political and social upheaval in the State, between 1930 and 1960, invoked an assertion of a revolutionary self, invigorated with unfaltering cultural pride rejecting the bondage that deters it from soaring high.

The articulation of the religious and economic rights of Muslim subjects by Abdullah in the 1930s revived regional sentiment with an unparalled ferocity. In the years prior to 1947 the rallying banner and political ideology of the National Conference mobilized a collective sense of pride in regional identity.  Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah had the political will and astuteness to create an efficiently organized network of young men who were committed to the party’s ideology. Abdullah’s emphasis on a shared Muslim identity which brought Kashmiri nationalism out of the dark chambers of tyranny with the promise of social and political enfranchisement was a light at the end of the tunnel for an abject, debased, and politically disenfranchised people. In order to align itself with the purportedly secular and nationalist Indian National congress, the younger generation of Muslim Conference leaders, including Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, and Maulana Sayeed Masoodi, strove to transform a communally oriented political movement into a secular movement for political, economic, and social reforms. Sheikh Abdullah and his political organization fought tooth and nail against Dogra autocracy, and demanded that the Treaty of Amritsar be revoked and monarchical rule ousted. He described the Dogra monarchy as a microcosm of colonial brutality and the National Conference’s Quit Kashmir movement as a ramification of the larger Indian struggle for independence. At the annual session of the National Conference in 1945, the unity and integrity of India was recognized and the demand for India’s independence and the right of self-determination for the various ethnic-cultural groups in the country was propounded.

All through his political life Abdullah remained consistent in his antipathy toward the autocratic Dogra monarchy, feudalism, Punjabi hegemony, and communalism. The populist measures employed by Abdullah’s National Conference enabled it to win the support of the majority of the Muslim populace in the valley.

Despite the support that the Quit Kashmir movement launched by Abdullah’s cadre received from various regional councils and state Congress committees, the movement was brutally crushed tactically and militarily. On May 20, 1946, speaking at a public rally at the Shahi Masjid (Mosque), Srinagar, Abdullah thunderously condemned the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar which had legitimized the Dogra possession of Kashmir. In addition to the brutal opposition that the National Conference encountered from the Dogra regime, it also faced vociferous resistance from a section of the Muslim Conference leadership. This leadership vehemently opposed any attempt to create a syncretism that would bridge the divide between Hindus and Muslims.

As the National Conference made its support of secular principles and its affiliation with the National Congress more forceful, the gulf between the upholders of secularism and the guardians of an essential Muslim identity became wider. Despite its tenacious hold on secular principles, the National Conference found itself gasping for breath in the quagmire created by the maharajah’s duplicitous policies. The communally oriented polices created a rift between the Muslim leadership of the National Conference and their Hindu colleagues.

The rift within the organization was further widened by Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s insistence that Abdullah extend his support to the Muslim League and disavow every principle he had fought for. Abdullah’s refusal to do so sharpened the awareness of the Muslim League so much that it would be unable to consolidate its political position without his support. Initially, the Congress ardently supported the Quit Kashmir movement and reinforced the position of the National Conference on plebiscite. The Congress advised the maharajah to gauge the public mood right up to 1947 and accordingly accede to either India o r Pakistan. Nehru’s argument that Kashmir was required to validate the secular credentials of India was a later development. Jinnah refuted the notion that Pakistan required Kashmir to vindicate its theocratic status and did not make an argument for the inclusion of Kashmir in the new nation-state of Pakistan right up to the eve of Partition.   The Congress’ unrelenting support and furtherance of Partition, however, eroded the notion of a united India.

Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, on the contrary, was ambivalent about the Partition because he didn’t agree with the rationale of the two-nation theory. He was equally ambivalent about acceding to India because he felt that if that choice were made, Pakistan would always create juggernauts in the political and economic progress of Kashmir. As for the idea of declaring Kashmir an independent state, he recognized that “to keep a small state independent while it was surrounded by bi g powers was impossible.” But Abdullah did categorically declare that, “Neither the friendship of Pandit Nehru nor that of Congress or their support of our freedom movement would have any influence upon our decision if we felt that the interests of four million Kashmiris lay in our accession to Pakistan.”

On 27 October Abdullah told a correspondent of an Indian newspaper, The Times of India, that the tribal invasion was a pressurizing attempt to terrorize the people of the State and, therefore, needed to be strongly rebuffed. On 2 November, 1947, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, reiterated his government’s pledge given not only to the people of Kashmir but to the international community to hold a referendum in Indian and Pakistani administered Jammu and Kashmir under the auspices of a world body like the United Nations to determine whether the populace preferred to be affiliated with India or Pakistan. Nehru emphasized this commitment several times at public forums over the next few years.

The United Nations reinforced Nehru’s pledge of holding a plebiscite in Kashmir and in 1948 the U.N. Security Council established the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) to play the role of mediator in the Kashmir issue. Abdullah made some controversial observations in an interview with the London Observer. He voiced his concern over the increased vulnerability and instability of J & K between two countries that were hostile toward each other. Abdullah expressed his solicitude over the political and economic hardships that the location of the state would cause its populace. The only viable option, according to him, would be for J & K to have a neutral status vis-à-vis both India and Pakistan. However, because of the ruptured politics within J & K given the diverse political, religious, and ethnic affiliations within it, the sovereign and autonomous status of the state would need to be acknowledged and guaranteed not just by India and Pakistan but by the United Nations and world powers as well.

Rather than demand a pulverization of the insurgency and a cessation of infiltration, the people of Indian and Pakistani administered Kashmir would favour resumption of dialogues with the militant groups in the state. In order to protect the autonomy of the state, Article 370, which, has undergone steady erosion, would need to be bolstered to guarantee Kashmiri autonomy. The autonomy option is a lot more complex than it is made out to be by the plethora of tantalizing proposals laid out by the Indian intelligentsia. As opposed to various autonomy proposals, the notion of independence for either part or all of the former princely state is derided as impractical, economically destructive, and dangerous in terms of arousing the monstrous passion of communalism in the rest of the Indian subcontinent. Robert R. Wirsing sums up the repugnance of independence for part or all of Jammu and Kashmir in both India and Pakistan: “Kashmiri self-determination, . . ., has never meant for Pakistanis that Kashmiris had a right to anymore than a bifold choice of destinies. The seeming unpopularity of the independence option among both Indians and Pakistanis leaves the Kashmiri Muslims as its only consistent advocate.” Would such seemingly non-negotiable antipathy expressed by politically and militarily powerful players allow for the implementation of UN resolutions by holding a free, fair, and internationally monitored plebiscite in the state? But that, to me, is the option worth fighting for.

The insurgency in Kashmir, India and Pakistan’s ideological differences, their political intransigence could result in the eruption of a future crisis. The atmosphere of paranoia and mistrust is exacerbated by the frightening attempts of Hindu fundamentalist groups to rewrite Indian history and the recasting of Pakistani history by Islamist organization, which are efforts to radically redefine Indian and Pakistani societies in the light of ritualistic Hinduism and Islam, respectively.

Such propaganda to further narrow agendas makes it impossible to hold informed debates in issues of political and religious import. Jingoistic textbooks and biased interpretations negate the possibility of reaching a national consensus regarding the Kashmir conflict.

In the wake of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in December 2007, the politically chaotic climate of Pakistan, the bellig erence of the military, and the tenacious control of fundamentalist forces basking in the glories of a misplaced religious fervor stoked by a besmirched leadership, India and Pakistan need to produce visionary leaders capable of looking beyond the expediency of warfare, conventional or otherwise. The emerging leadership in Pakistan cannot douse the conflagration that threatens to annihilate the entire region by flippantly shelving the Kashmir issue for future generations to resolve. The besieged populace of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir cannot remain beholden to a leadership that doles out valueless crumbs to laypeople while dividing the spoils amongst themselves. Our only feasible future is the reclamation of our own space—political, cultural, and economic. If East Timor and Kosovo have been able to carve their own space, why not Jammu and Kashmir? Plebiscite is still a viable option.

Dr.Nyla Ali Khan is Associate Professor of English and Multiculturalism at the University of Nebraska-Kearney and can be reached at: khanna@unk.edu