Ethnic Conflicts & Terrorism in Sri Lanka

How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/

ABSTRACT *

This article examines peace initiatives in the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan, with particular attention to their significance following the revocation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution in August 2019. After outlining the history of the territorial dispute, the ethnic and religious diversity of the region and the human cost documented in official and human rights reporting, the author considers what the constitutional change may mean for the population, including the position of displaced Kashmiri Pandits, property rights of women and the demands of Ladakh. A central section addresses the erosion of Kashmiriyat as a shared identity and its replacement by an us versus them logic on all sides. The article then surveys civil society peace initiatives, including the Peace Bus organised by the Women’s Initiative for Peace in South Asia, the South Asia Free Media Association, the Pakistan India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy, and the Pakistan Peace Coalition, and concludes that peace initiators have a decisive role in restoring confidence and working with both governments beyond political objectives. The terminology and characterisations reflect the author’s own perspective; the editorial position of this journal is neutral as between the states and communities concerned.

KEYWORDS *

Kashmir, India, Pakistan, Article 370, Kashmiriyat, Line of Control, Kashmiri Pandits, peace initiatives, civil society, people to people dialogue, identity, Ladakh

INTRODUCTION

This Article is exploring the peace initiation by the government, people, and organizations in the conflict between India and Pakistan, over the territorial dispute of Kashmir. How the people of Kashmir are affected by this territorial conflict; and what influence the peace initiators could do in the process of bringing democracy to the people of Kashmir is examined, particularly in the backdrop of removal of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which granted special status to the territory of Kashmir.

Territorial disputes over the Kashmir region glinted through the three major India- Pakistan wars in 1947, 1965, and 1999. Auxiliary in the border clashes that began in late 2016 and continued into 2018 killed dozens and displaced thousands of civilians on both sides of the Line of Control. Pakistan is more concerned to segregate Kashmir from India, for democratic rights; but, India is more concerned about cross-border terrorism. From the partition of India in 1947, the conflict in Kashmir continues today, involving three nuclear powers, China, India, and Pakistan, who are in a dispute over the territory of Kashmir. The conflict is set against the backdrop of the Himalayan Mountains and valleys and involves a mélange of languages, religions, and ethnicities, notably Kashmiris, Dards, Ladakhis, Dogras, Hanjis, Gujjars, and Bakarwals. The current scenario of the territorial conflict in Kashmir is a conflict between India on one side, and the other two countries are Pakistan and China, and the Kashmiri separatists and insurgents from Pakistan occupied Kashmir. There are some groups that support the complete independence of Kashmir, while others seek Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan. The conflict in Kashmir has strong Islamic elements among the insurgents, with many of the “ultras” identifying with “jihadist” movements and supported by such identified insurgents.

MAIN CORPUS

Casualties in Kashmir Conflicts

According to the official figures released in Jammu & Kashmir assembly, in 2009, there were 3400 disappearance cases and the conflict has left more than 47000 people dead which also includes 7000 police personnel.

Human Rights Watch (2014), reports that “Behind the Kashmir conflict, abuses by the Indian Security forces and Militant groups continue”. Islamic separatists, militants are accused of violence and serious human rights violations. Summary executions, rape, and torture are reported daily. Kidnapping and killing of civil servants and suspected informants are happening, and militant groups claim responsibilities for the same. Human Rights Watch alleged that thousands of civilian Kashmiri Hindus have been killed over the past 10 years by Islamic military organizations or Muslim mobs. In the struggle for Kashmir, Burhan Wani, a poster boy of militancy, was killed by security forces in July 2016, the government failed to control the protests that broke out. The ensuing violence resulted in the deaths of more than 96 people, with thousands being injured and the Kashmir remained paralyzed for months.

Article 370 and Peace initiatives in Kashmir

In August 2019, the Government of India introduced the Jammu & Kashmir reorganization Bill 2019 in the Rajya Sabha and moved a resolution to scrap Article 370 from the constitution of India and bifurcate the State of Jammu & Kashmir into the Union Territories called as Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh. However, the removal of Article 370 from the Indian Constitution by the Government of India is to bring peace or it is only a legal integration of the territory of Kashmir to India is the moot question. On the positive side, if the decision helps in resettling the uprooted Kashmiri Pandits, ethnic minorities in Kashmir, back home, it will be a big win. Most of these Pandits want to go back from the existing disorder of living in abject conditions in refugee camps in Jammu and elsewhere. Ending the discrimination against women deprived of property rights after marrying outside the valley is also a welcome step, from the reorganization activity by the government. The decision to divide the state has been welcomed by Ladakh. They have been demanding UT status for a while.

Historically, Kashmiri Muslims have preferred greater autonomy and sovereignty for the region have even proposed. Juxtaposed to it, 55000 families, mostly Hindus, had not been granted citizenship despite settling down in the state after partition, and were unable to own land or apply to government jobs. Hence, a minority of the non-Muslims who live in the region would like to see the state fully integrated into India

Global Peace Messenger Ms. Malala urged the people and government in this context as “The people of Kashmir have lived in conflict since I was a child since my mother and father were children since my grandparents were young. For seven decades the children of Kashmir have grown up amidst violence”.

Us versus Them

“Us versus them”. The young generation of Kashmiris who grew up in an era of violence is largely ignorant of the true meaning of Kashmiriyat, having been raised instead in the binary ideology of ‘us versus them’. Secondly, a dominant and vocal section of the Pandits after migration, came to be identified with ultra–right-wing organizations that similarly de-emphasized the Kashmiriyat component of their identity. For their part, the Kashmiri Muslims stressed more on their ‘Islamic ‘ identity rather than on their ” Kashmiri” identity; they saw themselves as part of a global Islamic Community.

Peace Initiatives

PEACE BUS – Peace Bus organized by the Women’s Initiative for peace in South Asia (WIPSA). It involved Indian activists traveling from New Delhi to Lahore in March 2000 and subsequently Pakistani activists traveling from Lahore to New Delhi in May 2000. The ‘Peace Bus’ activists were able to challenge the adversely pretentious identities and perceptions of the ‘enemy’; and provided a rare occasion for free dialogue, relationship building, and deliberations on problems that pandemic to the bilateral relationship between two countries.

SAFMA (South Asia Free Media Association) was formulated to promote interactions amongst journalists in South Asia, especially between journalists from India & Pakistan. SAFMA efforts resulted in the ‘Pakistan – India Parliamentarians, Journalists, and Experts Conference in Islamabad in August 2003’. Also, stimulated people–to–people interactions between citizens via their Mumbai- Karachi- Mumbai exchange, the Punjab-Punjab exchange; and historical initiative to bring Indian and Pakistani journalists together in Kashmir.

PIPFPD (Pakistan- India People’s Forum for Peace & Democracy), works for de-escalation of violence and killings between two countries. Frequently urges for ceasefire agreements initiate for dialogue between governments, including the people’s organizations and civil society of Kashmir.

PPC (The Pakistan Peace Coalition), is a civil society initiative for peace launched in September 1998, following the nuclear tests carried out by India & Pakistan. The PPC comprises numerous pro-peace organizations, groups, and individuals from various parts of Pakistan. They share the common goal against nuclear arms and work for peace in South Asia. PPC works with regional movements and organizations on broader themes of reduction in defense expenditure to promote human development in the two countries.

SUMMARY *

The article’s central observation is that the Kashmir conflict is not only territorial but has become a conflict of identities. Kashmiriyat, the shared regional culture that once bound the communities of the valley across religious lines, has eroded on every side: among a generation raised in violence, among displaced Pandits whose political representation has hardened, and among Kashmiri Muslims for whom religious identity has displaced regional identity. Against this background the author places the constitutional change of August 2019, whose consequences for the population remain open, and the record of civil society peace initiatives, which have repeatedly opened channels between the two societies when official relations were frozen.

CONCLUSION

The Peace initiators’ role is decisive at this critical juncture to reassure and reinforce the true meaning of Kashmiriat, and the government of India to work for Kashmiris to bring the democratic rights to people of Kashmir, and to ensure them that the Kashmiriyat ethnicity and culture is not in threat because of the termination of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. Promoting and developing people consensus and confidence in the State to see significant improvement in the lives of ordinary Kashmiri can stop recent and anger, and the role of peace initiators’ and messengers to work with the governments of India and Pakistan beyond political goals can bring peace, happiness, and prosperity to the people in the territory of Kashmir.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

The initiatives the author catalogues share a feature that explains both their value and their limits. Every one of them, the bus journeys, the journalists’ exchanges, the civil society forums, was built between Indians and Pakistanis. Kashmiris themselves appear in these accounts mainly as the subject of the conversation rather than as parties to it. This mirrors the structure of the official process, in which two states negotiate about a territory whose inhabitants are represented by neither, and it is the single most consequential gap in the peace architecture described here.

Correcting it does not require resolving the sovereignty question, which is not resolvable in the near term and need not be attempted first. What can be attempted is a process in which Kashmiris across the Line of Control speak with each other and are heard by both governments: intra Kashmiri dialogue including Muslims of the valley, Pandits in displacement, Ladakhis, Gujjars, Dogras and communities on the Pakistani administered side, on the questions that concern them daily rather than on final status. Divided families, trade across the Line, movement, education, the fate of the disappeared and the conditions of return for those displaced are all negotiable now, and each is a matter on which agreement changes lives immediately.

The author’s emphasis on Kashmiriyat identifies where the deepest work lies, and it is worth being precise about what such work requires. A shared identity that has eroded cannot be restored by appeals to it; it is rebuilt, if at all, through practices that make it real again. Joint cultural and historical projects that treat the valley’s composite heritage as belonging to all its communities, contact between young people who have never met a member of the other community except as an image, and above all the return of the displaced under conditions they themselves consider safe and dignified, negotiated with them rather than announced for them, are the substance of that work. Return imposed as a political achievement produces enclaves; return negotiated between communities produces neighbours.

Two conditions determine whether any of this is possible. The first is a genuinely open space for civil society, since dialogue requires people who can travel, meet, publish and disagree without penalty, and no peace initiative of the kind described in this article can function under communication restrictions or the detention of interlocutors. The second is accountability for abuses, which the article records as attributed to security forces and militant groups alike. Where grievance has no lawful channel, it finds unlawful ones, and impartial investigation of allegations against all parties is therefore not an obstacle to reconciliation but its precondition.

Finally, the wider bilateral relationship should not be allowed to hold every other question hostage. Trade, water management under the Indus arrangements, cricket, cultural exchange and cooperation on disaster response have all functioned at moments when the political relationship was at its worst, and each maintains the contacts through which a future agreement will eventually have to travel. In a conflict now in its eighth decade, keeping such channels open is not a substitute for a settlement but the means by which one remains conceivable.

* Added by the WMO Editorial Team

REFERENCES

Raj Chengappa, The Road to ‘Naya Kashmir’, INDIA TODAY , (Oct 12, 2019, 11.00 AM) https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/cover-story/story/20190909-the-road-to-naya-kashmir-1592959-2019-08-30.

Ramnik Mohan, Indo –Pak People-to-People Peace Efforts need a Close Look, COUNTER CURRENTS, ( Oct 10, 2019, 10.40 AM)https://countercurrents.org/2019/08/indo-pak-people-to-people-peace-efforts-need-a-close-look

B.M. Kutty, Pakistan- India Relations:- Non-governmental Initiative for Peace, PAKISTAN HORIZON, Vol.57, No.3, 41-53( July 2004)

Jaibeer Ahmad, Will the removal of Article 370 bringing peace? ECONOMIC TIMES, ( Oct 07, 2019, 08.40 AM)https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/will-the-removal-of-article-370-bring-peace/articleshow/70622110.cms

Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team

United Nations Security Council Resolutions 47 (1948) and 91 (1951) on the India Pakistan question.

The Simla Agreement between India and Pakistan, 2 July 1972, and the Lahore Declaration, 21 February 1999.

The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019 (Act No. 34 of 2019), India, and the Constitutional Order of 5 August 2019.

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (2018 and 2019). Reports on the situation of human rights in Kashmir, Geneva.

Human Rights Watch, reports on Jammu and Kashmir, New York.

Bose, S. (2003). Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Schofield, V. (2010). Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War (3rd edition). I.B. Tauris, London.