Kashmir is bracing itself for another crackdown. The Modi government has made it clear that it wants to take back control from the stone-pelting youth out on the streets.
A security official told the Business Standard “Sooner or later, we will have to retake control in South Kashmir. The longer we wait, the more emboldened the protesters become, the more force will be required to deal with them”.
What is bewildering analysts is the persistence of Delhi’s hardline strategy. More than 80 civilians have been shot dead, many blinded and over 10,000 reportedly injured. There is no attempt to scale back the response of security forces. Indian governments have brutally put down unrest before such as in 2010 when 120 youth were killed – but this time, Delhi’s reaction seems to be crafted for larger purposes.
To establish that this flows from a well-thought strategy one needs to see a candid 2010 lecture on Kashmir by India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and discern the continuity between the approach he commended Delhi’s policy then and now.
Speaking at an NGO event in Hyderabad when he was not in government, Doval characterised the Kashmir problem as the product of the “dysfunctional mindset” of three parties: India, Pakistan and the Kashmiri separatists.
India’s mistake, according to Doval, was to follow a policy of appeasement since 1947. Instead of making Pakistani troops vacate Jammu and Kashmir, India went to the United Nations; Kashmir was internationalised and Article 370 was a product of such appeasement. “Once you accepted they were different, you sowed the seeds of separatism,” he said.
Doval argues that India has trouble in exercising power, in setting the agenda and changing realities in its favour. Pakistan, instead, decided the timing and terms of engaging India in war or peace, India restricted itself to defensive defence, not defensive offence.
Pakistan’s and Kashmiris mindset, he reckons, is that “India is weak, it is a nation of brahmins and banias…they are no fighters, on the contrary,“we are great fighters, we have a great religion …that teaches us self-sacrifice…jihad and therefore India can be balkanised by them”. The Kashmiri separatists assume that international opinion is in their favour and they have great faith in Pakistan.
His doctrine is thus essentially predicated on three assumptions: India is traditionally reluctant to embrace power, Pakistan is driven by a desire to destroy India. Doval argues that the situation will change and that Kashmir will have a solution if one of the three players changes their mindset. Delhi should give up on the high moral ground as an antidote to Pakistan’s misadventures and embrace the exercise of power. “In the game of power, the ultimate justice lies with the one who is strong”.
Doval believes that if India exercises power, then Pakistan and the Kashmiris will fall in line. Islamabad must be made to understand that it cannot take on the Indian establishment. Islamabad’s mindset “is unlikely to change unless India gives a decisive blow to Pakistan”. This would also make the separatists change their minds and renounce links with Pakistan.
The Business Standard drew the conclusion that the Doval doctrine is essentially an aggressive assimilationist strategy to end the discussion on Kashmir’s political status. We are seeing that strategy implemented in parts. Rajnath Singh constantly reiterates that J&K is an ‘integral part of India’ and that violence will not be tolerated.
Modi’s decision to call off foreign secretary talks in September 2014 in reaction to a meeting of separatists with the Pakistani High Commissioner appears as an element of this strategy geared to get Kashmir off the bilateral agenda.
The ongoing crackdown is designed to convince Kashmiris that they will need to reconcile to assimilation, even if it involves the use of force. In the lecture, Doval advises governments not to underestimate “your own security agencies”. “They can do if they are asked and if there is a political will to ask them to do a thing”. Modi appears to have endorsed this policy as he has barely spoken out about the scale of casualties in Kashmir except in vague generalities – a marked contrast to his immediate, fervent appeal about protests and violence in Karnataka over the Cauvery waters dispute.
Two, the timing of the crackdown is also strategically astute. It happens as the Barack Obama presidency winds down when his administration is keener on tying up security arrangements with regional powers like India to balance China than worry about human rights violations in Kashmir.