Failure of Politics
Kashmir Problem is, Primarily, a Failure of Statesmanship
Badri Raina’s Kashmir : A Noble Tryst in Tatters is a first book of its kind presenting a Kashmiri Neo-Marxist account of what is wrong with Indian engagement with Kashmir. Awaited eagerly by Kashmiri readership of Indian left, it, true to the Kashmiri poetic genius, combines the poet’s view of the issue with an incisive analysis of what can only be termed as an absence of statesmanship or failure of politics. The author pleads for his essential thesis that Kashmir isn’t to be framed/can’t be understood in identitarian or communal terms or as an unfinished legacy of partition. It is simply failure of a relationship that had nothing inherently problematic about it to begin with, but turned sour due to mishandling or lack of vision and trust. India’s moral claim over Kashmir has largely been lost even though Azadi is not a solution. Vetoing against any kind of proposal of divorce between India and Kashmir, even though noting failure of decades of reconciliatory measures, Raina still hopes that the dialogue is possible, even inevitable and we have, in theory at least, almost a solution at hand. For him we need to expose the ideological content behind popular slogans of self determinism and independence and seeking solution by framing Kashmir problem in 1947. Independence, he argues, would be first a disaster for Kashmir and then Indian Muslims and Indian nationalism. The idea of secession or self determinism though applicable elsewhere too are non-starters for any meaningful dialogue process. He notes that even Pakistan has recognized it long back and explicitly proposed other solutions in Musharaf’s time. One of the pivotal objectives of self determinism/independence movement has been achieved through revolutionary measures taken by Sheikh Abdullah with regard to land reforms and subsequent evolution of Kashmir history that saw the birth of a middle class and much softening of class divisions. Now what is lacking is democracy in the true sense. Make borders irrelevant and restore autonomy with a few caveats that would in no way harm Kashmir’s interests and we have almost dissolved the problem. Nagging problems are not solved but dissolved. Raina blames Hindu right and now Muslim right for obfuscating the real issue of Kashmir. Analyzing new mood following major uprisings as a social/political scientist, Raina argues for achievable consensus amongst major stake holders on the contours of way forward – shunning violence, will to change status quo, resisting trifurcation and seeing Kashmir not in isolation but as an integral unit of Jammu and Kashmir, strengthening democracy and resisting rightist ideologies. Although the sentiment for Azadi remains, its concrete realizational content in the changed scenario can’t be total independence Kashmiri. Kashmir issue has been its genesis, not in 1947 but in 1953 and it can be resolved by retracing certain missteps taken by the Centre. Raina presents the crux of Kashmir problem by deconstructing integral part slogan (without implying possibility/desirability of disintegration!) in his poem:
Every inch in love with Kashmir, Badri Raina celebrates the living culture of Kashmir. He, unlike many foreigners who wrote on Kashmir, doesn’t find anything seriously jarring in people’s disposition. Appropriating Kashmir’s great cultural legacy, Sufism and Marxism, is, to be read as a cosmopolitan humanist and a critic of considerable prowess whose analyses of Kashmir issue can’t be taken lightly. One can’t but appreciate elements of is wit, humour and wisdom in his exposition of the underside of things and his razor sharp critique of religious right obstructing democracy in India and Kashmir. He keeps a sharp critical eye on the rise of alien ideological currents of religious fundamentalism and now neo-salafism on a Sufi soil. He takes strong positions and doesn’t mince words in calling spade a spade although one might dispute with him that there is some parallax effect that distorts his view of the spade. It is very clear that he is one of the most brilliant argumentative Kashmiris who has attempted to speak for an ordinary Kashmiri (that partly explains his recourse to poetry) and, on whose behalf, he punctures popular slogans of certain political/exclusivist religious classes and capitalism serving rightist politics trading religious slogans. It is surprising to find rather limited attention to the questions (often raised by Kashmiri analysts) of interests of military-industrial complex and contradictions of nationalist project including systemic and inevitable failure of democracy and Kashmir as a symptom/cost of the same project. Kashmir is the rear side of shining India housing stinking kitchen and its miserable workers.
Raina is a hard hitting cricketer. He means business and in a no non-sense tone, targets “illegal” marriage of PDP and BJP, paranoiac view of certain Pandits that makes Muslim community a culprit in their mass migration, need of separate Pandit colonies, and those who are taking seriously ISIS flags or calls for Caliphate or communalist slogans from Kashmir. He is against integrationists and defends the case of greater autonomy and largely bails out Sheikh Abdullah questioning Indian betrayal of him in 1953 on flimsy grounds and later encroachment of autonomy as key to current instability. He notes that today Kashmiris either seek independence – and mostly mean greater autonomy – or autonomy and not Pakistan. Mirwaiz Umar has the best creative approach to solution. Militancy has been a lost cause and a symptom of patent failure of status quoist standpoint.
In celebrating Kashmiri secular spaces, Raina invokes ideologically loaded term than Kashmiryat that has had a bad press for some good and some bad reasons. The discourse of Kashmiryat, its critics have pointed out, has been appropriated to delegitimize even genuine resistance elements who, like Raina, have been expressing disenchantment with the status quo. Kashmiryat has been lately especially appropriated to defend status quo, to deny agency to Kashmiris and even silence the demand for restoring autonomy that existed for some years post-1947.
As Raina excludes total independence (he calls it a pipedream and argues it might prove disastrous for both India and Kashmir) and merger with Pakistan (an insignificant percentage of people would opt for it and thus it is in any case inadmissible) Kashmir issue is best resolved (dissolved!) by some creative appropriation of Musharraf formulae or extending and deepening the autonomy paradigm that has a precedent. Kashmiri could be irretrievably lost if urgency is not shown in resolving it. Raina’s case against independence repeats rather old arguments and doesn’t consider counterarguments put forward by resistance camp (for instance, Amanullah Khan), public intellectuals such as Arundhati Roy and a few highly articulate and mostly young Kashmiri writers though he very briefly and hastily considers Roy only to dismiss her. He also, rather problematically, assumes the civilized world with all its international bodies and charters has no guarantees for protecting the scores of smaller weaker and emerging nations neighbouring big powers. Kashmir, Raina argues, has been briefly independent in 1947 but failed to defend itself against raiders and there was nothing to prevent Kashmiris to join Pakistan for that brief period – the arguments that might easily mislead those who aren’t familiar with complexities surrounding the issue and now better documented alternative narratives around 1947. Pakistan can’t be ignored or silenced or wished away from collective consciousness of Kashmiris and despite Sheikh Abdullah and secular sensibility or “Kashmiryat” its ghost hasn’t been exorcized till date and here our left leaning intellectualism faces a challenge. The dream of and love for Pakistan and its victories in Kashmiri heart is a difficult question that hatred for or alienation from India alone can’t explain. Kashmir issue presents more difficulties than Raina would perhaps admit in his quest for resolving/dissolving it. Since marriage with India has turned sour, almost from the very beginning, and there has been simultaneously going on a tragic love affair of a whole people (made tragic by seeming impossibility of its consummation) with Azadi (and with Pakistan in certain symbolic spaces), Raina’s faith in restoring autonomy as a panacea seems difficult to sustain. Autonomy has had the best pleaders till date but even this hasn’t been forthcoming and it has failed to substitute the nostalgia or sentiment for Azadi. A more creative reformulation or sublimation of the sentiment for Azadi is called for and that needs more attention from the likes of Raina and other Kashmiris. It needs statesmenship rather than politics and the moot question is: Do we have statesmen?
What one finds especially problematic in the book is refusal to engage with serious criticisms of Sheikh Abdullah’s life and work including almost all of his key moves from conversion of Muslim Conference to National Conference to sidelining a significant section of people, his aides, his promises, his own activism for years pursuing strange gods while facilitating Indian control of Kashmir. Jinah’s Pakistan was not theocratic as Sheikh’s retort to him would have us believe. Sufism continues to thrive in Pakistani culture. However the question of feudal connection and Punjabi aristocracy suffocating Kashmir in future that Sheikh had raised remains valid one. Sheikh’s misreading or downplaying the role of religious and other cultural affinities while deciding the accession remains as does his proverbial double speak, his ambitious authoritarian character and his later abject surrender and rather dismal second inning post 1975. Radicalization of Kashmiri youth might be signaling much more than Raina is ready to grant and his worst apprehensions regarding loss of Kashmir might not be unfounded.
http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/opinion/failure-of-politics/260788.html
Badri Raina’s Kashmir : A Noble Tryst in Tatters is a first book of its kind presenting a Kashmiri Neo-Marxist account of what is wrong with Indian engagement with Kashmir. Awaited eagerly by Kashmiri readership of Indian left, it, true to the Kashmiri poetic genius, combines the poet’s view of the issue with an incisive analysis of what can only be termed as an absence of statesmanship or failure of politics. The author pleads for his essential thesis that Kashmir isn’t to be framed/can’t be understood in identitarian or communal terms or as an unfinished legacy of partition. It is simply failure of a relationship that had nothing inherently problematic about it to begin with, but turned sour due to mishandling or lack of vision and trust. India’s moral claim over Kashmir has largely been lost even though Azadi is not a solution. Vetoing against any kind of proposal of divorce between India and Kashmir, even though noting failure of decades of reconciliatory measures, Raina still hopes that the dialogue is possible, even inevitable and we have, in theory at least, almost a solution at hand. For him we need to expose the ideological content behind popular slogans of self determinism and independence and seeking solution by framing Kashmir problem in 1947. Independence, he argues, would be first a disaster for Kashmir and then Indian Muslims and Indian nationalism. The idea of secession or self determinism though applicable elsewhere too are non-starters for any meaningful dialogue process. He notes that even Pakistan has recognized it long back and explicitly proposed other solutions in Musharaf’s time. One of the pivotal objectives of self determinism/independence movement has been achieved through revolutionary measures taken by Sheikh Abdullah with regard to land reforms and subsequent evolution of Kashmir history that saw the birth of a middle class and much softening of class divisions. Now what is lacking is democracy in the true sense. Make borders irrelevant and restore autonomy with a few caveats that would in no way harm Kashmir’s interests and we have almost dissolved the problem. Nagging problems are not solved but dissolved. Raina blames Hindu right and now Muslim right for obfuscating the real issue of Kashmir. Analyzing new mood following major uprisings as a social/political scientist, Raina argues for achievable consensus amongst major stake holders on the contours of way forward – shunning violence, will to change status quo, resisting trifurcation and seeing Kashmir not in isolation but as an integral unit of Jammu and Kashmir, strengthening democracy and resisting rightist ideologies. Although the sentiment for Azadi remains, its concrete realizational content in the changed scenario can’t be total independence Kashmiri. Kashmir issue has been its genesis, not in 1947 but in 1953 and it can be resolved by retracing certain missteps taken by the Centre. Raina presents the crux of Kashmir problem by deconstructing integral part slogan (without implying possibility/desirability of disintegration!) in his poem:
Integral people could
Do without bullets
Integral part implies
Boundary overrides blood
Integral people means
We too die when you
Are dead.
Integral part says
Forget the promises
We had made;
Integral people say
We are betrayed.
Integral part yells
Lump it or die;
Integral people cry, cry and cry.
Every inch in love with Kashmir, Badri Raina celebrates the living culture of Kashmir. He, unlike many foreigners who wrote on Kashmir, doesn’t find anything seriously jarring in people’s disposition. Appropriating Kashmir’s great cultural legacy, Sufism and Marxism, is, to be read as a cosmopolitan humanist and a critic of considerable prowess whose analyses of Kashmir issue can’t be taken lightly. One can’t but appreciate elements of is wit, humour and wisdom in his exposition of the underside of things and his razor sharp critique of religious right obstructing democracy in India and Kashmir. He keeps a sharp critical eye on the rise of alien ideological currents of religious fundamentalism and now neo-salafism on a Sufi soil. He takes strong positions and doesn’t mince words in calling spade a spade although one might dispute with him that there is some parallax effect that distorts his view of the spade. It is very clear that he is one of the most brilliant argumentative Kashmiris who has attempted to speak for an ordinary Kashmiri (that partly explains his recourse to poetry) and, on whose behalf, he punctures popular slogans of certain political/exclusivist religious classes and capitalism serving rightist politics trading religious slogans. It is surprising to find rather limited attention to the questions (often raised by Kashmiri analysts) of interests of military-industrial complex and contradictions of nationalist project including systemic and inevitable failure of democracy and Kashmir as a symptom/cost of the same project. Kashmir is the rear side of shining India housing stinking kitchen and its miserable workers.
Raina is a hard hitting cricketer. He means business and in a no non-sense tone, targets “illegal” marriage of PDP and BJP, paranoiac view of certain Pandits that makes Muslim community a culprit in their mass migration, need of separate Pandit colonies, and those who are taking seriously ISIS flags or calls for Caliphate or communalist slogans from Kashmir. He is against integrationists and defends the case of greater autonomy and largely bails out Sheikh Abdullah questioning Indian betrayal of him in 1953 on flimsy grounds and later encroachment of autonomy as key to current instability. He notes that today Kashmiris either seek independence – and mostly mean greater autonomy – or autonomy and not Pakistan. Mirwaiz Umar has the best creative approach to solution. Militancy has been a lost cause and a symptom of patent failure of status quoist standpoint.
In celebrating Kashmiri secular spaces, Raina invokes ideologically loaded term than Kashmiryat that has had a bad press for some good and some bad reasons. The discourse of Kashmiryat, its critics have pointed out, has been appropriated to delegitimize even genuine resistance elements who, like Raina, have been expressing disenchantment with the status quo. Kashmiryat has been lately especially appropriated to defend status quo, to deny agency to Kashmiris and even silence the demand for restoring autonomy that existed for some years post-1947.
As Raina excludes total independence (he calls it a pipedream and argues it might prove disastrous for both India and Kashmir) and merger with Pakistan (an insignificant percentage of people would opt for it and thus it is in any case inadmissible) Kashmir issue is best resolved (dissolved!) by some creative appropriation of Musharraf formulae or extending and deepening the autonomy paradigm that has a precedent. Kashmiri could be irretrievably lost if urgency is not shown in resolving it. Raina’s case against independence repeats rather old arguments and doesn’t consider counterarguments put forward by resistance camp (for instance, Amanullah Khan), public intellectuals such as Arundhati Roy and a few highly articulate and mostly young Kashmiri writers though he very briefly and hastily considers Roy only to dismiss her. He also, rather problematically, assumes the civilized world with all its international bodies and charters has no guarantees for protecting the scores of smaller weaker and emerging nations neighbouring big powers. Kashmir, Raina argues, has been briefly independent in 1947 but failed to defend itself against raiders and there was nothing to prevent Kashmiris to join Pakistan for that brief period – the arguments that might easily mislead those who aren’t familiar with complexities surrounding the issue and now better documented alternative narratives around 1947. Pakistan can’t be ignored or silenced or wished away from collective consciousness of Kashmiris and despite Sheikh Abdullah and secular sensibility or “Kashmiryat” its ghost hasn’t been exorcized till date and here our left leaning intellectualism faces a challenge. The dream of and love for Pakistan and its victories in Kashmiri heart is a difficult question that hatred for or alienation from India alone can’t explain. Kashmir issue presents more difficulties than Raina would perhaps admit in his quest for resolving/dissolving it. Since marriage with India has turned sour, almost from the very beginning, and there has been simultaneously going on a tragic love affair of a whole people (made tragic by seeming impossibility of its consummation) with Azadi (and with Pakistan in certain symbolic spaces), Raina’s faith in restoring autonomy as a panacea seems difficult to sustain. Autonomy has had the best pleaders till date but even this hasn’t been forthcoming and it has failed to substitute the nostalgia or sentiment for Azadi. A more creative reformulation or sublimation of the sentiment for Azadi is called for and that needs more attention from the likes of Raina and other Kashmiris. It needs statesmenship rather than politics and the moot question is: Do we have statesmen?
What one finds especially problematic in the book is refusal to engage with serious criticisms of Sheikh Abdullah’s life and work including almost all of his key moves from conversion of Muslim Conference to National Conference to sidelining a significant section of people, his aides, his promises, his own activism for years pursuing strange gods while facilitating Indian control of Kashmir. Jinah’s Pakistan was not theocratic as Sheikh’s retort to him would have us believe. Sufism continues to thrive in Pakistani culture. However the question of feudal connection and Punjabi aristocracy suffocating Kashmir in future that Sheikh had raised remains valid one. Sheikh’s misreading or downplaying the role of religious and other cultural affinities while deciding the accession remains as does his proverbial double speak, his ambitious authoritarian character and his later abject surrender and rather dismal second inning post 1975. Radicalization of Kashmiri youth might be signaling much more than Raina is ready to grant and his worst apprehensions regarding loss of Kashmir might not be unfounded.
http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/opinion/failure-of-politics/260788.html
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