LETTERS

Ever since the rst issue in 1966, EPW has been Indias premier journal for comment on current affairs and research in the social sciences. It succeeded Economic Weekly (1949-1965), which was launched and shepherded by Sachin Chaudhuri, who was also the founder-editor of EPW. As editor for thirty-ve years (1969-2004) K rishna R aj gave EPW the reputation it now enjoys.

Azaadi Is Not the Only Way

s azaadi the only way for the unending violence, the pain and alienation in Jammu and Kashmir, specically in the Kashmir Valley, to come to an end? Every time the peak in the rage and violence appears to have reached, there is another outrage, rape, killing or whatever provides the fuel for a fresh mobilisation of popular rage. The killing of Tufail Ahmed Matto in early June was in no way a dening moment; rather, it was a mere speck in this continuum of violence and resistance and violence, and more alienation. As against the self-delusional belief of the Government of India that if only the state holds out and carries on with masterly inaction (like appointing task forces or expert committees or interlocutor teams or whatever) the troubles will disappear, is the harsh reality of an increasingly strident assertion of the militancy and, more to the point, the weakening of what was till the other day an axiomatic rejection of any possibility of the separation of Jammu and Kashmir from the rest of the country among many democratic-minded Indian people. There is anger against the brutality of the Indian state, whose most visible symbols are not the civil administration but the army and the paramilitary forces, the callous indifference to the suffering of the ordinary people (as in the imposition of endless curfews), and the near permanent legitimisation of the military state. The call for azaadi once limited to the fringes is now heard from a much broader section of the people, not all pro-Pakistan. However, the ideology such as it is of some who propagate azaadi is informed by a visceral hatred of India and a perverse reading of the potential for the Indian revolution: that only by breaking up the Indian state can the true liberation of the Indian masses be achieved. Azaadi cannot be, and was indeed never, the only way out in Jammu and Kashmir. Indeed an independent Jammu and Kashmir is a dangerous illusion if not part of a larger agenda whose ultimate objective is the recolonisation of this awed structure, the Indian state. An independent Jammu and Kashmir was not an option provided for in the United Nations (UN) resolution calling for a plebiscite to determine the

editor

C Rammanohar Reddy
Deputy Editor

Bernard DMello
web Editor

subhash rai
Senior Assistant Editors

Lina Mathias aniket Alam Srinivasan ramani ashima sood Bharati Bhargava
Editorial Staff

Prabha Pillai jyoti shetty

Editorial Assistants

P S Leela Tanya Sethi

Editorial Consultant

Gautam Navlakha
production

u raghunathan s lesline corera suneethi nair

Circulation

Gauraang Pradhan Manager B S Sharma

Advertisement Manager

Kamal G Fanibanda
General Manager & Publisher

K Vijayakumar
editorial
edit@epw.in

Circulation
circulation@epw.in

Advertising
advt@epw.in

Economic and Political Weekly

320-321, A to Z Industrial Estate Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel Mumbai 400 013 Phone: (022) 4063 8282 FAX: (022) 2493 4515

EPW Research Foundation

EPW Research Foundation, established in 1993, conducts research on nancial and macro-economic issues in India.

Director

k kanagasabapathy
C 212, Akurli Industrial Estate Kandivali (East), Mumbai 400 101 Phones: (022) 2887 3038/41 Fax: (022) 2887 3038 epwrf@vsnl.com
Printed by K Vijayakumar at Modern Arts and Industries, 151, A-Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai-400 013 and published by him on behalf of Sameeksha Trust from 320-321, A-Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai-400 013. Editor: C Rammanohar Reddy.

wishes of the people of the state. Pakistan even more than India has never considered this as an option. As is well known, the idea of an Independent Jammu and Kashmir was rst mooted by Adlai Stevenson, the American politician, when he met Sheikh Abdullah during a private visit to the state in April 1953. The causal links between that event and the dismissal of Sheikh Abdullah as premier and his internment in Kodaikanal are widely acknowledged. It is true that the cold war, as understood in its classic sense, is dead, though the permanent interests of the principal nations in the region have not changed. A cursory look at the map would tell us why the United States supported, and would probably even now consider it as the best option, independence for the state. Such an independent J&K, with common borders with India and Pakistan and also on the edges of central Asia and China, that comes into existence with US support would provide more than a toehold to the US in the region. True, it is all history; and the principal players in those events are all dead. Yet, a return to the UN where the issue of Jammu and Kashmir remains inscribed in the agenda could now provide a way out of the dangerous slide to azaadi. Claims that the Shimla accord made the commitment to hold the plebiscite irrelevant notwithstanding, Indias commitment to hold a plebiscite has not been formally repudiated. And the options provided for the people of the state in that yet to be held plebiscite were accession to India (in other words endorsing the instrument of accession signed by the maharaja under admittedly extraordinary circumstances) or accession to Pakistan. Azaadi was not an option. The argument advanced by India during all those annual ritualistic debates in the UN on the holding of the plebiscite, with their predictable denouement in a Soviet veto was: Yes, India will hold the plebiscite provided the prerequisites for holding it are met. Among these were the complete withdrawal of Pakistan from occupied Kashmir (Azaad Kashmir) and removal of all Pakistani military and paramilitary forces from that part of the state, put simply the restoration of the status quo ante. Both the countries knew that they could not possibly
vol xlv no 51
EPW Economic & Political Weekly

december 18, 2010

LETTERS

meet these conditions, but the grandstanding and the posturing went on for years. Indias refusal to honour its international commitment has been duplicitous and shameful. But even conceding this, if it is at all possible, in realistic terms, to go back 60 years in history, India should return to a process and a procedure that is in place, fully cooperate in arranging for a plebiscite under international supervision in J&K. However, such a plebiscite has to take into account the major changes that have taken place in the subcontinent since the original commitment was made. This is not to raise the usual Indian demur that the will of the people of J&K on whether they want to a part of India or join Pakistan has been clearly answered in the several elections held in the state since that commitment was made. There is no need to labour the point as to how many of those elections were free and fair. More relevant are the changes that have come about in Pakistan. The most obvious, as also the most signicant of these is that the Pakistan of 1948 is not the Pakistan after 1971. Further, the either/or option of remaining a part of India or becoming a part of Pakistan cannot be pressed mechanically on the three regions of the state. This has to be ascertained separately in the three regions. One of the most dangerous illusions cherished in India is that Jammu and Kashmir is a test case for Indian secularism. The argument is that Jammu and Kashmir being a Muslim majority state, its remaining a part of India is the strongest repudiation of the pernicious two-nation theory that led to Indias partition along communal lines. The unspoken subtext of such high-mindedness is that in such a plebiscite the Muslims of the state will vote to join Pakistan, with its inescapable inference that J&K as a test case of secularism has failed, and, by implication, the imperilment of the safety and security of Muslims in the rest of the country. This kind of political blackmail did not work even in the wake of Partition and Independence. Secularism in India is not a concession made to the minorities. It is a necessary condition for the very survival of India as a nation state. The problems India is facing is not because of secularism or pseudo secularism or whatever but because of the perverse religiosity that has permeated into public life at all levels. Even an Imagined India
Economic & Political Weekly EPW

inhabited only by Hindus cannot survive without being secular, given the pluralistic divisions and variety of Hinduism in practice.
M S Prabhakara
Kolara, Karnataka

Tapas Majumdar
lthough I never met Tapas Majumdar, I enjoyed reading his essays in The Telegraph in recent years, and had, when living in Delhi in the 1990s, befriended his friend and student Narindar Singh. The obituaries in the EPW (13 November) draw attention to Majumdars qualities as a scholar and human being, as, in a different but no less telling way, did the dedication to Narindar Singhs prescient and unfairly neglected book, Economics and the Crisis of Ecology. This read: To Tapas, for reasons of head and heart, as charming a book dedication as one could think of, and, as the EPW tributes make clear, also manifestly true.
Ramachandra Guha
Bangalore

Thich Nhat Hanh

read with interest the article (Reinterpreting Buddhism: Ambedkar on the Politics of Social Action by Vidhu Verma, 4 December) on Ambedkars reinterpretation of Buddhism. In this context I would like to draw your attention to other such practices notable among them being the work of Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who is deeply involved in what he calls socially engaged Buddhism taking Buddhism out of the notion of meditation in a cave and renunciation of everyday life. He has done outstanding work in helping refugees of war-torn Vietnam. This is different from Sri Lankas political Buddhism where the Sinhalese Buddhists were involved in the conict with Tamils an aberration of the essence of Buddhism.
Maithreyi Krishnaraj
Bangalore

Police Action in Jadavpur University

9 November 2010 an unprecedented incident in the 55-year old history of our university. It is clear from the accounts of eyewitnesses and audiovisual media coverage of incident that in the immediate trail of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjees arrival in the campus, the concerned students were shouting slogans against the authoritys decision to invite a chief minister who they felt was responsible for the police atrocities on the people of Singur, Nandigram and Lalgarh. These demonstrators had not committed any act of violence while protesting against the chief ministers visit. Baton-wielding police, who had practically besieged the campus, ruthlessly beat up the demonstrators. Media coverage showed girl students being dragged by the hair and severely thrashed. Our indignation is all the greater because this incident of police violence ties up with a wider picture that has started looming large for all of us to see. We have already witnessed an acute anxiety on the part of our university authorities to initiate surveillance on campus life with the aid of CCTV cameras. More recently, in the immediate trail of a seminar in which some outsiders swarmed in to create a ruckus, the authorities have decided to have an Executive Council resolution to the effect that the themes, list of speakers and content of presentations of all future seminars in the university shall be under the surveillance of the authorities who will allow/disallow the holding of respective seminars accordingly. We strongly urge the university authorities to clarify to us whether the police action was authorised by them? If not, how could the police be allowed to unleash such atrocities inside the university? Campus life all over the world is especially insulated from police action. We demand that the university should verify whether the police have framed criminal charges against the students, and if so, the university should come to protect its students and work to see that these charges are withdrawn. The university should provide full medical treatment to the injured students and ensure that justice is done to these victims of police brutality.
Amit Bhattacharyya, Sumita Sen, B C Pal, Bhaskar Gupta, Kunal Chattopadhyay and 39 other members of faculty
Jadavpur University

e express our deep sense of shock and indignation at the police assault within the campus on a group of demonstrating students in the afternoon of
vol xlv no 51

december 18, 2010