‘To live between memory and potentiality is to live permanently in a creative space, pregnant with the unexpected. But it is also to live in the permanency of risk, for the journey between what lies behind and what lies ahead is never fully comprehended nor ever controlled. Such a space, however, is the womb of constructive change, the continuous birthplace of the past that lies before us.’

– John P. Lederach,

The Moral Imagination

 

‘A chance reading of Imitiaz Hussain’, wrote Anupama Shekhar from Pune in 2004, ‘reminded me that watan cannot be defined merely by the territory within which one claims rightful citizenship, but by the larger civilizational space from which one draws imaginative strength… And this is how it came to be that seeking nightness in Amritsar, I tasted the dazzle of Lahore’s dawn… between my two states of home.’

Ambreen Sehr Noon, a journalist from Lahore, expressed an interesting insight in 2006, saying, ‘Life it is said is a series of journeys. Often the most revealing are those that bring us closer to ourselves. My picture had flaws. But I still clung to "my" identity. It was easier returning to the shell. Even within the flag of our fathers, we had groups and divisions. But when we went to the table to talk, we put on a united national front. If they could quote numbers, we had double the figures. If their story brought a tear to your eye, we surely could come up with one that made you howl. If they had Kargil, we suffered at Siachen. Tit for Tat. Again and again.

‘For the first time, I looked at myself from the eyes of another. Another who was familiar, yet estranged? I experienced welcoming hospitality, open warmth, and a shared history that for once in my life went beyond 40-50 years. India owned me up and despite my resistance, I warmed to her and her people.

‘I found my freedom in India. I got on a rickshaw for the first time in my life and thought outside and beyond the dimensions of my superimposed morals and education. It was strange finding emancipation in the heart of the enemy. Maybe it was just luck. Maybe my trip came at an opportune time. Maybe I had to face the demon of "the other" before I could face up to those in me. Maybe …a lot of maybes.’

Anupama and Ambreen had shared debate, discussion and peace-building training at the annual Conflict Transformation (CT) workshops sustained for over twelve years by a small South Asian initiative, WISCOMP (Women in Security Conflict, Management and Peace), between 2001 and 2012. An attempt to ‘bridge the divide’ and facilitate a dialogic community of young professionals and ‘future influential’ from India and Pakistan, the CT confluence developed an alumna network of over 500 ‘conflict resolutionaries’, now spread across different parts of the globe. They were collectively invested in the idea coined by iconic peace scholar Johan Galtung that ‘a dialogue process is successfully begun when the exclamatory mark at the end of our statement becomes a question mark.’

CT miraculously withstood the ebbs and flows of the Indo-Pakistan official relationship. Even through the dark days of Kargil, Mumbai and the confrontations at the border, these young people made the journey to India crossing many lines to sustain a process away from the arc lights of high tables and summits where peace is normally brokered.

 

They carried within them the faith echoed by alumnus Faroq Ahmed Dar in 2005 that ‘If the process of meeting regularly continues – if you "rehumanize the other" through "collaborative explorations" for a few more years, change is possible. Even if our generation fails to attain peace, we would have changed the mindset of the next generation, enabling them to attain what many may consider "a miracle".’

All contentious issues were addressed and freely discussed – ranging from individual identity to nationhood, partition to religion, Baluchistan to Kashmir, security to development, terrorism to communalism, the future of SAARC and the geopolitics of power. All this in an atmosphere aimed to build trust and genuine dialogue and above all address stereotypes about the ‘other’.

The context to imagine a shift from a divided past to a shared future was provided by the spirit of the Composite Dialogue (CD) that had represented a brief shining moment, a window of opportunity, to draw down the fences with the ‘people next door’.¹

 

The tortuous India-Pakistan relationship, which encompasses wars in 1947-8, 1965, 1971, the Brasstacks crisis of 1986-7, the Kashmir crisis of 1990, the Kargil conflict of 1999, the border confrontation of 2001-02, and the Mumbai attack of 2008, casts its shadow over the security of the people of the subcontinent. Coming close to the brink of war in 1999 and again in 2001-2, the two countries purportedly held back on the nuclear option under intense U.S. and international pressure. The strategic restraint shown by India to desist from the path of full-scale military deployment has witnessed a change since the provocations of the Pathankot and Pulwama attacks. Balakot is a clear signal that retaliation remains an accepted option today.

With this, have the prospects for dialogue and rapprochement receded irretrievably? The mind goes back to another time, not that long ago, when both countries found it possible to step out from mutual acrimony.

The CD process initiated in 1997 and resumed by India and Pakistan in February 2004 had provided a framework for an innovative conflict resolution approach post-Kargil that moved beyond summit diplomacy to engage, for the first time, in a ‘peace process’. It marked a decisive shift in India’s approach to negotiations, from a short-term tactical militarist approach to a problem-solving orientation in keeping with its self-image of a rising power seeking a place in the sun. Crafting a normative positioning that simultaneously protected its strategic interests, India began to envision a stable and democratic Pakistan as consonant to this interest. Shedding adventurist notions of a dismemberment of its ‘troublesome neighbour’, the possibility of a terrorist spillover of jihadi or Islamist groups in case of a collapse in Pakistan, came home starkly following 9/11. The CD framework marked a fundamental shift from ‘speaking peace and thinking war’ and a genuine willingness to invest in the peace dividend.

 

While there had been sustained official level engagement between India and Pakistan since 1947, at multiple levels,² the Composite Dialogue implicitly sought to broaden the canvas beyond the ‘core’ issue of Kashmir, build confidence among the highest level of decision making, seeking simultaneously to widen and engender peace constituencies in their respective countries. The political leadership, clearly in this instance, was ahead of their security and foreign policy establishments to grapple with the ‘trust deficit’ between the two countries, stake their reputations and take on the ire of recalcitrant domestic communities and critics, and to invest in peace.

Despite the then Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s deep disappointment at the turn of events following his bold attempts at building bridges – ‘ I had gone to Lahore with a message of goodwill, but in return we got Kargil’ (referring to his trip in 1999 to inaugurate the Delhi-Lahore bus service) – and former Pakistan President Musharraf’s statement describing the Kargil War as a watershed that drastically altered the Indian attitude and response, the Composite Dialogue reflected and engendered the growing public sentiment for peace in both countries.

 

The floodgates opened and the mood was (in retrospect, perhaps mistakenly) heady. Kargil had proved to be, for better or worse, a defining moment in Indo-Pak relations. Again, the 2002 confrontation had established beyond doubt that the role of external powers, the United States in particular, was set to increase. Despite India’s steadfast opposition to ‘internationalizing’ disputes between India and Pakistan, South Asian security got internationalized after the decisions in both countries to openly go nuclear in 1998.³

Vajpayee’s vision and leadership and his extraordinary ‘leap of faith in the dark’ for continuing engagement with Pakistan even after Kargil and the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001, was seen as representing a bold shift. Some commentators described this as a shared vision between Vajpayee and his ideologically different successor, Manmohan Singh, that marked the ‘significant continuity’ on a ‘big rewrite’ of India’s Pakistan policy – involving a shift from short-term tactics to grand strategy.⁴ This rewrite of course stands overwritten today by a different script.

The period between 2004 and 2007, saw a spurt of multi-track processes and an overwhelming ground-swell of people-to-people exchanges.⁵ Indo-Pak peace became something of a cause celebre for the civil society community in India and Pakistan during this period. There was a spate of people-to-people contact and exchanges between both sides – from chambers of commerce, media persons, journalists, religious leaders, parliamentarians, youth groups, Kashmiri groups (from both sides of the LOC and diaspora) scholars, academics, educationists, lawyers, jurists, and a host of civil society activists. In particular, women’s groups that had been the precursors of cross border peace initiatives from the early 1980s, played a significant role in the civil society peace initiatives.⁶ Through the ebb and flow of Indo-Pakistan official relations and restrictive visa regimes, women’s groups attempted to sustain the dialogue, although their role largely remained under-recognized in official fora.

 

The subjects brought to the table reflected a readiness to address all outstanding and contentious issues for a decisive movement forward. The existing ‘dividers’ and potential ‘connectors’ alike were included in the eight-subject menu.⁷ India agreed to discuss the Kashmir question purposefully and Pakistan promised not to allow terrorism from its soil. The agreement to negotiate Kashmir in an environment free of violence and terrorism was the principle achievement of the India-Pakistan joint statement of January 4, 2004.⁸ The accordion was open to take on board creative ideas and thinking ‘out of box’ – as the then President Pervez Musharraf put it – on the vexatious question of Jammu and Kashmir.

 

The Kashmir conundrum remains central to the possibilities for peace on the subcontinent and efforts to build sustainable peace in South Asia. Even today, much of Indo-Pak hostility gets enmeshed both symbolically and strategically with the dispute over Kashmir.

The CD attempted to move beyond the discourse of belligerence. There was an emphasis on developing opportunities for conflict transformation, both personal and systemic, and to restore broken relationships. There was also an attempt to situate the process as impacting lives and futures and to engender an adaptive, dynamic and responsive change process.⁹

The opening up to different constituencies to engage vertically and horizontally to expand the constituency of stakeholders for a peace process was a significant feature of the CD methodology. The Lederachian three-tier pyramid, which engages the top leadership (military, political, religious etc.), the middle range leadership (academics, intellectuals, eminent and respected persons, humanitarian leaders) and grassroots leadership (local leaders, NGOs, community developers etc.) across these constituencies approximates what was being attempted.¹⁰

 

It was an engagement with possibilities. In terms of stakeholders it was both a ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ process involving, for the first time, the people of India and Pakistan, with an orientation to work at all different levels of state and civil society. It focused on stabilizing the relationship even when threatened by ‘spoilers’ responsible for the earlier blasts in Mumbai in July 2006 and the Samjhauta Express train. Efforts were made to broaden the base by involving parties from across the political spectrum. The CD provided a context to examine conventional notions of sovereignty and territory and to see borders as zones where nations and cultures can interact.¹¹ Connectivity through telecommunications, advancement of technology, rail links, enhancement of trade and commerce and gas pipelines were viewed as integral to the process.

 

The Joint Anti-Terror Mechanism set up in 2006, received with considerable skepticism in India and increasingly seen after Mumbai as ill-conceived, was a novel initiative to institutionalize sharing information with a historical enemy, to curb infiltration, and move closer to setting norms for security cooperation against non-state armed groups.¹²

The CD was an innovative attempt at conflict resolution for the region. Two historically bitter adversaries broke intransigence – with the bigger rival (India) recognizing the limits of coercive diplomacy. India focused on what some analysts have described as normative means to make peace with Pakistan: confidence building measures (CBMs) arbitration, negotiation, trade and security cooperation.¹³ Added to this was the emphases on public diplomacy and trust building. Equally, an attempt to separate the dividers and potential connectors and search for common ground by recognizing differences and acting on commonalities.

The CBMs combined both conventional military¹⁴ approaches with those that addressed the aspirations of people on both sides – divided families in particular – and the release of POWs (prisoner of war) languishing in each other’s jails for decades. CBMs between India and Pakistan have had a long history dating back to the Indus Treaty in 1960. DGMO communication links have existed since the late 1980s. An agreement not to attack each other’s nuclear facilities was signed in 1988 and ratified in 1991 with each side undertaking a moratorium on testing.¹⁵

 

The relaxation of visa regimes, the visible transformation of the Wagah-Atari border, increased rail and road links across the Line of Control, the decision to open five transit points across divided Kashmir, the revival of the Munabao-Khokhrapar train service, and above all, the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service and facilitation of people-to-people contact had a major trust building effect.

The Composite Dialogue did stand out as a somewhat unique example of a bilateral process in South Asia, a region where a multilateral approach for negotiations is seldom the preferred first option. The public diplomacy that accompanied the CD, enabled civil society organizations a measure of engagement in the process. The official view also took on board the value of dealing with vexed issues incrementally moving from ‘easier’ to ‘harder’ issues, breaking hard issues into manageable clusters and taking some aspects to civil society. People-to-people initiatives were intrinsic to the process as a complement to official initiatives.

The complexity of the relationship between India and Pakistan was foregrounded and generated a rethink at several levels, especially among scholars and academics on the short-sightedness of engaging with Pakistan as a homogenous monolith.¹⁶ The broader, regional and global content to Indo-Pak relations, issues such as Afghanistan, energy routes, the Indo-U.S. Nuclear deal, international terrorism and its cross border ramifications added the necessary layers of complexity to bilateral issues.

 

The complexity of the Indo-Pak relationship came to be acknowledged as a multifaceted amalgam of layer upon layer of mistrust and a great deal of sentimentality emerging from the shared elements of culture. The ‘great divide’ of this potent brew could well be redressed by a new generation of citizens coming of age in both countries who, freed from the memories of Partition and its attendant ‘othering’, could explore the diversity and multiplicity of identities in the larger regional South Asian, context.¹⁷

Peace on the subcontinent requires an engagement by both India and Pakistan to finesse and institutionalize modes of crisis management that could evolve into conflict resolution mechanisms. It also requires a willingness to focus on issues that impact the security of their peoples, in terms of sustainable livelihoods, democratic rights, beliefs, culture, identity and emerging concerns around energy, climate change and water. The Composite Dialogue provided a framework for such a collaborative paradigm shift.

 

The vitality of people-to-people contacts is crucial to fuel the process to help bring down mental barriers and interrogate the cartographic anxieties of security establishments. Multiple tracks of peacebuilding need to work to ensure so that the new generation of Indians and Pakistanis can move beyond the narratives that continue to divide them. With the suspension of the Composite Dialogue post-Mumbai, a unique opportunity for a sustained dialogue was squarely jettisoned.

In attempting to use the opportunity provided by the Composite Dialogue, India and Pakistan came close to devising a framework for settling their long conflict over Kashmir in secret negotiations.¹⁸ But this was put on hold from March 2007 onward owing to Musharraf’s declining popularity, problems at home, and the chain of events that eventually led to his ouster in August 2008. Khurshid Kasuri, Pakistan’s foreign minister at the time, was quoted as saying that the ‘solution’ contained ‘four big ideas’ within which the proposed agreement was discussed. These included demilitarization (the gradual withdrawal of troops from both sides), the granting of special rights to Kashmiris to move and trade freely on both sides of the Line of Control, greater autonomy, and some form of self-governance and a joint mechanism that would link the two Kashmirs, consisting of local Kashmiri leaders, Indians and Pakistanis and would oversee issues affecting people on both sides of the line.¹⁹ Such a resolution of the Kashmir dispute was to be the cornerstone of a broad agreement representing a paradigm shift that would change the basic nature of the problem.²⁰ Although India and Pakistan reached substantial understanding on the contested Siachen glacier and, in one of the most significant movements in their bilateral diplomacy, made progress toward a resolution of the Sir Creek maritime boundary dispute,²¹ the Composite Dialogue was frozen in the diplomatic chill that followed the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008.

 

The broad pitch for peace had reflected the realization that given the nuclearized environment ‘war was no longer an option for either side.’²² It seemed to be additionally propelled by President Pervez Musharraf’s own imperatives to be seen as a liberal, modern Islamic leader; to control religious extremism in Pakistan; and to be the architect of a ‘grand settlement’ with India. Musharraf’s ‘out-of-box’ articulation in October 2004 for a proposed settlement on Kashmir had surprisingly underscored a flexible approach, moving away from rigid and hardened positions and even a willingness to ‘leave behind the UN resolutions, a position that was sensitive to the Indian aversion for a proposed plebiscite. His four-point formula suggested four stages: (i) the recognition of Kashmir as a dispute; (ii) the initiation of a dialogue; (iii) the shedding of unacceptable solutions; and (iv) the securing of a win-win position.

 

For someone who had consistently ridden on anti-India rhetoric and diatribe, President Musharraf’s proposals exhibited an uncharacteristic willingness to engage innovatively. His proposal for Kashmir was presented as an attempt to generate focused debate. The formula identified seven regions in Kashmir on which to first focus, two of which are in Pakistan and five in India, on the basis of a combination of factors such as ethnicity, linguistic homogeneity, religious commonalities, geographic proximity and compactness. As has been shown by Indian scholars on Kashmir, this is not an easy task since commonalities are difficult to establish in Kashmir, where several differentiated fault lines of ethnicity, caste, class, religion and language combine and collide, often flying in the face of neat labels such as population homogeneity or coherence.²³

There is a tendency to equate the state of Jammu and Kashmir with the Kashmir valley and to see the valley as exclusively Kashmiri Muslim. The ‘Kashmir issue’ consequently, is framed as a ‘territorial dispute’ between India and Pakistan and also as a struggle for an independent state by the Kashmiris. What or who is a Kashmiri is still mired in confusion. The province of Jammu and Kashmir, on the Indian side, represents a plurality with diverse communities such as the Ladakhi Buddhists, the Gujjars, the Bakerwals and the Kashmiri Pandits, for whom independence may not be an aspiration at all.

On the Indian side the province of J&K comprises a broadly Muslim valley, a Hindu majority Jammu and a predominantly Buddhist Ladakh. To speak of a uniform aspiration for freedom or even autonomy is both impractical and fraught. In Pakistan, the Shia communities of Baltistan and Gilgit have other denominations, i.e. Aga Khanis or Ismailis and Nurbakshis. Shia-Sunni riots have been endemic and Gilgit was under curfew through much of 2005. ‘Kashmir’ is by no means a monolithic undifferentiated space and defies easy categorization, a fact that has often been overlooked in international discourse.²⁴

 

The idea of ‘soft borders’ gained momentum even as the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh elaborated on 24 March 2006 (at the launch of the Amritsar-Nankana Sahib bus service) his earlier stated position on the need to make borders irrelevant without redrawing boundaries. By offering a treaty of peace, security and friendship to Pakistan, Singh took a further leap of faith.²⁵

Although Musharraf’s proposals are open to varied interpretations, the fact that he was quite uncharacteristically the first Pakistani leader to not demand Kashmir’s secession from India at this juncture, was not lost on the Indian establishment.²⁶ There was a sense on the Indian side that it was important to do business with whoever was in power in Pakistan especially if they could bring the all powerful army on board. The democratic credentials of the ‘peace broker’ were no longer flagged as an important factor for sustaining the dialogue.

 

The subsequent political leadership in Pakistan distanced itself from Musharraf’s proposals. Since the Mumbai blasts of November 2008 and the subsequent stand-off between India and Pakistan, much water has flowed under the bridge. At the UN General Assembly on 28 September 2010, Pakistan’s first call in over a decade for a free and impartial plebiscite in Kashmir under UN auspices came as a major setback to the enthusiasm generated by the dialogue process. The then army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, did not favour building on Musharraf’s proposals to resolve the Kashmir issue. The renewed violence in the Kashmir valley post-2010 in India and provocative Pakistani statements, put paid to any conversations around ‘mutually acceptable overarching solutions.’

With a significant shift in the Indian articulation, the focus increasingly became not just the problem of Kashmir, but the problem in Kashmir. There was growing recognition that issues within Jammu and Kashmir must be pursued to the extent that local sentiments about identity, fear of dominance and neglect are addressed. Development initiatives were followed with seriousness, particularly to provide energy, electricity and better transport, connectivity, and livelihoods for the conflict scarred region. After decades of disruption schools, colleges, and universities began to function again. Tourism, the greatest casualty in the post-1980s insurgency, and an important pillar of the Kashmiri economy, received a boost.

Massive investment in development and livelihood opportunities for Jammu and Kashmir appeared then the way both to offer an olive branch and to negotiate loyalty. The recrudescence of violence in the valley from 2010 would reveal the shortsightedness of offering ‘development’ as a substitute for ‘dignity’ with the youth taking to the streets in large numbers and the iconization of the militant Burhan Wani as a martyr in the cause of azadi.

 

In early 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in an unprecedented confidence building move to address human security concerns of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, and also to improve relations between the beleaguered state of J&K and the central government, had set up five working groups to propose initiatives that reflected the felt needs and realities on the ground. These groups were headed by eminent persons with an unimpeachable track record of public service who were not affiliated to any political party – two outstanding civil servants, two veteran diplomats and a retired judge.

The recommendations made by four of the working groups, which focused on confidence building measures; strengthening cross-line-of-control relations; good governance and addressing vulnerable groups like women and children affected by militancy, were welcomed as ‘opening new pathways’ by sections of civil society – even as it evoked protests from some political groups that feared an erosion of their agendas.

 

The fifth working group, chaired by Justice Sagir Ahmad, which focused on the constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir and dimensions of autonomy, sparked a furious controversy with the release of its report in December 2009. With political parties across the ideological spectrum jumping into the fray, it was seen as waffling on the crucial issue of autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir, not taking on board the views of the alienated sections of society and polity, and completely turning a deaf ear to sentiments about azadi and the views of the separatists. Some sections also opposed the report for its pro-valley bias, and for ostensibly ignoring the sentiments of the Jammu and Ladakh regions in the Indian province of Jammu and Kashmir. Renewed incidents of terrorism and violence, including military reprisals, further derailed discussions around the sensitive issue of autonomy.²⁷

The working groups did not duck hard political questions and made some unorthodox and far-reaching suggestions. They called for – among other things – the review of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act; the strengthening of the state Human Rights Commission; a general amnesty for those on trial for minor offences; a gradual troop withdrawal (especially from orchards and farming areas); lowering the ominous presence of security forces; the rehabilitation of ex-combatants; economic packages to ensure that young people did not revert to militancy; the vacating of private and public property held by the security forces; special schemes for orphans and widows; employment for Kashmiri Pandits who had to forcibly migrate, and full compensation for ‘illegal’ takeovers of property.

The recommendation for the establishment of a joint consultative group of ten members from each of the legislatures on both sides of the border, which would exchange views periodically on social, economic, cultural and trade related matters of mutual interest, reflected one specific vision of how ‘joint management’ and cooperation in the context of a soft border could be envisioned. The setting up of an expert Defence Panel comprising representatives from the state and central government in India, to determine the relocation and reconfiguration of troops and a provision for a periodic review of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, was then envisioned as a response to a long-standing demand of the people of the valley but was not followed through.

 

The opening of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus route, an outcome of intense track-two efforts, and flagged off on 7 April 2005, was seen as one of the most positive steps in bringing together the people of divided Kashmir and also divided families. The devastating earthquake of October 2005 further served to facilitate the transport of relief material to victims in Pakistan administered Kashmir. The agreement to open five points along the Line of Control – Poonch-Rawalkot, Uri-Chakoti, Tithwal-Nauseri, Mendhar-Mirpur and Uri-Hajipur – for the first time in fifty-eight years was also part of the effort to bolster people-to-people contact.

In addition, regular bus links, such as Lahore-Amritsar, Amritsar-Nankana Sahib, Poonch-Rawalkot, and the Munabao-Khokrapar train service and the Karachi-Mumbai ferry service were proposed to facilitate transport and communication links. A memorandum of understanding between the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency and Indian Coast Guard in May 2005 was put in place to help the return of fishermen, periodically caught for inadvertently transgressing maritime boundaries, and also to enhance search operations to control smuggling, drug trafficking and the like.

 

There emerged a clearer domestic agenda for Kashmir to quell fundamentalist influences, especially with the youth, by focusing on the economy to build a democratic and secular culture. The revitalization of university campuses through large allocations was part of this thrust, as also tolerance and acceptance of local and national NGOs. The conduct of reasonably free and fair elections since 2002, with unexpected voter turnouts (despite boycotts by the separatist conglomerate of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference and threats by Islamist fundamentalist groups), was read over-optimistically (and mistakenly) by the national government as a waning of militant popularity.²⁸

Until the close of the 20th century, the international agenda on Kashmir and the terms of debate was being set by Pakistan. India was reactive, responding with ‘officialese’ or thundering silences. Since 9/11, India succeeded in wresting the initiative and shifting the discourse from human rights violations to ‘cross border terrorism’ and emphasizing the presence of Islamist training camps in Pakistan. There was also focus on the lack of autonomy in Gilgit and the Northern Areas and the inadequacy of democratic arrangements in Pakistan administered Kashmir. This was accompanied by a systematic effort to broaden the notion of Kashmiri identity beyond the valley focus that it had acquired in international understanding.

 

Interactions between civil society groups and policymakers across the divide were tacitly encouraged by India. There was a sense that regional, national and international events had created a window of opportunity and all that remained was for India and Pakistan to ‘stop trying to drink soup with a fork and for someone from either side to have the common sense to use a spoon.’²⁹

In moving out of the ‘partition plus Cold War mode’, there was an attempt to examine the requisites for a pragmatic solution of the Kashmir dispute. These involved (i) creating conducive environments for ‘multilogues’; (ii) facilitating realistic assessments of prevalent theories and myths; (iii) establishing sustainable frameworks for negotiations; (iv) accommodating sensitivities on both sides and reducing ‘preconditions’; (v) recognizing the changed realities of the regional and international environments; (vi) injecting more and more confidence building measures; (vii) containing cross-border infiltrations and human rights violations; and (viii) committing to demilitarization and demobilization.³⁰

Musharraf’s Kashmir proposal in October 2005 suggested that in order to secure a win-win situation, the recognition of Kashmir as a dispute and the initiation of a dialogue was important. The shedding of unacceptable solutions was equally necessary. Consequently, the earlier available options mooted by Pakistan – the plebiscite option, the partition option, the independence option, and the UN administered option – were not seen to be viable at this point. The autonomy option and a collaborative water management option opened up ‘soft border’ possibilities within a future joint management arrangement.³¹

 

In the interim, there was growing acknowledgment and articulation (prompted by civil society initiatives) of the need within India to: (a) address the people of Jammu and Kashmir as crucial stakeholders and partners in the peace process; (b) sustain a concerted pitch against terrorism; (c) push actively for the cessation of violence by militant groups and the state machinery; and (d) set up soft borders to facilitate increased trade and contact among people on both sides of the Line of Control.

For India, the real challenge was to sustain a secular, participatory and democratic arrangement that also meets the aspirations of its people. The emphasis then seemed to be on a multi-pronged process – a composite dialogue with Pakistan and a sustained dialogue within its province of Jammu and Kashmir. India saw a ‘secular’ solution to Kashmir as integral to its position as a non-theocratic functioning democracy in South Asia, with the competence to integrate citizenship, pluralism and a ‘national’ identity. Kashmir becomes the litmus test of its claims of distinctiveness from Pakistan. With the terror attacks of 26 November 2008 in Mumbai, the CD process came under increasing strain both difficult to sustain and sell to its citizens.

 

From June of 2010, the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir experienced its most severe domestic crisis since the beginning of militancy in 1989. A wave of protests once again paralyzed the Kashmir valley. More than 100 Kashmiris, predominantly young men and boys, died in clashes with the security forces in 2010. There was a perceptible breakdown of governance and the electoral mandate received by the ruling National Conference had been short-sightedly squandered away. The separatist groups – notably headed by Mohammed Ali Shah Geelani – once again attempted to occupy the ceded political space, call the shots on strikes, protests and everyday shutdowns. The writ of New Delhi ceased to run.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had sought dialogue and reconciliation and announced an eight point peace package to respond to frustrated (youth) aspirations, but it seems to have cut little ice. These developments had implications not only for the Indian state, but also cast their shadow on the fast waning India-Pakistan relationship. With young people taking to the streets in large numbers and the iconization of the slain militant Burhan Wani, Commander of the Kashmiri militant group Hizbul Mujahideen, and his associates in 2016, and the smouldering intransigence of large sections of the youth, hopes for peace kindled by the CD spirit evaporated into the smog of mistrust in less than a decade.

 

Riding on the Indo-Pakistan bonhomie generated by the CD process, between 2004 and 2008, WISCOMP’s Conflict Transformation Workshops in 2004, 2005 and 2006, included modules where Kashmiris on both sides of the divide engaged in collaborative explorations on what the shape of a sustained dialogue around contentious issues could possibly look like. The aim was to open multiple fronts on creating a knowledge base and a deeper awareness about the land and people of Kashmir, to visually engage with the multiple, fractured realities emanating from this region and to think ‘out of the box’ in the continuing search for new pathways.

These meetings built on the faith that the vitality of people-to-people contacts was crucial to sustain the process. As more and more 21st century netizens from both sides revisit stereotypes, grapple with issues of identity and politics, ride on nostalgia or curiosity or even social interactions, they could bring down mental barriers and revisit the meta-narratives of security establishments. Multiple tracks of peacebuilding are needed to open up the subcontinental mind and enable the third generation of Indians and Pakistanis to exorcize the ghosts of Partition that enslaved and imprisoned their forebears.

Both serendipity and synchronicity were at work here, but above all, it also involved creating a safe catalytic space; an invitation to the parties to converse with each other, and an orientation towards collaborative problem solving; a delight in social and personal encounters for their own sake; deep listening skills; a willingness to interact non-judgmentally; a reflective capacity that helps the parties acknowledge the ‘other’ to engage in multiple conversations with themselves and one another; and a basic respect for life and dignity.

The focus was to develop an option-generating capacity and to engage with redemptive rather than repetitive history making; summed up in short aphorisms; reach out to those you fear the most; touch the heart of complexity; imagine beyond what is seen; risk vulnerability through transparency; and one-step at a time.

 

The participant-led discussions revisited and interrogated classical (Westphalian) formulations around the concepts of security, borders, territoriality, plebiscite, LOC, sovereignty, democracy and autonomy. For borders to become ‘irrelevant’ (an idea that had gained some currency in the discourse around CD), a shift in focus from territoriality to fostering relationships was flagged. Alternative narratives emerged and seemed to find greater resonance. Fluid ideas, a richer ambiguity, seemed to replace the procrustean bed of sterile certitudes. Phrases like pain-calculus, longing, dislocation, identity, homelessness, silence, the authenticity of testimonies, trust deficit, migration, people-on-the-run, space of uncertainty, armed patriarchies, deprivation, dignity, rape as a weapon of war, justice, victimhood, agency – resonated through the discussions, claiming space for an articulation that pushed the envelope beyond the vocabulary of the Composite Dialogue.

Workshop participants engaged in detail with the limits and possibilities of several peace accords from around the world that had addressed vexed issues of autonomy within and between national boundaries and that were attempts to be – in the words of peace guru Lederach – not just ‘temporary acid reducers’, but ‘systems that provide long-term health.’³²

Also on the table were several Kashmir specific proposals providing a context to engage through a subcontinental, even South Asian lens.³³ Clearly, a new narrative was seeking articulation, searching for voice. Would a new Aikido look at borders not as points of sealing, but areas of opportunity? Could sites of ‘cross fire’ once again become sites for ‘cross fertilization’ of ideas, cultures and commerce?

 

The moment, for now, seems to have passed, swallowed in the whirlwind of the dust storms that sweep Lahore and Delhi, as a Punjabi poet wrote of Independence and Partition in the ’50s.

‘A caravan has reached its destination/and yet lost its way….’³⁴

How indeed do we go about Processing Peace? How do we continue to speak in a different voice amidst the din and babel of war talk? ‘Amidst the fog of war’, begins a Dawn editorial in April 2019, ‘the truth is often lost as propaganda is trotted out by the belligerents to confuse and demoralize their opponents … Moreover when disinformation becomes the norm, even after the crisis abates, the road to normalization is all the more difficult.’³⁵ As a pacifist commentator reminds us, ‘political relations between India and Pakistan have the bitter-sweet aftertaste of an oxymoron’ (Distant Neighbours, Armed Peace are titles used for books that describe them.) cautioning that ‘history’s unlearned lesson tells us …lies may write the prologue of war; truth pens its postscript.’³⁶

 

The soundscape has changed. Jumhurriyat, Kashmiriyat, Insaniyat have yielded space. Pathankot, Uri, Pulwama-Balakot, Surgical Strike, Collapse of Coalition, Governor’s Rule, Burhan Wani, Stone Pelting, Terrorists, Blocking of National Highway 44, Suspension of Cross LOC Trade, Line of Control, Militarization, Azaadi, Security, Article 370, Nation, 35A, Convoys – are persistent echoes and resonances. Wither New Kashmir …Vajpayee 2.0?

With two decades of low-key work in the Valley, Jammu and Ladakh attempting to facilitate and nurture dialogic spaces, first with women’s groups through its Athwaas (‘handshake’ in Kashmiri) initiative and with youth and educators in schools and colleges (through Hum Kadam), WISCOMP once again faces a different bend in the road.

Through it all, how does one reach the subliminal level of perceptions and attempt in experiential mode to enter that space which defies labels and is better invoked through art – colour, or film, photography, music, poetry or prose and that lays bare the intensity of the pain of division/partition/ migration/dislocation? What is that extra territorial space that invokes heated passions, longing, yearning, hatred and the desire of possession?

What is this ‘nebulous territory’, this ‘floating land’ that the Kashmiri artist Veer Munshi projects on his canvases and that has dominated the consciousness of India and Pakistan for so many decades. Veer Munshi’s work speaks through the multitude of fractured realities that he weaves to record the passage of violence through his homeland once fabled for its beauty. His images of everyday insecurities that undergird life in the valley, have been a precursor to many younger voices today that attempt to overcome their alienation through the catharsis of artistic expressions that attempt to make sense and meaning from the fragments and debris that now dot their inner and outer landscapes.³⁷

 

As art critic Geeti Sen had said (of Munshi’s work), ‘Kashmir represents a state of a mind’, the geopolitics of the 20th century, and is paradigmatic of the predicaments of the people across the world where ‘when another migration takes place it connects you to earlier dislocations, partitions, divisions, exile and migration.’

WISCOMP had begun its engagement in Jammu and Kashmir in 2000. At the time, the absence of women’s voices in the discourse from Kashmir provided the impetus. Women had been silenced/invisiblized in the narrative on Jammu and Kashmir that then existed. Over the next 18 years, WISCOMP made attempts to amplify the voices of women and post-2010, concertedly worked with youth to contribute to opening safe spaces for dialogue.

The vicissitudes during this process posed many challenges for strengthening constituencies for non-violent engagements in Jammu and Kashmir and with other parts of India. At various points during this period the debate became increasingly polarized: New Delhi vs. Islamabad; New Delhi vs. Srinagar; Jammu and Ladakh vs. the Valley, Pakistan supporters vs. India supporters; Radicals vs. Moderates; Sunni Muslims of the Valley vs. ‘other’ Muslims. These competing narratives sometimes appeared at loggerheads and at other moments offered some hope for finding common ground and resolution. However, in the past year even determined optimism has been sorely tested. The narratives ‘on Kashmir’ and ‘in Kashmir’ seem to rest on a normalization of violence with high thresholds of ambivalence to violence.

As the situation in Kashmir continues to unravel and cause concern, some fundamental questions need to be addressed. Do our frames of reference need serious interrogation? Do the binaries within which the dominant discourse on Kashmir is couched, serve us to gauge the layers of complexity that make up its current canvas? Is it time to engage in deconstruction – interrogate received concepts and begin a process of ‘re-storying’? How do multiple narratives cohere, collide or coexist? Do they herald hope or trap us in a welter of despair?

 

Over the past year, the three status reports from the Concerned Citizens Group³⁸ and the work of several researchers show that youth in Kashmir play a decisive role in mobilizing opinion in the valley. Deeply alienated and high on a sense of disenfranchisement, the Kashmiri youth (a sizable number, if not all) express their discontent through protests on the street and pelting of stones. These two means of articulation are believed to have consolidated youth opinion, bridging the gap that existed earlier between the educated youth and the not so well educated middle class and the urban and rural Kashmiris. As a result, youth in various parts of the valley are perceived as the face of the movement, using largely similar tactics of mobilization.³⁹ They have found a common vocabulary – stone pelting and a sense of togetherness in street protest. And they see this as strategic defence, the only armour they have against the might of the state.⁴⁰

 

Kashmiri civil society interprets youth protests as an overt manifestation of the closure of safe spaces for articulation for young people. For them what is deeply troubling is the fact that post-2016, children as young as 8-10 years have begun participating in the street protests.⁴¹ This participation has led to the loss of lives of many young people, a sizable number lost their sight when pellet guns were used by the armed forces and scores were arrested under the Public Safety Act. The increased participation of schoolchildren and young girls since 2017 is undoubtedly a crisis for the future of the youth of the valley.

 

In the narratives emerging from the valley, a great deal of attention is placed on the fact that the Kashmiri youth justify the pelting of stones as an act of defence and not an act of violence.⁴² The questions that need attention are: in a context of power asymmetry, when and how does violence gain legitimacy? What signifies the ‘normal’ in Kashmir today? What are the consequences of the ‘normalization’ of the gun versus the stone narrative?

Mainstream Indian media (especially television channels) reminds viewers that India has done everything it could to placate Kashmiri citizen with resources and space for democratic participation through periodic elections.⁴³ Some analysts also connect the new form of these continuous protests on the streets with global Muslimhood.⁴⁴ A fairly large number of Indians increasingly see the problem as one of terrorism and radicalization that has to be tackled primarily with military strategy.⁴⁵

‘Ask teenagers in Srinagar and they will tell you how all these years India has been seen as communicating to Kashmiris through rigged elections, dismissal of elected governments, through encounters and corruption. They will tell you how India has become synonymous with a military bunker or a police vehicle or a ranting panelist on prime time television. Is this the idea of India, which can win Kashmiri hearts? Accepting what India and its symbols stand for in the eyes of a Kashmiri is the first step towards untangling this Gordian knot’,⁴⁶ says Shah Faesal, a young Kashmiri who shot to fame for having topped the Indian Administrative Service examination and who subsequently resigned from the service to pursue ‘clean politics’.

 

The millennials in Kashmir do not hold cultural views that are identical to those of the older generations.⁴⁷ Those between the ages of 10-30 years, who have not seen a semblance of ‘normalcy’ being ‘born in conflict’ and living through militarization, have a view of ‘Kashmir’ that is different from their parents and grandparents. Their exposure to diversity is also limited. The young Kashmiri cannot relate to the idea of a diverse syncretic paradise-like Kashmir.⁴⁸

Formal spaces for articulation have continued to shrink in the valley. The 23-year old female editor of the fortnightly newspaper Mizraab which started as a student-led initiative in Kashmir University, avers: ‘Since the 1990s’ conflict, we don’t have a student union, it was banned. If they are not allowing us to have a physical union, why not have a written space that will help us to draw our ideas and grievances, and what we as a new generation feel about conflict.’⁴⁹ Even the school is no longer considered a safe space. Teachers and students often face sanctions and decisions about classes and exams are made either in the department of education of J&K or at Hurriyat meetings. As a consequence, prolonged school and college closures have become routine.

 

Several other issues have remained outside the mainstream narrative. Women and girls are conspicuously absent here except as victims of sexual violence and as mothers of the enforced disappeared persons. A study on the youth of Kashmir asserts that, ‘In the current context men-only interactions are the norm; these tend to focus on the issues and perspectives of men, who often end up representing women in public forums on issues concerning them.’⁵⁰

There has been an explosion of alternative forms of expression in the last few years – the virtual world and social media becoming widely popular with the young generation as both consumers and creators of content. However gradually even the virtual network has come under the scanner from both the security establishment and the secessionist groups. Fear of reprisal on posting comments on web-spaces that are easy to track are commonplace now. Despite this, youth continue to use virtual networks to hold conversations, express dissent and communicate with the world outside. It is consequently important to ask if the social media provides a cultural space that is less confrontational than mainstream media or is it doomed to replicate the black and white narratives with little room for nuance and genuine exchange of ideas?

Young Kashmiris are also increasingly articulating their views through art, music, theatre and other creative methods. Examples are the music of M.C. Kash and Alif Feat. This music is centred on rights, grievances and feelings of voicelessness. Phrases such as, ‘stand up for your rights’, ‘meri awaaz suno, mujhe azaad karo’ are indicative of this desire to be heard and acknowledged.⁵¹ What insights do these articulations offer on the aspirations of the youth? Young Kashmiris like cricketer Parvez Rasool, actress Zaira Wasim and R.J. Vafa are individuals articulating ‘freedom’ in a different form by refusing to be constrained by circumstances in the valley. How many mainstream narratives yield space to these articulations and forms of expression?

 

Security analysts have argued that ‘there has been a surge in Islamic terminology and symbolism in Kashmir’s socio-political landscape that is gradually delegitimizing the previously dominant ethno-nationalist agenda of the insurgency.’⁵² They see the increase in Wahabi influence in the valley as pushing Kashmiris, particularly youth, towards a more fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. Several other developments in the valley fuel this thesis.⁵³ The waning in the practice of Sufi Islam, the traditional form of religious practice in the region, and the growing congregations of the Wahabi flock through various Ahl-e-Hadith mosques legitimizes the radicalization narrative. The incidents of arson⁵⁴ at one of the Sufi shrines combined with the other factors gives credence to this argument.⁵⁵

 

The idea of using spaces of worship for articulation of political demands is not new. Such examples abound in India and in other parts of the world. Martin Luther King used the pulpit to mobilize African Americans during the Civil Rights movement as did Desmond Tutu to galvanize the anti-apartheid sentiment in South Africa. But, unlike in the valley, theirs were exhortations to non-violent struggles. The legitimization of violence has been a deeply disturbing feature of the religious symbolism that is gaining a prominent space in several youth-led agitations in the valley. One particular image of an IS flag-carrying youth after the death of Burhan Wani raised newer concerns, in a place that was believed to have been relatively free of IS recruits.⁵⁶

The question about where Burhan Wani’s charisma lies did not find any space in analysis. Has the youth in Kashmir rejected the leadership of the wise men with beards and opted for a physically, sartorial ‘sexy’ militant, who sought to have an image akin to Che Guevara? Why are the obvious differences in the imagery of the ‘new’ radicals overlooked?

 

As the Kashmiri youth get attracted to right wing ideologies, do they mirror similar populist assertions that are unfolding across the world? Moreover, is it only a section of the Kashmiri population which is getting ‘radicalized’, or does it also apply to other parts of the population of India? Analysts caution that the effects of this radicalization cannot be geographically isolated – as Europe has learned at great cost and that India should address this trend of radicalization across all fault lines.⁵⁷

Where and when in the midst of this do spaces for dialogue emerge? How does one enter this complex, layered space with reflexivity, shedding the familiar reductivist shibboleths, meta-narratives and shrill rhetoric handed down through mainstream (mostly electronic) media and try to understand the inflection points of 2010, Burhan Wani and after, and see in the patterns of the years gone by, and in the emerging mosaic, where spaces for healing and reconciliation can emerge?

How do we acknowledge that there may be a flawed understanding of the multiple realities that are concaving or convexing our lenses, such that we cannot make the connections in the spectrum that presents itself as events or isolated occurrences of terror, stone pelting, crackdown, search operations, or the use of pellets? Are we homogenizing groups and communities with attribution and labels that overlook a deeper complexity? What does it take to genuinely be ‘in dialogue’ in the valley, between the youth and civil society groups or even amongst the youth.

 

Are we asking the right questions? How far are the differing expectations of the disparate actors – civil society groups, policy makers, governments, legislatures, the Hurriyat and the government leadership – at all in sync with the language and syntax of the young people who are the future of Kashmir? Is Kashmir nothing more than a graveyard of several missed opportunities and failure to render to its people a sense of dignity and faith in democracy and above all a sense of justice?

How can we strive, through genuine processes of reconciliation, for that finer balance between the enervating cultivation of grievance and collective amnesia? How do we re-imagine the present? How do we generate or facilitate a discourse that makes despair unconvincing and hope practical?

How may we explore how new processes of re-storying can generate multilogues that move beyond the arid binaries of law and order versus human rights; justice versus legality; radicalization versus mainstream; constitutionalism versus azaadi; election versus participatory democracy; government versus representation; diversity versus fundamentalism; state security versus human security, among others. Can these binaries give way to a more nuanced, textured understanding of the pervasiveness of violence even in the quotidian aspects of life in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

After all, the central issue in Kashmir is not Article 370, not even 35A, but the expressions, sometimes in the shadows, often lurking in unacknowledged nooks and crannies of deeper distances in the psyche of hurt, humiliation and pain – which is why azaadi can never be a uniformly agreed concept. It is a cry for attention. In many ways, genuine dialogic processes require active listening. They also require creativity, transgression and critique.

As Shiv Visvanathan evocatively points out, ‘Peace is a perpetual hypothesis, tested and verified every day. A people’s peace cannot be an experts’ peace’… ‘Unlike the Holocaust or Partition, which have the gigantism of epic memories, the sadness of Kashmir is forged, crafted out of thousands of little memories, unwritten diaries merging quietly together. It is this alchemy of memories that is struggling against government policy, which sanitizes violence and erases memory to create this strange machine that moves from violence to violence in facile amnesia.’ ⁵⁸

Postscript: We dust the faded postcard WISCOMP once received from Ramu Gandhi, the Mahatma’s grandson. It has the image of a little Chinese boy held aloft with his hands folded, around the multitude of helmets of security forces formed into something of a lotus-like pattern in Tiananmen Square and beneath it read:

‘In the midst of Death, Life persists.

In the midst of Untruth, Truth persists

In the midst of Darkness, Light persists

In the midst of Hate, Love persists.’

As we clip it to our office board, an unfamiliar light shines from it.

 

* The author thanks Seema Kakaran and Shilpi Shabdita for their valuable inputs and insights on the formulations on Kashmir in this paper.

Footnotes:

1. See T.C.A. Raghavan, The People Next Door: The Curious History of India’s Relations with Pakistan, Harper Collins, Delhi, 2017, for a refreshing account of the many layers, ambiguities and contradictions of the India-Pakistan relationship.

2. These include the Nehru-Liaquat Pact; the Shimla Agreement; the Ziaul Haq-Indira Gandhi Joint Commission Agreement, 1982; the Rajiv Gandhi-Benazir Bhutto talks, 1988; the Narasimha Rao-Nawaz Sharif talks, 1991; the engagement between Prime Minister I.K. Gujral and Nawaz Sharif, which paved the way for a Composite Dialogue, and the Lahore Declaration of 1999.

3. See Christophe Carle, ‘International Security in a Nuclear South Asia’, in R. Thakur and O. Wiggen (eds.), South Asia in the World. United Nations University Press, Tokyo, 2004, p. 64.

4. Shekhar Gupta, ‘Two PMs, One Big Idea’, The Indian Express, New Delhi, 1 August 2009.

5. It is reported that the Indian missions in Pakistan processed only 30 visas in June 2003, which went up to over 30,000 during the highnoon of the Composite Dialogue. In early 2007, an average of 12,000 visas had been issued for Pakistani visits to India.

6. Cross border peace initiatives between women’s groups from Pakistan and India can be traced back to the early 1980s. One of the first contacts between women’s groups was in 1984, when Indian peace activist Kamla Bhasin was invited as a family planning trainer. In 1988 a Pakistani women’s initiative spearheaded by Shirkat Gah studied the Chipko movement in India leading to the first joint Indo-Pakistan conference on environment in Lahore. ‘The Women’s Bus for Peace’, organized by WIPSA (Women’s Initiative for Peace in South Asia) against the rhetoric of war post-Kargil, attempted to create a space for dialogue, when in 2000, women from both countries representing diverse professional backgrounds, made the 12 hour journey each way to generate goodwill on both sides.

7. The eight subjects were peace and security, including confidence building measures; Jammu and Kashmir; Siachen; the Tulbul Navigation project; the Sir Creek marshland; terrorism and drug trafficking; economic and commercial cooperation; and the promotion of friendly exchanges.

8. C. Raja Mohan, ‘India-Pakistan: Ten Questions on the Peace Process’, Economic and Political Weekly, 10 July 2004.

9. John Paul Lederach, Preparing for Peace. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY, 1996, pp. 11-23.

10. See John Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies. United States Institute of Peace Press, Washington DC, 1997, p. 39. The sustainability of peace building requires both horizontal and vertical relationship building and coordination. Horizontal capacity refers to efforts to work with counterparts across the lines of division – focusing on improving relationships by getting counterparts to meet each other, e.g. initiatives that bring women’s groups, NGO workers, political leaders etc. across ‘enemy lines’; vertical capacity is the ability to develop relationships of respect and understanding between higher levels of leadership, mid-range, grassroots and community levels of peace building. Sustainable peace building requires building synergy between and across levels.

11. Shiv Shankar Menon, ‘Engaging with Possibilities, Collaborative Explorations’, WISCOMP Report, New Delhi, 2006, pp. 38-43.

12. Radha Kumar, India as a Foreign Policy Actor – Normative Redux, CEPS Working Document No. 285, February 2008, p. 8.

13. Ibid. p. 8.

14. Military CBMs (Confidence Building Measures) included DGMO (Director General of Military Operations) hotlines and regular meetings of border forces. In October 2007, both sides held the fifth round of expert high level talks on nuclear and missile related CBMs. They signed an agreement on ‘Reducing the Risk from Accidents Relating to Nuclear Weapons’, and committed to notifying each other in the event of nuclear accidents.

15. The missile pre-notification agreement was scrupulously observed even at times of tension. One point of difference arose since India wanted this confined only to ballistic surface to surface missiles, whereas Pakistan wished to include all types of missiles including cruise missiles. See Christopher Carle, ‘International Security in a Nuclear South Asia’, in Ramesh Thakur and Oddny Wiggen (eds.), South Asia in the World. United Nations University Press, Bookwell, 2005, p. 63.

16. Security scholar, Amitabh Mattoo, evocatively alluded to these constituencies in Pakistan as the ‘Subedars’ (military), the ‘Saudagars’ (business community), and ‘Sufis’ (intellectuals and civil society), who need to be creatively engaged with for CBMs to succeed.

17. Pakistani analyst, Farzana Shaikh, Making Sense of Pakistan, Hurst and Company, London, 2009, argued that Pakistan’s identity crisis, particularly over its Islamic/Muslim construction, has continued to plague the country – its ‘obsession’ with India spurring it to define itself in terms of what it is ‘not’ rather than what it is. As a state burdened with negative identity, it is propelled to seek a compulsive parity with India, a country almost seven times its size. Pakistan’s struggle with India is deeply embedded in a painful awareness of its own lack of history, it is argued.

18. Referred to as the ‘back channel’, the talks were held over several years by special envoys in Bangkok, Dubai and London. The two principal envoys – Tariq Aziz for Pakistan and S. K. Lambah for India – developed a text on Kashmir called a ‘nonpaper’, because it contained no signatures or names but could serve as a detailed basis for a deal. See ‘India Pakistan Were Close to Secret Deal on Kashmir – Report’, Agence France-Presse, 23 February 2009.

19. Karan Thapar, ‘Excerpted Interview With Former Foreign Minister of Pakistan Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri’, The Hindu (New Delhi), 21 February 2009. In an interview, Musharraf reiterated and confirmed this adding that the two countries were close to a solution on Kashmir, Siachen and Sir Creek. See The Hindu (New Delhi), 18 July 2009.

20. See ‘India Pakistan Were Close to Kashmir Accord’, Indo-Asian News Service, 22 February 2009, http://in.news.yahoo.com/43/20090222/890.

21. The issue of Sir Creek – an area with varied biodiversity thought to be rich in oil and gas reserves as well, is one of the least politicized disputes between the two countries, and as a result is considered more amenable to an early settlement. It concerns the demarcation of the India-Pakistan border along a 96 kilometre long estuary in the Rann of Kutch. Pakistan claims the whole of the creek; India says that the border should run midway through the water channel. At the widest point it means a difference of 10-12 kilometres of territory for both countries.

22. ‘Excerpted Interview of Kasuri’, The Hindu, op. cit.

23. See Radha Kumar, Making Peace with Partition. Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2005, pp. 115-118. See also B. G. Verghese, A J&K Primer: From Myth to Reality. India Research Press, New Delhi, 2006.

24. A lucid elaboration is found in Navnita Chadha Behera, State, Identity and Violence: Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. Manohar, New Delhi, 2000.

25. Javed Naqvi, ‘Indian PM Offers Friendship Treaty: Delinking of Kashmir Sought’, Daily Dawn (Karachi), 25 March 2006.

26. See A.G. Noorani, ‘A Working Paper on Kashmir’, Frontline, 25 February-1 March 2006.

27. Current demands for the abrogation of Articles 370 and Section 35A concerning the special status of J&K reflect the cartographic anxieties around the issue of autonomy.

28. India’s reasonably successful parliamentary elections in 2004 and 2009 in Jammu and Kashmir, the positive mandate for electoral processes in the Provincial Assembly elections of 2002 and 2008 (despite pre-poll violence and threats by the extremists), and an unexpected voter turnout even in 2009, in the aftermath of intrastate tensions and massive protests over disputes around land ownership of the Hindu shrine at Amarnath, were foregrounded by government and the media as a vindication of the country’s position on the democratic space available in Jammu and Kashmir. Average voter turnouts for the Assembly elections were 44% and 60.5% in 2002 and 2008, respectively, and between 39.66% and 45% for the general elections to Parliament in 2004 to 2009.

29. See F. S. Aijazuddin, ‘The Mulberry Bush of Kashmir’, Dawn (Karachi), 13 December 2005.

30. See Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, ‘Solving the Kashmir Dispute: Is There a Way Out’, WISCOMP Conflict Transformation Working Paper IV, New Delhi, 2005.

31. Ibid., pp. 10-13.

32. These included (i) the Aland Islands (1921), (ii) the South Tyrol Model (1969), (iii) the Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement (1998), (iv) the Indonesia-Aceh Accord (2005), (v) Spain-Catalonia Autonomy Agreement (2005), (vi) the Ibarretxe Proposal for Basque (1999-2006), (vii) the New Caledonia Model (1998), (viii) the Sami Assembly (2000).

33. Some of them included the Chenab Formula, the Delhi Policy Group proposal, the Hurriyat proposal, the International Centre for Peace Initiatives, the Kashmiri American Council proposal, etc.

34. Randhir Singh, Dust of the Paths (translated from the Punjabi) Aakar, New Delhi, 2017.

35. ‘View From the Neighbourhood’, The Indian Express, 9 April 2019.

36. F.S. Aijazzuddin, ‘A Foreign Past’, Dawn, Lahore, 11 April 2019.

37. A boy silhouetted against a blast, helmets on the Dal Lake, the story of crows symbolizing how pieces are picked up from the debris, symbols of high table politics that excludes people, a border that separates people physically similar, uniformed personnel who guard the nation, images of hope in the midst of despair reflected in the light behind the clouds and women looking through saffron fields…

38. See the The Concerned Citizens Group Report I at http://www.cdrindia.org/pdf’s/2016/Report%20on%20Srinagar%20 Visit%20pdf-2016.pdf. Other reports are available from CDR at http://www.cdrindia. org

39. This observation was made in 2010 by Rekha Chowdhary and others. See Rekha Chowdhary, ‘The Second Uprising’, Economic and Political Weekly 45(39), September-October 2010, pp. 10-13. Amitabh Mattoo and Souresh Roy, ‘Summer of Discontent: Considering Conditions in Kashmir’, Harvard International Review 32(4), Winter 2011, pp. 54-58. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4276 3421 http://www.jstor.org/stable/25742111. Accessed on 3 August 2017.

40. While much is made of the use of stones by Kashmiri youth, Wajahat Habibullah observes that this method of protest is not novel to the region as stone pelting happened even during the Maharaja’s time. See Echoes and Resonances: Critical Challenges for Youth and Peacebuilding in Kashmir: A Consultative Dialogue, WISCOMP, New Delhi, 2017, p.16.

41. Nazir Gillo, ‘5 Boys Aged 7-15 Years Detained for Stone Pelting’, Kashmir Reader, 16 February 2017. http://kashmirreader.com/2017/02/16/5-boysaged-7-15-years-detained-stone-pelting/

42. This was noted by Fahad Shah during the WISCOMP roundtable in March 2017 and also noted in the Report by the Concerned Citizens Group on Kashmir after they visited the valley in November 2016.

43. Shah Faesal, ‘Every Hour of Prime Time TV News Aggression Pushes Kashmir a Mile Westward from India’, The Indian Express, 20 July 2016. http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/kashmir-protest-burhan-wanikilling-selective-indian-media-coverage-insensitive-residents-column-2922176/

44. Tavleen Singh, ‘Hugs for Kashmir’, The Indian Express, 20 August 2017.

45. D.S. Hooda, ‘The People’s Way Out: Can the Civil Society of J&K Take a Leading Role to Stem the Slide of its Youth Towards Radicalization?’ The Indian Express, 16 September 2017.

46. Shah Faesal, op. cit., 20 July 2016.

47. The gap between the cultural views of the older generation of Kashmiris and young people who have not experienced religious and ethnic coexistence in their daily lives highlighted during the dialogues that WISCOMP organized between 2012-2015. The baseline assessment conducted by WISCOMP in 2012 before initiating the youth dialogues also demonstrated that young people in the valley had limited experience of ethnic and religious diversity. See Chitralekha, Deepika Papneja & Seema Kakran, Baseline Assessment: The Hum Kadam Programme, WISCOMP, New Delhi, 2012.

48. K. Khandelwal, et al., ‘The Imprisoned Dove: Transcending Conflict and Building Cultures of Peace’, Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi, 2013,

49. Expressed in the documentary, In the Shade of Fallen Chinar, directed by Fazil NC and Shawn Sebastian, Drokpa Films, 2016.

50. Fayaz Ahmad Dar, ‘Opening Spaces for Youth in Jammu & Kashmir’, Conciliation Resources, 2013. Available at http://www.c-r.org/downloads/687%20CR%20Open% 20spaces%20for%20youth%20-%20 web% 20version%202_0.pdf

51. Lyrics of a song written and sung by a student of Kashmir University in the documentary, In the Shade of Fallen Chinar, op. cit, 2016.

52. Vinay Kaura, Counter Insurgency in Kashmir: The Cyber Dimension, ORF Occasional Paper 106, January 2017, pp. 11-12.

53. Alpana Kishore, Nationality and Identity Shifts in Jammu and Kashmir’s Armed Conflict, WISCOMP, New Delhi, 2009.

54. Arson at Peer Dastageer Sahab in 2012 is the most dramatic example of this attack on Sufi shrines. Other examples are Hazrat Zainuddin Reshi at Pendabal in Aishmuqam, Anantnag in 2005, Chrar-e-Sharief siege in 1995, Baba Reshi Shrine in Tangmarg, 1989.

55. At some of the WISCOMP workshops, participants from Kashmir both at the school and college levels were divided over whether visits to ziyarats are unislamic or permissible.

56. A recent analysis observed that the IS type of recruitment and radicalization trends are more visible in the southern states. See Ullekh NP and Siddharth Singh, ‘God’s Recruits: the Radicalization of Indian Muslim Youth in the Age of Islamic State’, Open, 3 July 2017.

57. D.S. Hooda, ‘The People’s Way Out: Can the Civil Society of J&K Take a Leading Role to Stem the Slide of its Youth Towards Radicalisation? The Indian Express, 16 September 2017.

58. See M. Gopinath, S. Kakran, S. Shabdita, (Re)Storying Kashmir: Exploring Possibilities for Constructive Partnerships, WISCOMP, New Delhi, 2018.