I write this article weeks after the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance won a second term, with Narendra Modi as Prime Minister once again. The election campaign was marked by the February 14 Pulwama terror attack, following which both sides used fighter jets to bomb each other’s territory, with the significant distinction that India’s air attacks were against the Jaish-e-Mohammad whereas Pakistan’s were token, to make a point.

Following Modi’s re-election Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan renewed his earlier request for peace talks, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek in mid-June offered a sidelines meeting between the two prime ministers which Narendra Modi spurned, on the grounds that talks and terror do not go together.

At the moment, therefore, any discussion of negotiation seems abstract at best. Yet it is also true that our need to make peace in Kashmir – whether we start talks with Pakistan or not – is at least as urgent a priority as is our need to deal with cross border attacks. This article is a personal account of the lessons I learned as a government appointed interlocutor for Jammu and Kashmir. It is adapted from my book, Paradise at War: A Political History of Kashmir.

In the summer of 2010 stoning protests broke out in the Kashmir valley leading to the deaths of over 120 youth. Paralyzed for three months, the Manmohan Singh administration eventually reacted with a slew of measures, including the appointment of a group of interlocutors, of whom I was one. The appointment was the first time an Indian government had appointed non-government people to such a mission; previous interlocutors were retired government officers.

Our mandate was something short of negotiation. We were ‘interlocutors’ – in other words, our task was to consult with the widest range of political opinion in the state and formulate steps for the union government to take. To that extent we were not negotiators with x, y, or z offers to make. Yet we could only suggest steps for the government to take if we consulted on the ground to identify which were the most immediately important, and assessed which could be feasibly achieved. Both required negotiation.

Our brief was political and it was wide. According to the Home Ministry’s official announcement, our terms of reference were to ‘hold talks with all shades of opinion including... separatists and other stakeholders in all the three regions – Jammu, Ladakh and Kashmir …to chart a course for the future.’

 

Before making our first visit to the state, we held extensive discussions on how we would approach the mission amongst ourselves as well as with Home Minister Chidambaram, Home Secretary Gopal Pillai and Home Ministry point person K. Skandan. Our work would be step by step: we would visit the state every month and give the ministry monthly reports with recommendations for Confidence Building Measures (CBMs). The ministry would act in real time on some if not all of our recommendations, so that at the end of a year, when we presented our final report, the ground would have been set for next steps towards political resolution.

Within the army, too, a ‘hearts-and-minds’ approach had gained salience. Speaking to journalists in December, the new GOC (General Officer Commanding) of the Army’s 15 Corps, which oversaw security in the valley, Lieutenant General S.A. Hasnain, said he was ‘looking at a long-term perspective where [the] army can assist the state administration and the government in reaching out to the people by putting a balm on [their] wounds’, a phrase that Mehbooba Mufti had used during the Sayeed administration of 2002-6.

We decided that priority CBMs – release of stone throwers and political prisoners, along with human rights improvement – would be high on our agenda. Despite this messaging, we knew pro-Pakistan and pro-independence groups were unlikely to meet us. Dilip Padgaonkar and I knew most of the dissident leaders through our previous Track II engagements, but this did not work in our favour once we had become official. As Yasin Malik of the JKLF said later, ‘One of them was my friend, but I could not meet the group.’ For the dissident leaders, we would have to find a different strategy.

On our first visit, therefore, we visited the Srinagar Central Jail and Shopian, in addition to the established schedule of meeting political parties and sectoral groups. Our Shopian visit was intensely painful. The town was silent and brooding, with only a few people to be seen. The husband of one and father of both murdered girls accepted our condolences with a single message for us: troops should be withdrawn from Shopian. They believed that two army men had raped and killed the girls; we heard from others that an errant policeman had organized the murders. Whatever the truth, it was not an issue to debate with the bereaved, and Padgaonkar promised to raise their demand with the chief minister as well as with the union Home Ministry.

 

Our visit to the Srinagar jail was more substantive. After we had discussed the release of first time stone throwers with the jail superintendent, he suggested we talk to the Hizbul and other guerrilla prisoners to probe whether there was scope to renew the 2001 ceasefire. It was taken for granted that they still exerted influence, even from inside the jail. Ushered into a large cell, we were surprised to find around seventy prisoners waiting for us. To our even greater surprise, most of them told us that they belonged to the Lashkar-e-Taiba. The earlier, bitterly violent, rivalry between the Hizbul and Lashkar appeared to have ended, at least in prison. Or perhaps their announcement, made somewhat defiantly, was intended to provoke. If true, the former was a warning for the Indian and state governments, indicating that the line between foreign (aka Pakistani, with a sprinkling of Afghan) and local guerrillas had been erased.

When we began our discussion, it became clear that the prisoners had already prepared. Their spokesmen came quickly to the point. If they were able to convince the guerrillas in the field to ceasefire, would their release be a quid pro quo, they asked. We were not in a position to say yes or no, but we could certainly convey their proposal, we said.

 

Leaving the cell after a two-hour-long discussion, we decided to keep the talks confidential. But when we exited the prison gates, we found a group of local journalists waiting for us. They had already received a statement from the prisoners that they would be submitting a ‘peace plan’ to us. I had heard how porous the Srinagar jail was, but the ease and speed with which prisoners could communicate with the media – and presumably anyone else with a cell phone, including guerrillas in hiding and maybe even cross-border agents in Pakistan – was still astonishing.

There was immediate uproar at the news of our jail discussion. Why were the interlocutors talking to terrorists, the BJP clamoured, and television channels echoed their accusations. In Jammu, there were demonstrations denouncing us. In fact, the Home Ministry and state government had cleared our meeting, and state intelligence officials accompanied us. And the terrorists were behind bars.

Within days of the BJP’s clamour, the Pakistan-backed United Jihad Council followed suit. ‘Having failed to garner support and endorsement from Kashmiris, New Delhi’s interlocutors have taken undue advantage of the helplessness of detained militants in an unsuccessful bid to prop up their falling credibility’, the council’s spokesman, Sadaqat Hussain, said. In Srinagar, Geelani called for a boycott of us.

The Jihad Council’s statement indicated that the prisoners’ ceasefire proposal was local in origin, not cross-border. It might have reflected exhaustion from the field, just as Majid Dar’s offer on behalf of the Hizbul had ten years earlier. There was little overall support for guerrillas, whose sources of local shelter and sustenance had shrunk enormously from 2008 on. Total casualties had fallen to 375 in 2009 and remained at that figure in 2010, declining to 183 in 2011. Civilian casualties were below 50, but did not include those who died in stoning protests. When added, civilian deaths due to the conflict were 170 in 2010-11. Despite these signs of diminishing violence, the clamour in Jammu and Delhi made it impossible for us to probe the prisoners’ offer further.

 

Though our jail discussion proved stillborn, its impact in the valley was considerable. Home Minister Chidambaram, people began to feel, may have been serious when he said there were no red lines on whom we could talk to. It helped too that we defended the decision to hold a discussion with guerrilla prisoners without either claiming it as a victory or disclaiming it as never having happened. Slowly, the tide against us in the valley began to turn.

Despite this small and struggling shoot of opportunity, the hostility towards us in Jammu and Delhi continued to remain high and forced us to change our strategy. Our initial focus had been to woo the alienated. The jail discussion was only one element of this strategy. The most important task was to secure the release of stone throwers, beginning with first time offenders, and those political prisoners who were not accused of heinous crimes such as murder. Alongside, there was the issue of unresolved human rights abuses, such as whether and which youth disappearances were forced and which were voluntary (those who had crossed to the Pakistan-held territories of the former princely state for guerrilla training).

 

My colleagues had asked me to deal with human rights issues, knowing what a complex and thankless task it would be. Though I requested a list of youth detained by the state government, I did not receive one. Instead, parents began to write to me with individual complaints. Follow up entailed endless file pushing, liaising with the police and families to ensure that action was taken. By the end of November, I had only succeeded in ensuring thirty releases, and we turned to the union Home Ministry to push for general amnesty for first time offenders rather than case-by-case recommendations from us.

Arrests, however, continued. Though stoning protests had by now much reduced, they were still frequent in areas such as Baramulla, Pattan and Shopian. The state police, who had begun to video protests to identify the ringleaders, also continued to arrest as their recordings were processed. A general amnesty was finally declared on Eid 2011, but only after our mission had ended.

Our dilemma in the valley was how to balance immediate needs that would calm the situation with longer-term solutions. Each of our meetings started with an explosion of anger by participants, as did the phone calls I received from Kashmiris across the valley, as many as forty a day, starting at 7 a.m. and ending at midnight. I often felt that we were sponges to absorb hate – a necessary but gruelling task. At the same time, it became clear that most of the valley supported four priority CBMs: release of young stone throwers, easing restrictions on movement, addressing the aspirations of youth, and putting in place a responsive and effective public grievance redressal machinery. Most of our interlocutors stressed that implementation of these four CBMs would act as game changers.

In the same months, I opened a Facebook page to interact with Kashmiris on social media. Within a week, over 5,000 people signed up to the page, mostly youth. Initially, our discussions worked well. Beginning by questioning the Indian government’s commitment to solving the Kashmir problem, one Facebook post commented: ‘peace is an assiduous exercise, rather, a process.’ Several agreed that peacemaking was a hard, slow and painful task, in which they would willingly join. Sadly, the conversation soon degenerated into abusive exchanges between pro- and anti-independence supporters, most of whom I suspect were trolls.

 

We also continued to offend. In December, our monthly press release reported a trust deficit between the state government and valley residents, and urged serious effort to reduce it through transparent and accountable governance and due process of law. The release alienated many in the coalition government. The interlocutors were ‘trying to divert attention’, admonished senior National Conference leader and MP from south Kashmir, Mehboob Beg. ‘Their mandate is to suggest ways for permanent political settlement – engaging Pakistan or initiating a meaningful dialogue. Criticizing the government, which faced [its] worst-ever five months, doesn’t make any sense.’ People’s Democratic Front president, Hakeem Muhammad Yasin, added, ‘accountability, transparency, building trust are things that can be taken care of once the bigger issue’ of Jammu and Kashmir’s political status was settled.

Common as Yasin’s perception was, it misconstrued the situation. Trust building through governance is widely understood as paving the way for a durable peace settlement. Institutional development is also now widely seen as critical to a successful transition to stability. In country after country, where destroyed institutions were not revived prior to a peace agreement, warlords and/or hardliners gained the upper hand in negotiations and grew to dominate public institutions. As a result, post-conflict stabilization failed.

 

Our big breakthrough came in late December, two days before Christmas. Independent MLA Mohammad Rashid, who had formerly been a member of Sajad Lone’s People’s Conference, organized a large public meeting with us at Langate in Kupwara, at which over 500 participants took a pledge to refrain from stone throwing if ‘there was an assurance that the Indian government would move for a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue and protect human rights.’ Asserting that they wanted to ‘live a dignified and honourable life’, speakers called for political space for non-violent protest. ‘The men with guns in their hands should also be included in dialogue’ for a lasting solution, Rashid urged.

News of the pledge made headlines across Jammu and Kashmir. ‘This is the biggest breakthrough since Vajpayee’, a Facebook user wrote to me. Even the BJP, which had revived its campaign to hoist the Indian flag in Lal Chowk, welcomed the pledge and flooded Rashid with congratulations.

Though I urged that the prime minister or home minister respond to the pledge with a formal statement of welcome, the response was lukewarm. I was puzzled, and remain so. Was it that they did not want to be seen welcoming a pledge against what was in any case illegal? Or were they cautious about the maverick MLA Rashid, who had himself been pro-independence and may still be?

Slogans for independence resounded during the Kupwara meeting. Padgaonkar, who attended with me (Ansari had remained in Srinagar), was visibly uncomfortable. He had been attacked for hearing pro-independence students at a closed-door meeting; how would the BJP react when we were televised listening to azaadi slogans? We were already so controversial that Chidambaram had been constrained to remark there should not be ‘a ball by ball commentary’ on our every doing.

 

We continued to emphasize human rights and security reforms, but the fact that reforms were not tied to a specific peace initiative, such as talks with the Hurriyat or Rashid’s public meeting, diluted their effect on the ground. Though we approached reforms as a basket of measures that would each strengthen the other, in practice they were undertaken in separate steps. For example, we recommended simultaneous action on two interconnected sets of issues: change in the security forces-citizen interface, and reforms in the justice system.

On the first, we recommended minimizing barriers and checkposts, using non-lethal methods of crowd control, human rights training for police and paramilitary forces, and redeployment of troops out of heavily populated areas. These measures should be matched, we said, by better work conditions for security forces, such as troops’ rotation every six or nine months instead of the prevailing eighteen months, more frequent leave periods and fortified barracks and vehicles.

On reforms in the justice system, we suggested incorporating the Supreme Court guidelines for standard operating procedures into the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), setting up public grievance redressal cells in army encampments, amending the state’s Public Safety Act (PSA) to remove its sweeping powers of arrest and detention, and designating special areas for public protest, as in Delhi. The state’s Human Rights and Accountability Commissions, we said, should be empowered to take suo moto cognizance of human rights abuses, as happened in other Indian states.

 

In view of the criticism of our first initiatives, we decided to focus on the second prong of our strategy, to hold consultations in each district of the state. Our district-by-district visits were organized as round table or town hall meetings. The tactic was deliberate. Previous interlocutors had received delegations one by one, in the routine pattern of government appointments. Unintentionally, in a conflict situation, this routine scheduling led to sectoral divisions and, more importantly, meant that groups with differing or antagonistic viewpoints did not have to share a table. As a result, political discourse in the state was a cacophony of voices talking over each other but never to each other. We tried to break through this deadlock, and in some areas the approach worked.

Commenting on our meeting in Bandipora, organized by PDP MLA Nizamuddin Bhatt, with around fifty political leaders and intelligentsia, the newspaper Rising Kashmir said, ‘Unlike past precedence, there was no one-to-one or secret conversation with any group as representatives of political parties, academicians, lawyers and senior citizens of the town talked in open air and called for resolution of the Kashmir issue.’

While district hearings and consultations with political leaders formed the core of our mission, we identified three communities whose views were of special interest: women, cultural groups and the intelligentsia. We held one to two day round tables with each. The round table with cultural groups provided a string of recommendations that would have gone a long way towards peace building had they been implemented, which they were not. We had two purposes in organizing the women’s round table: by and large, the issues that concerned women as victims of conflict had not been highlighted in government policies, either at the centre or the state administration; equally significantly, women had not been involved in any of the peace processes, though they were active in both politics and civil society.

 

I was surprised to discover that this was the first time that Kashmiri women legislators, members of government institutions and civil society activists had sat around a table. At one point it looked as if the meeting might end in a walkout – some of the women activists said they could not sit at the same table as women legislators whom they accused of being complicit in the deaths of 120 youth during the stoning protests. Barely had I persuaded them that this was an opportunity to seek accountability and change, when the state Minister for Social Welfare, Sakina Itoo, who gave the keynote address, took exception to being questioned by one of the Islamists who attended the round table. Itoo, who was from Kulgam, had twice been attacked by armed Islamist guerrillas in attempts to assassinate her.

Difficult as these political issues were, the most painful and complex issue for us was the return of Kashmiri Pandits. We met a number of Kashmiri Pandit groups, some in Delhi, others in Jammu and the valley, and yet others who had migrated to the US and Europe (by Skype). Depending on the group, their demands ranged from seeking a separate Pandit homeland in the valley to hiking the allowance they got as internally displaced, to ensuring safe returns and employment and protecting their places of worship. Unsurprisingly, it was the far-flung Pandit diaspora – in the US, Europe, New Zealand, Australia – who most vehemently demanded a separate homeland. The history of ethnic conflicts shows that it is generally the far-flung diaspora that has the most unyielding demands.

 

In 2006, the Singh administration adopted a policy of encouraging the Pandits to return. The core of the policy was to bring Pandit teachers back to the valley. It was an imaginative idea, given that their role as teachers would give Pandits a productive space in valley communities.

To our shock, we found that Pandits returning under the policy had to sign an agreement pledging that their families would not accompany them. When we asked why the state government had sought such a punishing agreement, the relief commissioner told us that they were afraid residents of the transit accommodation provided by the state administration might never vacate if they brought their families with them. An understandable bureaucratic reservation had been turned into a cruel second separation for people who were refugees in their own land.

The biggest obstacle to the Pandit’s return, we grew to believe, was the lack of a serious state government policy to reintegrate them into local communities. The best practice for the return of ethnic refugees or internally displaced, as history shows, includes not only jobs but, even more importantly, sustained community and government policies to reintegrate them.

 

While the return of Pandits was a priority issue that was mishandled by the sluggish state administration, communities that had been internally displaced in Jammu due to constant cross-border shelling received little to no attention from both the state and the union governments. West Pakistani refugees who could not return also had a problem in the state. Mostly Sikh or Hindu, some had come during the 1948-49 India-Pakistan War and others during the 1965 and 1971 ones. The bulk of them had crossed through the state to other parts of India, but a small proportion remained in the state. Some had lived there for over sixty years but had neither property nor voting rights. Their children were not eligible for government jobs or scholarships in universities, nor were there reserved seats for them as for most communities in Jammu and Kashmir. In effect, they were stateless.

The issue was tricky since it impinged on the State Subjects Act and its incorporation in the Indian Constitution under Article 35A. Though the act, passed by Maharaja Hari Singh, laid down conditions and rights for the residents of the state, it also allowed the state government the flexibility to use its own discretion in exceptional cases, which West Pakistani refugees clearly were. In 2016, the state government gave them domicile certificates, which enabled them to apply for government jobs. Minor as it was, this sop sparked protest in the valley, but it died down after a few months.

Meantime, another peacemaking strand began to fall in place. Though the Hurriyat and JKLF did not meet us, they began internal reforms that helped a larger peace process. In early January 2011, at a seminar to commemorate the 1993 assassination of JKLF mentor Abdul Ahad Wani, Hurriyat leader Abdul Ghani Bhat exploded the long-entrenched canard that ‘unidentified gunmen’ had killed Wani and other pro-independence or pro-Pakistan leaders. ‘Let me speak the truth today,’ Bhat said, ‘It was not the army or the police who killed Farooq or Prof Wani or Lone sahib. It was our own people.’ Had the Hurriyat ‘chosen to speak the truth in the 1990s, our movement would have gone in a better direction,’ he added.

Bhat’s disclosure came as a rude shock to many pro-Pakistan groups, and he was widely criticized in the local media where dissidence was strongest. Three weeks later, Sajad Lone followed with an impassioned appeal. ‘For all those cynics and sermonizers who are questioning [Bhat’s] timing, his intentions, I – a son who lost his father to bullets – would want to put my appreciation on record... The culture of unaccountability, impunity, cultivated and nourished by a select group of intellectuals, thinkers, has only emboldened the killers to indulge in more heinous acts, aimed at disempowering the Kashmiri voice and coercing it into submission.’ Bhat and Sajad appeared to have read the changing local pulse. In February 2011, when alleged Lashkar guerrillas shot two sisters, Sopore erupted in protest.

 

In this more propitious atmosphere of reform, some dissidents did meet us. In late March, Maulvi Abbas Ansari, the Shia leader who had headed the Hurriyat and was an Executive Council member, held a lengthy discussion with us at his home, on how the Hurriyat could be brought on board a new peace process.

I had arrived late at the meeting and was startled when my colleagues told me they were declaring it in our weekly press release. They had discussed a public announcement of the meeting with Ansari, and he had agreed. It was certainly a major breakthrough for us to have had a substantive discussion with a Hurriyat leader. But a public announcement would equally certainly put the Hurriyat on the back foot and curtail Ansari’s ability to act as a channel. In the event, the news was leaked and came up in our press conference. I sought to downplay it by saying the meeting was simply a courtesy call, to my colleagues’ displeasure. They believed the announcement might pave the way for Hurriyat talks. Perhaps they were right, though the idea went against my received wisdom.

 

Any such possibility was pre-empted when, a few days later, Maulana Showkat Ahmad Shah of the Jamiat Ahle Hadees sect was killed by a bicycle bomb placed at the rear entrance to his mosque in downtown Srinagar. Shah had spoken out against stoning, calling it un-Islamic.

The valley shut down in silent protest. Together with the Ahle Hadees, the Hurriyat and JKLF set up an all-party inquiry committee into the assassination. In a first, the Lashkar-e-Taiba announced its own investigation into Shah’s assassination. ‘We initially thought that the murder was the handiwork of Indian forces to weaken the freedom struggle and to create confusion in the pro-freedom camp. We never thought that the killers would be our own people... [T]he death of Moulana Showkat was planned by the traitors from within our own ranks.’ Soon after Shah’s assassination, the Hurriyat suspended Ansari for meeting us. Another hopeful opening closed before it could achieve results.

By end-July 2011, when we began writing our final report, the ground situation had improved considerably. Stoning protests had dwindled and over a million tourists and pilgrims visited the valley that summer. Despite the Tehreek’s call to boycott the panchayat polls, supported by the Hizbul Mujahideen and the Lashkar-e-Taiba, who put up warning posters at mosques, there was a 78 per cent voter turnout: 32,335 local council officials were elected in 2011.

 

The vast majority of panches were young – in their twenties and thirties – and had been elected for the first time. They included engineers, business studies graduates and teachers. All were enthusiastic about bringing infrastructure and accountability to their villages. They were also enthusiastic about peacemaking. ‘The desire for a peace process is very strong on the ground’, Shah Mir, convenor of the Jammu and Kashmir Panchayat Conference, told us. ‘If we were empowered, we could bring inputs from our villages and anchor the work of your mission.’

We thought the proposal was revolutionary, and took it to the union Home Ministry. If panches at the village level were involved in a peace process, the groundswell that would ensue in favour of an end to conflict and a negotiated settlement would undermine the power of spoilers and radically alter the face of the conflict.

Our hopes were soon disappointed. There were no takers for Mir’s proposal. State legislators feared that financial empowerment of panchayats would create alternate authorities in their constituencies. As the promise of the panchayats slowly dissipated, elected panches and sarpanches began to be targeted. Ten panches were killed and, under threat from guerrillas, close to another 150 resigned. Of the ten panches who were murdered, seven belonged to Baramulla and three to Shopian.

Our conversations in Jammu and Kashmir taught us that narrative was at least as important as peacebuilding on the ground. Indeed, the former most often overshadowed the latter, especially as far as the young were concerned. With frequent curfews and shutdowns, their chief access to information was social and local media, where facts counted less than emotion. It is difficult to measure the damage that abusive exchanges between young Kashmiri and mainland Indian nationalists inflicted, but I saw how every fruitful beginning on my Facebook page rapidly ended in hate-filled abuse.

The high casualty and widely broadcast terrorist attacks of 2006-08 had taken their toll. Indian public opinion, which previously supported an India-Pakistan-Kashmir peace process, slowly turned against talks and in favour of a military response. The Indian electronic media played into this narrative with its constant reporting of terrorism in Kashmir and little else, an approach that the local Kashmiri electronic media countered with cries of Hindu state repression.

 

Writing our final report was not easy. We had to examine possible solutions to the conflict and also suggest the roadmap to consensus. Being very different individuals with very different backgrounds was both a plus and a minus. Padgaonkar was a seasoned journalist who knew the leaders of all the major parties, a large bonus when it came to considering what could be politically acceptable. Ansari was an economist who had worked with the government and could cover development issues. I had a background of policy work on Kashmir and with Kashmiri civil society, and had devised a roadmap towards peace in the state. In theory we complemented each other, though in practice we sometimes competed, to our own loss. It also became clear that we had different ideas of what constituted a solution. Our differences were even greater when it came to what the Indian government should do.

On two major points, we agreed. Article 370 and Kashmir’s autonomy within the Indian union had to be taken as the baseline for a solution, we believed – as had most of our predecessors. To mitigate reservations in Jammu and Ladakh, any strengthening of the state’s autonomy should be accompanied by regional and local devolution.

 

It was an anomaly that Article 370 remained ‘temporary’ in the Indian Constitution seventy years after its inclusion. It should, we argued, be made permanent, after a constitutional committee was set up to review its provisions and the changes made through a series of presidential orders. Once the committee decided which elements of Article 370 needed to be strengthened or altered, and which changes rolled back, the union and state legislatures could amend it, if required. For example, the term ‘autonomy’ could be replaced by ‘special status’. This would keep Article 370 in the general basket of states with different relations to the union, all of which have special status under Articles 371A to I of the Indian Constitution.

Special status is synonymous with autonomy in, for example, Nagaland, which has very similar powers to Jammu and Kashmir, arguably even greater. Eleven out of twenty-nine Indian states have special status under Article 371: Maharashtra and Gujarat (371), Nagaland (371A), Assam (371B), Manipur (371C), Andhra Pradesh and Telangana (371D and E), Sikkim (371F), Mizoram (371G), Arunachal Pradesh (371H) and Goa (371I).

On a third associated point, we disagreed: the question of Pakistan. That Pakistan played a role was indisputable, as was the fact that it was a spoiler role. Whether Pakistani spoilers could or would transform to being part of the solution was debatable, but again we agreed there was no option but to try. Where we disagreed was whether our report should have a chapter on Pakistan administered Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. My colleagues argued that we had only been appointed to canvass opinion in Jammu and Kashmir. I argued that if we went by the 1995 Parliament resolution, then the Pakistan held parts of the former princely state became part of our brief, even if in practice we were restricted to long distance communication. Finally, my colleagues agreed and asked me to write that chapter.

Our biggest debates were on security issues. On some, my colleagues were initially more in sync with Kashmiri views than I was. They argued that the Disturbed Areas Ordinance, under which AFSPA fell, could be applied selectively, to specific districts, and lifted selectively. On the ground, however, this meant that guerrillas could seek refuge in districts where the ordinance did not apply. If the army needed to pursue fleeing guerrillas to these districts, they would only be able to do so under highly restricted and as yet unspecified terms. This would impose costs on the security forces that were likely to prolong conflict rather than telescope it, and lead to a severe loss of morale. It was a halfway step of doubtful cosmetic gain for politicians but not for peacebuilders.

 

On AFSPA, on the other hand, my colleagues were more conservative than I. They argued that we should focus on the Disturbed Areas Ordinance, rather than deal with AFSPA itself. My view was that AFSPA should be repealed and the Indian Parliament should incorporate safeguards into the Indian Army Act.

The Ministry of Home Affairs had recommended several amendments to AFSPA, which would bring it into line with the Indian Criminal Procedure Code while allowing for the protections for armed forces that exist in every democratic country. The government’s Second Administrative Reforms Committee also suggested replacing AFSPA with an amended Army Act. Finally, the Supreme Court issued guidelines in 2009 qualifying the army’s powers under AFSPA, but these had not been legislated in Parliament. Was it not time to do so?

Our most difficult decisions were on how to frame the political solution, whether we should go into its details, and if so, which? There was also the question of whether we should put the political solution front and centre, or whether the roadmap should have pride of place. We had already received several inputs from political parties. The BJP leaders whom we met – Advani, Jaitley and Swaraj – advised us to concentrate on human rights. The National Conference wanted us to adhere to their autonomy report and refer to internal devolution only in passing, if at all. The PDP wanted us to emphasize their ‘self-rule’ document and Sajad Lone his ‘Achievable Nationhood’ proposals.

 

We, on the other hand, found that there were large overlaps between Kashmiri proposals for a solution, whether NC, PDP or the People’s Conference. Our approach was to build on their commonalities, but served merely to anger the three parties, whose bread and butter was difference.

Simultaneously, we had to consider how to reconcile the regional devolution issue, which was a source of tension between Jammu and the valley. In Jammu it provided a way around the union territory demand, which would have divided the state. In the valley, it was seen as a way of further undercutting Srinagar’s powers. Many in the valley advised us not to recommend regional devolution as part of a political solution. Instead, experienced Kashmir administrators advised that we would achieve the same impact in terms of improved governance if we recommended district level devolution.

 

The problem was that Jammu and Ladakh were unlikely to accept a roll-back of encroachments on Article 370 without some degree of power sharing as regional units. To devolve to the districts without devolving to the regions would also run the risk of giving primacy to religious identities, since most of the state’s districts were either Muslim or Hindu majority. It could lead to further fracturing residents instead of enabling them to integrate.

The way we chose to address the problem was through a three-tiered system of devolution of powers, from the union to the state, from the state to its provinces, and from the provinces to the districts. The legislature would, however, remain as one, and the powers of regional councils would be largely limited to budgetary allocations and development administration. Though we were aware that our solution would be unpalatable to start with, we also believed that once it began to be seriously discussed, it would gain a wide degree of acceptance. Most of its elements had been proposed earlier and accepted by the chief political parties in the state; they had also begun to be accepted as the core of a solution during the 2004-7 India Pakistan peace process.

In the event, there was no discussion of our report, let alone follow up. Under pressure of a series of financial scandals, and with some degree of peace on the ground, the Singh administration decided to let matters lie. It was a costly mistake, as the Modi administration that came into power showed. Declaring that there could be no talks with separatists, whom they labelled terrorists, the Modi administration took a series of ill-advised steps – from ignoring lynching to toppling the state government, throwing second rung Hurriyat members into jail, and imposing President’s rule – that rapidly furthered alienation in the valley.

 

Today, while tensions with Pakistan are higher than they have been for a decade, we urgently need engagement with alienated Kashmiris to shore up the state’s defences and move towards a permanent peace in the valley. The chief lessons we have from the past are: first, the Hurriyat has acted as a bridge for peacemaking with Pakistan before; perhaps they might do so again. Second, as our experience showed, Kashmiris respond positively to peace initiatives provided we listen first and opine later. Third, political grandstanding, such as the BJP engaged in during our interlocution, can wreck even the most promising of beginnings. Fourth, the Hurriyat too made a costly mistake in not meeting us – it was a last opportunity that was not used. And fifth and most important, no interlocutor or negotiator will succeed unless national and regional political parties back him/her to the hilt, in bad times as well as good.

For me there were personal lessons too. I had had the fortune of meeting several peacemakers and I clung to their words during my short stint as interlocutor. When depressed by criticism, I would remember how Nancy Soderberg, who had worked with Senator Kennedy on the Irish peace process, had survived more scurrilous attack. When even more depressed, I would write to Martin Mansergh, adviser to the Irish government for the negotiations that led to the Belfast Agreement, who told me to hang in there. And when I had to argue with colleagues and others on security, I would quote General Sumbeiywo who negotiated the Sudan Peace Agreement, and Lord Alderdice, who led disarmament efforts in Northern Ireland. They were very different individuals but they made one point in common – no peace agreement could sustain until armed non-state actors agreed to a process of disarming, disbanding and reintegrating.

A few words in conclusion. The roadmap we had proposed comprised a multi-track approach, of talks between India and Pakistan, between the Government of India and dissident groups such as the Hurriyat, between the Government of Pakistan and Pakistan-backed groups, and between legislators and civil society on both sides of the Line of Control dividing Jammu and Kashmir. Alongside, talks would be accompanied by a series of Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) to pave the way for a sustainable solution. Variations of this multi-track talks cum CBMs approach had proved productive during both the Vajpayee and the Singh administrations but had withered after Pakistani General Musharraf had put the peace process on a back burner and the Pakistan army had prevented successor civilian administrations from reviving it. In its first term, the Modi administration did not renew peace initiatives in Jammu and Kashmir. For the sake of the people of the valley, and India’s democratic principles, it is urgent that the BJP in its second term does so.

There appears to be the beginning of an India-Pakistan thaw, with the exchange of letters between the two prime ministers as well as Foreign Minister Qureshi and Foreign Secretary Jaishankar. Perhaps it will lead to a breakthrough on Kashmir. One can only hope that multitrack talks will follow. Though that might be a hard sell, the dividends are likely to be significant.