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Kashmir is as good as gone from the Republic of India

The news item was missed by many because most papers did not care to carry it. In early August, United Liberation Front of Asom leader Anup Chetia submitted a writ petition to a Bangladesh judge in Dhaka, where he is currently facing extradition proceedings. The request of the Indian authorities to hand him over to them, argued Chetia, should be kept in abeyance till 2005; by then, he expects India to be divided into five or seven independent states.

Cognoscenti occupying space in the country's heartland will treat Chetia's rhetoric with unswerving contempt. The reaction, however, is likely to be somewhat different in Assam and the rest of the North-East. Whether it is Guwahati or Imphal or Kohima, the status report has a disturbing focus.

Is it integration with India that is still only half complete, or is it the reality of alienation from the nation now rapidly gathering momentum: one is invited to pick between these alternatives. Either alternative is arguably heavily laced with cynicism. History is nonetheless replete with examples of how town cynics, give or take a couple of decades, come to be hailed as sages.

Which pushes us to the next unavoidable query: for how long more should the rest of India be shut out from awareness of the true situation in the North-East or, for the matter, in Kashmir? However hard New Delhi may try to inform the world otherwise, Kashmir is as good as gone from the Republic of India. The facade of free and fair assembly elections followed by the installation of a state government with Farooq Abdullah at its helm has not made the slightest difference; with every day, the quality of verisimilitude in official pronouncements has continued to decline.

There aren't great many admirers of Pakistan either in Kashmir, but their number comfortably exceeds that of those who swear by India. A large majority of Kashmir's population perhaps wishes a plague on both the cantankerous neighbouring countries and would prefer to be an independent republic in the manner of other Central Asian entities.

If Kazhakstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kirghizstan can flaunt the badge of their sovereign existence, why might not Kashmiris join their ranks? After all, they come from the same stock, their languages are reasonably similar; there is also a fair measure of cultural affinity and, of course, the bind of religion.

Such speculation cannot be throttled merely by greater and greater deployment of the army. It cannot be throttled in Kashmir, nor in Assam and the rest of the North-East.

The army was despatched to Nagaland and Mizoram fairly early, within a few years of Independence. The special arrangements the British had deigned it wise to enter into with a number of chieftains and ethnic heads in the region were dismissed as junk, for had not Jawaharlal Nehru meanwhile expatiated at length, from the ramparts of the Red Fort, on the theme of India's unity in the midst of its immense diversity? The declamation was taken to be a version of axiomatic truth; anyone challenging it was invited to examine his or her head. Not surprisingly, over large parts of the North-East, administration gradually got reduced to army and paramilitary personnel enforcing law and order as defined by New Delhi minds. That dispensation has continued.

The political party that enjoyed more or less uninterrupted power at the Centre from 1947 onwards treated this segment of the country as a pocket borough that could be manipulated. Economic development of the pocket borough was judged to be unnecessary flummery. Brahmaputra therefore remains untamed, and Assam remains a monoculture for lack of irrigation water round the year. Hardly any industry worth the name embellishes the extensive stretch of the North-East, unemployment has swelled and swelled, grievances either subjective or with strong objective roots have accumulated against the inhabitants of the Indo-Gangetic valley, more specifically, the Bengali-speaking migrants, including those from Bangladesh.

The experience of the past few years has -- or should have -- resolved a central issue: quasi-authoritarian modalities of the government cannot hold India together.

Army rule, by whatever nomenclature it is described, will evoke discontent. The resulting manifestation of anger will take many forms. Suppressing these expressions of resentment, by further induction of army contingents, is bound to be counterproductive. And in more than one sense. For the larger outlay on the maintenance of army and police forces will mean so much less of resources being available to finance economic development in these areas of surging discontent.

Rulers in New Delhi, irrespective of their party affiliation, were for long shackled to a theory: when under strain, it pays to be brusque. Article 356 and deployment of military personnel under the Armed Forces (Disturbed Areas) Act in course of time became standard mechanism for maintaining the authority of the Centre. Machined politicians are slaves of habit; their response to developing awkward situations, whether in Nagaland or Manipur, continues to be quintessentially Pavolvian.

Even leaders belonging to the now disintegrated United Front, otherwise pristine votaries of unadulterated democratic norms and procedures, have fallen for the charm of orthodoxy: come special circumstances, such as what obtained in the wake of the barbaric act perpetrated in Ayodhya in December 1992, the deployment of Article 356 is a social necessity.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, trying hard to somehow stay in power; does not know which direction to turn. Its ingrained authoritarianism will not permit it to let off Article 356; it is however equally aware of the complications that might ensue in case of indiscriminate applications of the article. Issues of principles have fallen by the wayside in this contemporary discourse; the premises and the conclusions are branded products of free market vintage pragmatism.

The constraints of coalition politics have struck a final deadly blow. J Jayalalitha is enjoying tremendously her current mission, which is to establish the fact that morality has undergone a total eclipse and no shame attaches itself to brazen conduct. Corruption, highway robbery not excluding, is passe.

Certain crucial administrative conventions are being thrown to the winds because of the pressure of events. The bureaucracy too is being dragged into the murky game of politics; you reap what you sow, the consequences are likely to be frightful.

Should not one offer, as a footnote, a commentary on a further disturbing development? It is not just the imbroglio over Article 356 -- a legislation purported to discourage political desertions has also been turned on its head.

Presiding officers of legislative bodies have been vested with arbitrary powers to decide whether a particular crossing over is legitimate or not. The Congress has unashamedly used, alternately as well as simultaneously, the offices of both the governor and the speaker of the state assembly in a number of north-eastern states to retain, by hook or by crook, its control over the state administration. Rest assured, the BJP has been a quick learner.

What took place in Goa in July last was sordid to the core. Both the governor and the speaker behaved outrageously; even minimum bourgeois propriety was cast aside.

The Left -- supposedly the last ditch defenders of national morality -- were also caught napping. Their performance in Parliament during the debate over the Goa episode was, to say the least, bizarre. They went hammer and tongs to condemn the conduct of the governor, but kept totally mum on the role of the speaker: Nor was there even any cursory reference to the Congress's grisly misdoing, over a span of 40 odd years, including the deployment, on umpteen occasions, of Article 356 for narrow partisan ends.

It is delusion of the worst kind to aver that the immoral goings on at the level of the political superstructure have no impact on how people feel or decide. In the corridors of power and the ramparts thereabouts, there is ceaseless talk on how to restore law and order in this or that part of the country. As if law and order can be restored in a moral vacuum. More than anything else, is it not because of the collapse of the moral fabric that the unity and integrity of the nation are currently in peril?

Till as long as politicians of different hues fail to admit their culpability in the matter, they will be merely talking at cross-purposes and mindlessly increasing military expenditure in the mistaken belief the bulwark of defence against the enemies within is strengthened thereby.

A harassed Central administration will every now and then have recourse to Article 356 to save the situation from worsening further in this or that state. The situation will not be saved, just as corruption will not go down.

Unchaining India, grisly manipulations in the name of parliamentary democracy will persist. But is there any guarantee that it will be an unfragmented India too?

Ashok Mitra