Wajahat Habibullah is not a Kashmiri. That makes the title of his book, My Kashmir, intriguing for those who are not familiar with the author’s background. Habibullah is a bureaucrat who has spent most of his career in the troubled state starting in 1969 as a trainee in Baramulla district. In Delhi he has held several senior posts in the Union Government and is now, after retirement, the Chief Information Commissioner of India. The strength of his book, written during a fellowship at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, are the raw accounts of his experiences as an administrator, experiences that help to explain why things went so wrong in Kashmir.
Take one of his first encounters with the security forces. It is a chilling account that reveals the horrors to which the Kashmiri people have been subjected over these many decades. In June 1970 Habibullah was sub-divisional magistrate in Sopore when mysterious fires swept through the villages of Baramulla district. His very first assignment was to visit a town ravaged by fire. There Brigadier General Randhawa, deputy inspector-general of the BSF, the notorious security agency, exhorts the people to cooperate. The fires, he tells the townspeople, had been started by Pakistani elements to create rift between the armed forces and the people. Therefore, the BSF would start patrolling the villages, and “at any time of day or night, the BSF might enter people’s homes and shoot anyone they suspected of intending mischief. He emphasized that this was not his voice but God’s speaking through him because he was protecting the right….” Habibullah says the police and the security agencies did not consult the deputy commissioner, much less him, while going about invoking penal laws and making large-scale arrests including those of government servants.
The theme that runs strongly through My Kashmir is the deep and searing suspicion of the Kashmiris by outsiders, specially by the Delhi government. There are enough anecdotes and instances involving Indira Gandhi, Morarji Desai et al that reveal the pathological nature of the distrust. Indira Gandhi even rejected the proposal to turn Srinagar into an international airport and chastised a joint secretary who had made the proposal. As such, national security interests have superseded all other concerns including human rights, he says. Habibullah has been a courageous bureaucrat. He has stood up to the likes of Jagmohan, who was sent as governor by Indira Gandhi in April 1984, and to the military top brass by consistently opposing hard-line military action in the state. He was also attacked by a youth who chased him in Srinagar firing from an AK-47 rifle.
None of this has deterred Habibullah from seeking to foster dialogue with the separatists — militants and politicians alike — for almost two decades. These credentials make his book an excellent chronicle of the political turmoil in the state since the 1960s although some might find his version of certain events not to their liking. For those who want a brief introduction to Kashmir’s history, specially the role of Islam in shaping the culture and outlook of the people, Habibullah offers a lucid explanation of the conflict between its age-old Sufi traditions and the rise of Wahabi fanaticism.
But what is the solution to what many consider the intractable — the author disagrees with this notion — problem of Kashmir? He dismisses the idea of an independent state because it would be unrealistic. “[A]n independent state of 5.44 million people occupying 8,500 mostly mountainous square miles, located in one of the world’s most volatile regions amid rival nuclear powers and a number of smaller states in conflict, with potential oil wealth, is hardly likely to be left free.” His perception is that the climate between India and Pakistan could pave the way for durable peace and suggests seemingly simple remedies for the wrenching violence, corruption, misgovernance and disillusionment in Kashmir.
One, predictably, is a focus on economic revival. That’s a given. The more interesting suggestion is “a paradigm shift to local governance, down to the village level” by giving a constitutional framework to elected village and municipal councils. This might seem a romantic solution to alienation but as a seasoned bureaucrat Habibullah knows that nothing works as well as making people responsible for governance.
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The author is also in favour of a bigger role for the US in the Kashmir peace process. With Barack Obama having signalled his interest in taking a hand in Kashmir, a statement that has been greeted with unalloyed enthusiasm in Kashmir, Habibullah’s thesis seems more workable now.
MY KASHMIR
Conflict and the Prospects of Enduring Peace
Wajahat Habibullah
US Institute of Peace Press
201 pages; Rs 565
