Former intelligence chief given unrestricted
mandate, indicating that even separatist leaders will be consulted
By Michael Safi
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Members
of Jammu and Kashmir police bow their heads during a ceremony at a
training
centre. Photograph: Farooq Khan/EPA
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The Indian government has announced it will
commence talks in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir with all parties,
including separatists who are calling for independence or a merger with
Pakistan.
The move was seen as particularly significant
coming from a government led by a staunch Hindu nationalist, Narendra Modi, who
has previously taken a tough line on the 30-year-old conflict in India’s only
Muslim-majority state.
The home minister, Rajnath Singh, announced
on Monday that a former chief of the intelligence bureau, Dineshwar Sharma,
would lead “a sustained interaction and dialogue to understand legitimate
aspirations of people in Jammu and Kashmir”.
Singh told a press conference in Delhi that
Sharma, who led the Indian intelligence agency for two years from 2014, had a
mandate to speak with whoever he wanted, indicating that even separatist
leaders would be consulted.
The Modi government had so far refused to
include separatists in any dialogue, insisting it would talk only to those who
recognised the entirety of Kashmir, including sections controlled by Pakistan
and China, as part of India.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party, whose vision
casts India as an inherently Hindu nation, has long campaigned for the special
autonomous status granted to Jammu and Kashmir to be revoked.
The BJP’s ascendency in Delhi as well as
renewed unrest in Kashmir in the past 18 months had been thought to make
meaningful dialogue a remote prospect in the near future.
For decades, separatists have been calling
for a referendum – ordered by the UN in 1949 but never implemented – to decide
whether Kashmir remains part of India, joins Pakistan or becomes independent.
An armed insurgency with similar goals, sponsored by Pakistan, has raged since
1989.
AS Dulat, a former chief of the Research and
Analysis Wing, an Indian security agency, said the announcement of talks was an
accession to political reality in the troubled region, but one the government
had spent months foreshadowing.
“The prime minister made an announcement from
the Red Fort on independence day that the government needed to engage with
Kashmiris,” he said. “So I think [Monday’s announcement] is in consonance with
their approach.”
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Members of a key separatist alliance, the All
Parties Hurriyat Conference, have become increasingly open to dialogue in their
statements in recent months, hinting at the possible announcement of talks.
Omar Adullah, a former chief minister of the
state, welcomed the lack of preconditions and said the announcement of talks
was a “resounding defeat of those who could only see use of force as a
solution”.
Any progress towards peace could be
complicated by fissures inside the separatist movement, including between an
older generation of leaders who favour dialogue and a small but influential
crop of younger fighters with links to jihadi groups such as al-Qaida.
Pakistan would also need to be included in
longer-term negotiations over the future of the region.
Additional reporting by Azhar Farooq in
Srinagar.
