India’s Long-Held Line on Kashmir Bilateralism Is Blurring

The 'Kashmir issue' has been internationalised for the first time since 1958, writes David Devadas.

India’s acceptance of US President Donald Trump’s announcement of a ceasefire between India and Pakistan represented a worrying policy reversal.

(Photo: Kamran Akhter/The Quint)

India’s acceptance of Donald Trump’s ceasefire announcement on Saturday, 10 May represented a worrying policy reversal. The following day, the US president further said that he will work with India and Pakistan to see if, after "a thousand years”, a solution can be "arrived at concerning Kashmir".

The recent developments seem to have internationalised the 'Kashmir issue' for the first time since US Senator and UN Representative Frank Graham gave up trying to mediate the issue in 1958. (The Constitution of Jammu & Kashmir, which the government threw out the window in August 2019, had taken effect on 26 January that year. It had described Jammu and Kashmir as 'an integral part of India'.)

For 53 years after 1972, the Simla Agreement held firm. It bound India and Pakistan to treat the issue as strictly bilateral. Even when China and Pakistan raised the issue at the UN Security Council immediately after India’s constitutional changes in 2019, India reiterated the primacy of the agreement.

Trump’s mention of talks at "a neutral venue" suggested that the foreign minister or the national security advisor hosting the talks might sit in—and even seek to chair the talks.

Pakistan may press hard for talks to begin swiftly; that could explain the delay in the scheduled talks between the two countries’ Directors General of Military Operations (DGMOs) on Monday, 12 May.

Addressing the nation for the first time since the ceasefire announcement, Prime Minister Narendra Modi indicated on Monday evening that India would only talk about its own concerns—terrorism and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir—but he conspicuously remained silent on Trump's assertion about Kashmir. Messaging is the key to diplomacy. Last week, foreign Secretary Vikram Misri did an excellent job of stating India’s positions, but that method inexplicably changed this week.

One fears that India’s position has willy-nilly weakened.

India-Pakistan as Equals? 

The second policy reversal stemmed from Trump’s framing the two countries as equals, expected to sit together and sort out differences. There was no talk of Pahalgam, terrorism, or India’s accusations.

India’s first National Security Advisor, Brajesh Mishra, had maintained since 1998 that India should not be equated with Pakistan. Indeed, India’s size, weight in global affairs, and growth trajectory made it more comparable with China.

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s diplomatic outreach and strategic decisions were so skilful in 1999 that, when the then US President Bill Clinton ended the Kargil war by yelling at Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to withdraw from the heights, he clearly positioned Pakistan internationally as the errant aggressor. Pakistan lost face, and Sharif his job.

After Kargil (which followed Vajpayee’s Lahore bus yatra), the world perceived India as a mature, restrained, and responsible victim of aggression. There was greater international acceptance of India’s—and even Pakistan’s—nuclear weapons programme, given that a war had passed off without even a hint of activity related to nuclear weapons.

Over this past weekend, however, rumour mills buzzed with talk of a narrow escape. This is an unhappy scenario—more so for India—for Pakistan may well be under China’s nuclear umbrella if the need arises.

A Strategic Setback

A sober analysis of recent events indicates that India may be strategically worse off than before. India has found fewer solid backers in the international arena than Pakistan, and appears to have come off worse in global media coverage. China is strongly in Pakistan’s corner. Turkey and Azerbaijan, too, have seemed to be solidly with Pakistan, which reportedly used Turkish drones extensively to attack targets in India.

France has been non-committal, and the expensive Rafale acquisition may not have played out as well as Russia’s S-400s. After some uncertainty, Russia did announce support for India, but urged restraint even while specifically pledging support against all forms of terrorism.

This not very encouraging tally has been totted up, despite the fact that it is well known to the world that Pakistan is a haven for jihadist radicals, and that it has harboured terrorists, including Osama Bin Laden. India, on the other hand, is well recognised as a potentially huge economy, a country with immense technological, cultural, and human potential.

India should have been able to bank on goodwill—not only because of these differing trajectories (which were well recognised during the first decade of this century)—but also because of the global stature of its leaders and moral standing of its policies during its first 50 years as an independent republic.

The Tragic Human Cost

When the heat of battle has worn off, a cold and clear-eyed analysis should be undertaken of whether the government made the optimal strategic, diplomatic, tactical, and preparatory decisions before and during what might be termed 'a short war'.

From a purely human point of view, we need to ask whether citizens living near the Line of Control should have been evacuated before punitive action was taken against nine terrorist training centres.

In just Jammu and Kashmir—mainly in Poonch, but also in Karnah, Rajouri, and Uri—shelling has killed many, destroyed a large number of houses, and upturned lives.

It is tragically ironic that so many more innocents should have become victims in a process that was meant to be retribution for the bloodbath of innocents in Pahalgam on 22 April.

Over the past week, many in Kashmir—and more so in other parts of the Union Territory—have been lamenting the fact that instability has returned, almost with a vengeance. They yearn for the peace and stability that had allowed them to go about their lives over the past few years.

(The writer is the author of ‘The Story of Kashmir’ and ‘The Generation of Rage in Kashmir’. He can be reached at @david_devadas. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)