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Manmohan Singh-Hurriyat Meeting: Beginning of an Internal Peace Process?

On 5 September 2005, Manmohan Singh met the Hurriyat moderates led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq. Both sides agreed "to ensure that all forms of violence at all levels should come to an end" and an "honourable and durable solution should be found." Dr Singh assured that he is committed to provide "a life of peace, self respect and dignity" to the people of J&K and would review the cases of those detained. In an atmosphere of criticism and lack of concrete results, this meeting is important for many reasons. It would provide a major impetus to the peace process with Pakistan and strengthen New Delhi's efforts to reconcile internally with the Kashmiris.

For the first time after the outbreak of insurgency, New Delhi seemed to be taking bold steps towards Kashmir, abandoning its ad hoc approaches. If opening the LoC is a bold new step, allowing intra-Kashmiri interaction on a regular basis is a bolder move. A group of Pakistani and Indian journalists visited PoK and J&K respectively. In August 2005, the Union government allowed a group of civil society members from Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir to visit J&K and another such interaction is to be organized at Jammu University in mid-September.

The Union government's engagement with the Hurriyat in particular has been uniform in the recent months. The Congress persisted with the services of N N Vohra, Wajahat Habibullah and A S Dullat to reach the Hurriyat leadership. It also roped in Saifudin Soz, a senior Congress leader believed to be an important link in the current round of negotiations between the moderates and Manmohan Singh. The moderates had two rounds of high-level discussions with L K Advani earlier. Having encouraged Track II level contacts between the moderate Hurriyat leadership and its interlocutors, the Congress government allowed them to visit PoK. Undoubtedly, the moderates' visit to PoK, and later to Pakistan was a crucial breakthrough in the internal peace process.

The Hurriyat has been requesting the Indian government for many years now to allow them to visit Pakistan, include them in the dialogue and make it a trilateral process. Even today, the Union government has reservations over a trilateral process; though it was willing to initiate a triangular approach. The triangular process appears to be set in motion after the moderate section visited PoK and subdued protests over their visit to Islamabad. The Union government permitted the leaders to visit other countries as well. Both Moulvi Abbas Ansari and Mirwaiz visited Iran and Saudi Arabia in August 2005.

The moderate faction perceives the hard realities at the ground level. In an important statement before coming to Delhi, Mirwaiz Farooq said, "Now both India and Pakistan are making efforts for peace. Both the countries are coming closer to each other. The people in India as well as in Pakistan want a permanent solution of the Kashmir issue. So I think that the time has come when the leadership of Kashmir should also respond positively to this changed atmosphere." He stressed that "every concerned party works together for removing the irritants, which will come in the way of restoring peace." Significant in Mirwaiz's statement is the emphasis on a permanent solution, but not on a particular theme. Obviously, the permanent solution needs to be acceptable to everyone and not imposed by any section or sections. Before the meeting, the Mirwaiz group repetitively demonstrated their interest in discussing human rights violations, custodial killings and fake encounters, release of detunes and the withdrawal of Armed Forces Special Powers Act and the Disturbed Areas Act.

The moderates have also taken a step forward in ignoring criticisms and threats from the faction led by Geelani and by the militants. The Geelani faction condemned the moderates for going against the constitution of the Hurriyat, which emphasizes on UN resolutions and the al-Mansooriyan threatened the Hurriyat leaders. Threats followed from a group of four militant organizations calling themselves as G-4, including the Save Kashmir Movement. The arrest of Asiya Andrabi, the chief of Dukhtaran-e-Millat (DeM) along with seven other members of the organization was turned into a political crisis to undermine the moderates-Manmohan Singh meeting in New Delhi, and this was an unfortunate turn to the event. In late August, Andrabi and his DeM followers raided a few houseboats and internet cafes to purge obscenity from Srinagar's society. In a bid to overshadow the September 5 meeting, the anti-peace elements called for an immediate statewide strike for their release. The state government, in its zeal to see Andrabi behind bars provided the space for the radicals to undermine a significant event.

Some negative fallout was inevitable after the September 5 meeting, but its crowning achievement is the formal establishment of an internal process towards Kashmir. A bold first step in the right direction should strengthen both parties to take the next step.