Diplomacy is defined as the profession, activity or skill of managing international relations, typically by a country's representatives abroad. It would naturally apply to even the interactions of a country’s representatives with foreign emissaries placed in the former’s home country. From a common parlance perspective, it is also defined as the art of dealing with people in a sensitive and tactful way.
Taking both the perspectives into account, can we interpret it to apply in the situations where one is dealing with neither a foreign country nor its authorised representative but a host of elements who are either currently or / and potentially hostile to their home country’s interest? I would answer it in the affirmative, if the location is Kashmir and the referred elements are those who have had their past in the militancy against the Indian state or / and have strong links to the separatist mindset and its network.
The said thought arose at the backdrop of an event organised by London School of Economics, last October, where there was a panel discussion, involving Amarjit Singh Dulat (who headed the Kashmir Group at the Intelligence Bureau (IB), later headed the Research& Analysis Wing (RAW), till retirement and then worked in the PMO, as an Officer on Special Duty i.e. Kashmir, when Atal Behari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister) and exISI Chief Ehsan-ul-Haq. Here both the gentlemen reportedly agreed (in the words of the former) that “India made many mistakes in Kashmir and made a mess in the state”. Dulat also stressed upon the need to resume talks between the two countries, at the backdrop of the official position of the Govt. of India that it would not do so until Pakistan stopped engineering terrorist activities in India.
Although going by the Indian democratic traditions of free speech and their absence in Pakistan, the positions taken by Dualt and Ehsan-ul-Haq were understandable, it nevertheless raised a question about the propriety of an ex-RAW Chief’s expression on an international forum, agreeing with the official position of an overtly unfriendly & hostile country, that happens to hold opposite views w.e.t. the same sensitive region of India. Interestingly, I had recently finished reading the book, “Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years” authored by Dulat (with Aditya Sinha, a journalist), published in 2015.
Throughout the book, Dulat has described a number of his interactions with current or exmilitants, political figures and other opinion makers among Kashmiris. He narrates the depth & width of his such interactions, intended genuinely towards bringing peace to Kashmir. Many of the people who interacted with him and whom he looked upto as harbingers of peace, had had their past in militancy and terrorism, be it Hashim Qureshi or Fidous Syed or Abdul Majid Dar or Irshad Malik. They seemed to have spent enough time (read years) in trying their hand at violence against the Indian state, in connivance with & under the instructions from Pakistan’s ISI. After feeling frustrated with the unending jihad leading them nowhere and also suffering under the highhanded treatment from their Pakistani handlers, they seemed to open a channel with Dulat like Indian officials, for safe return & resettling in Kashmir. That clearly emerges as a pattern, after one goes through Dulat’s narrations.
Secondly, the Indian state that Dulat represented, seemed to be interested in talking to anyone and everyone, who may stand up and announce on a given day that he was interested in a dialogue with them, for peace in Kashmir. That only betrayed its weakness for peace (mainly through mutual or onesided announcements of ceasefire) as a superficial measure of achievement and that too at any cost. Secondly, a number of Kashmiris were involved in this game. They dreamt of Azadi, for which they thought armed rebellion was the rightful tool. Then they crossed the border to get trained by the ISI, then returned to Kashmir to put the said training to effect. Some of them got killed or jailed by the Indian security agencies, in the bargain. The rest then again crossed the border to hide & survive.
After such holidaying in Pakistan for some time they got bored, wanted to marry and settle down back home, but were scared of ISI. So they opened a channel and said that they believed in dialogue to be the only way to solve Kashmir’s problem and not violence. So Dulat like souls conveyed such “achievements” to the Govt. and pleaded their cases for safe re-entry and protection, with a hope that they would be useful in explaining to their community the futility of jihad. However, they did nothing of that sort and engaged in politicking, as their aim was to join the mainstream local politics of Kashmir, where there was personality-oriented factionalism and no room for any kind of introspection but a zest to continue agitating about how India had treated them badly and how badly Kashmir needed Azadi. Even the line demarcating the mainstream politics got blurred many times over, when the Hurriyat (meaning freedom) Conference started playing a decisive role in influencing poll results and especially when Dulat like officials dished out promises to extremists, about mainstreaming them.
I look at the whole thing as a case study, a bit unconventional though. First of all Amarjit Singh Dulat, as described above, was never a career diplomat, in the strictest sense of the term. However given the role & the responsibility he was handling i.e. of gathering, analysing & reporting about the intelligence that would eventually safeguard India’s security interests, he would naturally be expected to play a role that would befit the second definition of diplomacy i.e. of dealing with people in a sensitive & tactful way, especially in the hyper sensitive location called Kashmir. Secondly, the activity that one has to undertake essentially in such situations is to open as many channels of dialogue as possible, the underlying prerequisite being handling the said process skillfully.
Although the key word here is ‘being skillful’, the crucial part is to interpret it appropriately so as to suit the context, where the end objective can never be anything other than securing, protecting and promoting the interests of the state one is representing. While Dulat has been clearly expressive about the end objective of the then regime of the Indian state being securing peace, when we look closely at the vivid descriptions of the various interactions (most of which made for track II diplomacy, in his words) he had had with who’s who of then Kashmir, it can safely be concluded that the whole exercise was nothing but appeasement.
Appeasement is defined as a policy of making concessions to an aggressor in order to avoid confrontation. In the past, the said term was most often applied to the foreign policy of the British Prime Ministers Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain towards Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, between 1935 and 1939, taking it to be the right kind of diplomacy. The following history has stood testimony to the conclusion that no amount of such appeasement could succeed in avoiding the confrontation i.e. World War II, that finally put an end to the continental crisis unleashed by the Fuhrer.
While appeasement has all along been the consistent approach adopted by the regimes in India prior to 2014, towards endearing themselves to the politically cohesive & highly conscious minorities of India and Kashmir being politically controlled by the largest minority of India, it has only backfired when used as the sole tool of diplomacy in the region. Many instances narrated by Dulat in his book by way of providing insights into the Kashmiri psyche, only stand to corroborate the said theory.
Diplomatic communications are viewed as sacrosanct, even when transacted in track II or track III diplomatic effort, though there could be a difference of degree in treatment of them, in the descending order. From this perspective, certain expressions from Dulat’s narrations can be found to be incongruous vis-à-vis the stated official position of the Govt. of India as well as with its unstated, underlying beliefs. Below is some select sampling:
“When Afzal Guru was hanged in Feb.’13, for his “alleged” (that’s Dulat’s chosen word) involvement in the Dec.’11 attack on Parliament, he replaced Maqbool Butt, as the main martyr for the Kashmir movement. (p.284)”. Here, we all know that Guru was hanged after he was declared a convict by the appropriate court, by following the due process of law.
US-based Kashmiri businessman Farooq Kathwari had formed ‘Kashmir Study Group’ (KSG) comprising of legislators & academics. His two sons had died as jihadis in Afghanistan. KSG presented a proposal in Dec.’98, that spoke of reconstituting Kashmir as a sovereign
entity. Kathwari consulted Dulat (who sincerely shared his feelings & thoughts, the impression you get by reading their conversation in print) and re-coined the term as ‘self-rule’ of Kashmiris. (p.18,19,20)
“And after suffering at the hands of the Mughals, Pathans, Afghans, Sikhs, Dogras and currently India, they (Kashmiris) fight with their brains”. (p.322). This is so awfully self-speaking, it doesn’t need any explanation.
Dulat met Gen. Asad Durrani, former ISI Chief, at the Chaophraya Dialogue (Bangkok) in 2014. During the coffee break, their discussion dwelled on the proxy war initiated by Pakistan. Durrani retaliated saying that India too used proxies against Pakistan e.g. Mukti Bahini, at which Dulat kept quiet (p.293).
The most glaring and disturbing example here is that of the Dulat’s interaction with Pakistan’s Asad Durrani at Chaophraya Dialogue, where both of them did appear as members of the teams representing their respective countries, in a real time track II diplomacy effort. The episode of liberation of Bangladesh has historically been acknowledged by the world historians as an earnest requirement of the time. Secondly, India’s response (as no country was in the position morally & geographically to do that) by rising to the occasion and going all out to help the then East Pakistani people, suffering under the genocide unleashed by the West Pakistani army, simultaneously handling all the repercussions on its economy, caused by the influx of millions of refugees crossing borders, has well been acknowledged as a great effort towards a humanitarian cause. At this backdrop, an Indian diplomat keeping quiet, as if in acquiescence, in response to an atrocious claim made by an another diplomat representing a selfproclaimed enemy country in the same context, is unthinkable to say the least.
Even Dulat’s prescription for continuation of track II diplomacy with Pakistan (p.318) is based on the logic – Pakistan remains a factor in Kashmir, because of the anger & alienation against India and it provides Kashmiris with a convenient fallback position and Pakistan’s fallback is its special relationship with China, which can’t be underestimated – is unspeakable, as it betrays the fear psychosis that had possibly gripped the Indian state all these decades, post 1947.
A cautious researcher of the Kashmiri unrest can gather easily, that its essence & genesis, is rooted in nothing but the ideology of Islamic supremacy over a territory i.e. Kashmir, which was achieved through relentless mass conversions over centuries, followed by forcible evacuation of the unbending “kafirs” (read exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, in recent history). The whole restlessness is about the seeming infinity clouding ‘the waiting period’, before they enter the dream status of ‘Azadi’ (or annexation with today’s PoK, which they may not be finding appropriate to talk about at the moment).
The incongruities identified above (which incidentally corroborate with the public expressions of the author at above-referred LSE event), are quite disturbing, looking at the nonalignment of an incumbent’s thought process with the role that he was expected to play. It can certainly be a good case study, for inculcation of certain basic values among future recruits of the Indian Foreign Service and such services, the retired senior officials of which would be expected to play a role in track II diplomacy, so as to reduce the scope for such awkward situations (read LSE event) in future.
I am reminded at this backdrop about what Dattatreya Hosbale, Jt. Gen. secretary of RSS, said at the time of releasing the revised edition of a Hindi book by Dr. Suryakant Bali viz. ‘Bharat Ko Samajhne ki Shartein’ (meaning the prerequisites to the understanding of India), in Feb.’17. He mentioned that the said book (as it explains the civilisational character of India so well) should be translated in English and distributed among all the Indian ambassadors worldwide, making it a compulsory reading for them all, so that they could represent India well. I only wish Dulat had read it before attending the LSE event of Oct.’17.
References:
- Newspaper (Hindustan Times, Feb. & Oct.’17)
- Book (Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years, Dulat A.S.)
Blog-post dt.14/11/17 (http://pulindsamant.blogspot.in)
