The question has assumed importance in the wake of ongoing unrest in the Valley following the killing of the Burhan Wani, a commander of the militant outfit Hizbul Mujahideen in an encounter with the security forces. The Wani killing triggered widespread protests. Though backed by Pakistan’s ISI, the militants, who mostly comprised the local youth, started making the security forces as their target.

The situation which highlights alienation of the people of the Valley needs to be seen in the backdrop of the formation of the PDP-BJP coalition government after the failure of any of the mainstream political parties to secure an absolute majority in the elections held in November-December 2014.

After prolonged negotiations, the PDP and the BJP had decided to form a coalition government. The move was considered a positive step as it was hoped that it would strengthen the bonds between the Muslim-dominated Kashmir and the Hindu-majority Jammu region. The BJP’s decision to go in for a coalition with the PDP had ostensibly full backing of the RSS bosses.

While taking oath as Chief Minister on March 1, 2015, the late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed had not wrongly said that coming together of the two ideologically opposed political parties was like the meeting of “the North Pole and the South Pole”. The coalition formed an agenda of alliance “to ensure peace, development and self-reliance”.

It, however, did not take long for the alliance to start developing fissures which has not only adversely affected the smooth functioning of the coalition government but the people of the two regions also started getting disillusioned. Consequently, the coalition parties also started losing ground -PDP in the Valley, particularly in the Mufti’s stronghold of South Kashmir; and the BJP in the Hindu-majority Jammu region. Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, who was recently elected MLA in the by-election caused by her father’s death, has not visited her constituency to meet her electors.

The abnormal situation in Kashmir needs to be seen in the light of what the former Union home minister P Chidambaram said last week in an interview with India Today.

Chidambaram who had headed the three-member team of interlocutors sent by the then prime minister Manmohan Singh to Srinagar to conduct talks with all stakeholders said: “The government should revert to the original terms under which the state acceded to India in 1947 and allow the Kashmiris to frame their own laws within the ambit of the country’s Constitution. We ignored the grand bargain under which J&K acceded to India and we paid a price for 40 years…..Turn the clock back all the way to 1947 and the original terms of accession to the extent that is today possible.”

Chidambaram added: “I may be right or wrong, what is necessary is to give the people of Kashmir the assurance that they will be part of India but the grand bargain under which they acceded to India will be fully honoured.”

Chidambaram’s visit to Srinagar in 2007 for holding talks with all stakeholders reflected Delhi and Islamabad’s second attempt to resolve the Kashmir dispute.

Khurshid Mohammad Kasturi, who was Pervez Musharraf’s foreign minister from 2002 to 2007, had told the media in April 2010 that “as the four-point agreement neared finalisation early in 2007, the process was overtaken by the rapid political developments in Pakistan that set off Musharraf’s downfall.”

The four-point deal envisages the following: “one, keeping the military forces on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC) to the minimum, especially in populated areas; two, it is imperative that the people of Jammu and Kashmir on either side of the LoC should be able to move freely from one side to the other; three, it is important to ensure self-governance for internal management in all areas on the same basis on both sides of the LoC; and four, Jammu and Kashmir can, with the active encouragement of the governments of India and Pakistan, work out a cooperative and consultative mechanism to maximise the gains of cooperation in solving problems of social and economic development of the region.”

The first attempt to resolve the Kashmir issue was made when the then Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif signed the Lahore Agreement during Vajpayee’s bus journey to Lahore in February 1999. Nawaz Sharif had later said “the formula to resolve the Kashmir issue had unfortunately been derailed by then General Pervez Musharraf who ousted him in a military-led coup.”

Given the above background, it is not impossible for Delhi and Islamabad to make ‘third’ attempt to normalize relations between India and Pakistan and also try to resolve the Kashmir problem. For this it is necessary to create an atmosphere conducive for holding talks. One of the steps in this direction will be to rein the two countries hotheads who make provocative statements. While Modi will have to restrain his Sangh Parivar’s hardliners, Nawaz Sharif will have to fulfill his commitment made just before taking over as prime minister in 2013 that he would not allow his country to export terror.

No democracy, it is said, works without compromise. (IPA Service)