By M D Nalapat
One slap from Islamabad merits creation of two Union Territories from Delhi.
It
would not be a surprise if the Nawaz Sharif government in Islamabad
were to formally incorporate Gilgit-Baltistan as the fifth province of
Pakistan. The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) passes through the
territory, and Beijing is anxious to try and “legalise” its right of
transit through that region, before investing still more money in what
is the most ambitious project to have ever been attempted in Pakistan.
China has been steadily progressing in its bid to ensure
warm water ports athwart the oil lanes of the Persian Gulf. In case
India continues with its present relative lethargy in completing the
Chahbahar port, it is likely that Beijing will take advantage of Delhi’s
slow progress on the Iranian port (presumably caused by a deepening of
the frowns in Washington at the Chahbahar project) in order to take
control of that port as well, thereby giving the PRC an additional
outlet into waters that have long been the undisputed lair of the US
navy. Interestingly, both Chahbahar as well as Gwadar are situated
within territories that have traditionally been Baloch, a community that
has become even more disenfranchised than the much persecuted Kurds
were before wresting control of still tenuous safe zones in Iraq and now
in Syria.
Unfortunately, given China’s quick reflexes, India’s
Lutyens Zone follows what may be termed the “Digvijaya Singh mode of
decision making”. Had the AICC observer in Goa shown initiative and
speedily promised ministerial berths to independents and smaller parties
before the BJP did, it would have been Digambar Kamat, rather than
Manohar Parrikar, who got sworn in as the new Chief Minister. In like
fashion, had the Congress Party reached out in Manipur to the Naga
party, when the results of the Assembly elections were becoming clear,
that state too would have remained in their column. As it turned out,
Amit Shah was faster off the block, and won both races despite voters
having given Congress a head start. Global events, similarly, will not
wait for Lutyens Zone politicians and mandarins to spend days and weeks
cogitating on choices that often melt away with time the way ice cream
does in summer.
Both slowness and more often an absence of response have
lost this country opportunities that were at some point in time
accessible. The roots of the unfolding strategic reversal in
Gilgit-Baltistan go back to the Mountbatten-Nehru decision to enforce a
ceasefire before the entire state of Jammu & Kashmir got liberated
by troops commanded by General K.M. Cariappa. The ceasefire was another
of Nehru’s decisions that may have been grumbled at by Sardar Patel, but
was not opposed by him the way it ought to have been, by threatening to
quit and thereby bring the peacenik PM to heel.
Whenever Pakistan scores a geopolitical goal against
India, our so called “counter-attack” usually takes the form of tough
statements on television channels by both official spokespersons as well
as non-official voices, whose martial spirit rises the farther they are
from any actual or potential battlefield. Expectedly, yet another
“protest”, this time no less than a “strong protest”, has been lodged
with both Pakistan and China over the way in which territory that
belongs to India is being used to create a transport corridor between
the PRC and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. It is doubtful that any
individual is naive enough to believe that yet another “protest” from
Lutyens Delhi, no matter how “strong and stern” it be, will make any
difference to the speed of implementation of a project seen by Islamabad
as a ticket to economic stability. What is needed is action, and this
need not be in the form of a war with the China-Pakistan alliance,
especially when the India-US military alliance is still a work in
progress. Even the first of three Foundation Agreements is yet to be
wholly operationalised, given the propensity for prevarication of the
Lutyens Zone. Rather, what is needed is to follow the example of
Pakistan in Gilgit-Baltistan and “normalise” the situation in that part
of the state that Mountbatten and Nehru allowed to be retained under the
control of India. A start would be the creation of two more Union
Territories, that of Jammu and Ladakh, while Kashmir itself would remain
a state with Article 370 and other special features relating to it
intact for the present, even while the same would get removed from the
two new Union Territories. Such a move would be a non-military, but
strategically important, riposte to Islamabad’s incorporation of
Gilgit-Baltistan into its formal boundaries in order to “regularise” the
land through which the CPEC enters the actual legal boundaries of
Pakistan.
Ever since the one-sided accord entered into between
Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and Jawaharlal Nehru, both Jammu as well as
Ladakh have faced discrimination at the hands of the successive
Valley-centric administrations headquartered in Srinagar. The
proclamation of Gilgit-Baltistan as the fifth province of Pakistan would
provide adequate context for the creation of the Union Territories of
Ladakh and Jammu, whose governments would thereupon break free of the
overlordship of Srinagar. Indeed, this is the “azaadi” that both Jammu
as well as Ladakh have long sought. In the case of the state that would
remain after the two UTs get formed, Kashmir, it is important to ensure
that the Pandit community be enabled to return with honour to their own
land. Property that has been illegally seized from them or which has
been effectively stolen from them by paying ridiculously low amounts or
even zero compensation should be given back. Rather than protect the
security of agents of Pakistan the way so much of the police and other
security forces in that state are wasting taxpayer rupees in doing, such
protection should be given instead to those members of the Pandit
community who return to their “Panun Kashmir”. In every setback there is
an opportunity, and in the case of Gilgit-Baltistan, any unilateral
alteration of the status quo by Islamabad in the territory under its
control should be responded to by similar measures on the part of Delhi.
One slap from Islamabad merits the creation of two Union Territories
from Delhi.
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