‘Persecution is worse than death’

Islam abhors the taking of life which ‘Allah has made sacred’ (Al Quran 17:33) and the ‘recompense [of a murderer] is Hell to abide therein; and the Wrath and Curse of Allah are upon him, and a great punishment is prepared for him’ (4:93). Killing in Islam is an abominable and punishable crime. Qisas does not abrogate the punishment of a murderer but abolishes the practice of blood revenge (2:178, 179, 5:45, 42:40), killing in retaliation any member of the murderer’s family, tribe or people.

The Quran specifically stipulates that only the guilty be punished and no other. Whilst Diyat further douses the burning flames of revenge by giving the option to the heirs of the victim to forgive (‘afw) and receive monetary compensation (diyat) for the blood that has been spilled (2:178, 5:45, 17:33, 42:40).

The Qisas and Diyat laws contained in the Pakistan Penal Code have dozens of references to unfamiliar Arabic terminology, such as, ‘arsh’, ‘daman’, ‘ikrah-e-tam’, ‘ikrah-e-naqis’, ‘qatl-i-amd’, ‘afw’, ‘badal-i-sulh’,’shibh-i-amd’, ‘qatl-i-kata’, ‘qatal-bis-sabab’, ‘itlaf-i-udw’, ‘itlaf-i-salahiyyat-i-udw’, ‘shajjah’, ‘jurh’, ‘shajjah-i-khafifah’, ‘shajjah-i-mudihah’. The Pakistan Penal Code then proceeds to painfully translate and apply every Arabic term.

Arabic terminology and semantics became the substitute for the true intent and application of Quranic laws in a largely illiterate land. This is very dangerous because while a citizen may freely oppose the promulgation of any law, opposition to laws written in Arabic and partially borrowing Islamic concepts, like the Qisas and Diyat laws, the Hadood laws or the Qanun-e-Shahadat is mischievously portrayed as opposition to Islam itself.

Resort to Arabic diction alone does not make a law Islamic. An unIslamic law can use Arabic terms just as an Islamic law can be framed in English. The constitutional, judicial and legal system in Pakistan after all uses the English language. The Constitution and all laws are written in English, judgments are delivered in English, law reports are published in English and laws interpreted in English.

The preeminence of the Arabic language is indisputable but Arabic is not spoken in the country and therefore making laws in Arabic can only entail confusion, lack of clarity and floundering. The police, lawyers and judges who apply such laws have virtually no knowledge of Arabic.

This shortcoming gives seminaries, which have no role in the determination of legal matters, a handle to turn things to their advantage or convenience. Merely resorting to Arabic does not actualize the ordained concepts of Qisas and Diyat.

The proviso to Section 310 of the Pakistan Penal Code stipulates, that ‘only giving a female in marriage shall not be a valid badal-i-sulh’ (‘compensation to be paid or given by the offender’ to the heirs ‘in cash or in kind or in the form of movable or immovable property’). This enactment gave recognition and acceptance to concepts such as the ‘giving a female’ as compensation but since such paganism would be too blatant, it was qualified by stating that such ‘giving’ in itself would not be sufficient.

This law is contrary to Islam, which does not permit enslavement or a marriage which is not voluntarily entered into by the two concerned parties. A nikah (marriage) contract, by its very contractual nature, cannot be imposed. Essential elements of free will and mahar (dower) too would be absent here. ‘Giving a female’ is anathema to Islam, and a throw-back to the days of the Jahiliya (the Ignorance) belonging to the period before the advent and enlightenment of the Quran.

The Quranic concept of Qisas and Diyat inculcates forgiveness and charity in hardened hearts: ‘This is an alleviation and a mercy from your Lord’ (2:178). But the same verse also strikes a warning against ‘whoever transgresses the limits he shall have a painful torment’. However, the (Qisas and Diyat) laws in Pakistan enable men to transgress limits and follow their vain desires — by ‘giving a female’. The Almighty admonishes against just this — ‘And so judge among them by what Allah has revealed and follow not their vain desires’ (5:49).

Diyat (compensation) is an instrument of atonement and aimed at instilling mercy in the aggrieved and the journeying onto a higher plane. Instead, phraseology in the law facilitates the opposite and by its selective use of the word ‘female’ enables persecution of both women and young girls, who may be ‘given’ to settle feuds. This has been recently witnessed. The villagers who were strongly condemned simply followed the law of Qisas and Diyat as formulated in Pakistan. Human beings are the best of Allah’s Creation (95:4, 82:7) and Allah’s vicegerents on Earth (6:165). Yet Pakistani lawmakers reduce their status to one of commodities and chattels to be virtually sold and transferred in marriage. Illiterate villagers are being targeted and abused, but there is no condemnation of the highly educated lawmakers and the sermonizers who incorporated this provision, nor any sign of the repeal of such exploitative and unjust laws.

What the law permits is for the heirs of victims to strike deals with the murderer for the hand in ‘marriage’ of his sisters, daughters or close female relations to secure a pardon for the murderer. This practice offends the words of the Exalted, ‘Each soul earns only on its own account, no bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another’ (6:164). The Prophet (peace be upon him) told Abu Zamna that his son ‘does not compensate offences on your behalf, nor do you pay for his’.

General Zia, the man without legitimacy, looked to certain seminaries to anoint him. In return he agreed with their version of ‘Islamization’. The particular coterie he turned to had their spiritual headquarters in India and it did not trouble the general that they were the successors of those who had opposed the creation of Pakistan. Just as Islamic concepts came to be twisted, so too was the political integrity of a nation, by handing it over to forces inimical to its creation. No real attempt was made to introduce Qisas and Diyat laws in accordance with the Quran but instead the preconceived notions of the followers of mazhabs from across the border took the place of Islam.

Having learnt the art of sacking governments from his mentor, Ghulam Ishaq Khan nipped the budding democratic sapling and gave Benazir’s first government their marching orders and dissolved the National Assembly because of its ‘failure to discharge substantive legislative function’. Within a month he had promulgated the Qisas and Diyat laws through the dubious legislative device of an ordinance. Having established his ‘Islamic’ credentials, he proceeded to have a university named after himself and installed his son-in-law in an extremely influential post, from where he doled out patronage.

Rather than being awash with concern for women and tampering with the Constitution to raise their seats in parliament, let us first do the more simple, honest and truthful thing by repealing such and other anti-women legal perversions. For even a House full of women will not be able to dent any law buttressed by men in arms.

Violating the Constitution is easier than changing bad laws in Pakistan. Behind every recent incident of panchayat-prescribed rape, stoning, sentencing blasphemers to death and the payment of women as compensation that has been witnessed lies a bad law, which is contrary to Islamic injunctions. However, since such laws are couched in Islamic terminology, they are probably too hot to handle, particularly when most of them were conceived during the martial government of General Zia. In Pakistan laws contrary to Islam can be quickly and easily formulated if they have a veneer of religiosity, but to undo this evil it takes a clear head, clean conscience, sufficient knowledge of Islam and determination.

To profess the Quaid’s vision but to go weak-kneed when faced with the ranting and raving of the misguided, self-proclaimed defenders of the Faith and scuttle necessary amendments, serves neither Quaid’s vision nor Islam. Again, the determination in bringing the ‘madaris’ to heel melted away when faced with its rejection by the seminaries. They were favoured with a commission, the members of which were acceptable to them, to appraise the law that had already been enacted. But in the far more important matter of the Constitution and despite almost unanimous opposition to changing it, we see no indulgence and no commission, because civil society does not threaten, it does not disrupt — it only tries to reason.

General Musharraf’s government is relatively clean and the stench of corruption and scams do not waft in the higher echelons of power. This then is its strength and it can be proud of such achievements, though it does not follow that the government has the exclusive right to all thought and knowledge.

Experience has shown that whenever the National Assembly is bypassed and the army applies its hand at legislation, the results are far from satisfactory. Rather than using military bluster to trample the Constitution, the government would do better to amend bad laws which target and persecute women; the weak, oppressed and vulnerable members of society. For ‘persecution is worse than death’ (Al Quran 2:191).

Causes of Arab disunity

UNDERLYING most of the findings in the much cited 2002 UNDP Arab Human Development Report is the extraordinary lack of coordination between Arab countries. There is considerable irony in the fact that the Arabs are discussed and referred to both in this report and elsewhere as a group even though they seem rarely to function as one, except negatively.

Thus the report correctly says that there is no Arab democracy, Arab women are uniformly an oppressed majority, and in science and technology every Arab state is behind the rest of the world. Certainly there is little strategic cooperation between them and virtually none in the economic sphere.

As for more specific issues like policy towards Israel, the US and the Palestinians, and despite a common front of embarrassed hand-wringing and disgraceful powerlessness, one senses a frightened determination first of all not to offend the US, not to engage in war or in a real peace with Israel, not ever to think of a common Arab front even on matters that affect an overall Arab future or security. Yet when it comes to the perpetuation of each regime, the Arab ruling classes are united in purpose and survival skills.

This shambles of inertia and impotence is, I am convinced, an affront to every Arab. This is why so many Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians, Moroccans and others have taken to the streets in support of the Palestinian people undergoing the nightmare of Israeli occupation, with the Arab leadership looking on and basically doing nothing. Street demonstrations are demonstrations not only of support for Palestine, but also protests at the immobilizing effects of Arab disunity.

An even more eloquent sign of the common disenchantment is the frequent, wrenchingly sad television scene of a Palestinian woman surveying the ruins of her house demolished by Israeli bulldozers, wailing to the world at large “ya Arab, ya Arab” (“oh you Arabs, you Arabs”). There is no more eloquent testimony to the betrayal of the Arab people by their (mostly unelected) leaders than that indictment, which is to say: “why don’t you Arabs ever do anything to help us?” Despite money and oil aplenty, there is only the stony silence of an unmoved spectator.

Even on an individual level, alas, disunity and factionalism has crippled one national effort after the other. Take the saddest of all instances, the case of the Palestinian people. I recall wondering during the Amman and Beirut days why it was necessary for somewhere between eight to twelve Palestinian factions to exist, each fighting over uselessly academic issues of ideology and organization while Israel and the local militias bled us dry.

Looking back over the Lebanese days that came to a terrible end in Sabra and Shatila, whose purpose did it serve to have the Popular Front, Fateh, and the Democratic Front — to mention only three factions — fighting each other, to have leaders within Fateh proclaiming needlessly provocative slogans like “the road to Tel Aviv goes through Jounieh” even as Israel allied itself with the right-wing Lebanese militias to destroy the Palestinian presence for Israel’s purposes?

And what cause has been served by Yasser Arafat’s tactics of creating factions, sub-groups, and security forces to war against each other during the Oslo process and leave his people unprotected and unprepared for the Israeli destruction of the infrastructure and re-occupation of Area A?

It’s always the same thing, factionalism, disunity, the absence of a common purpose for which in the end ordinary people pay the price in suffering, blood and endless destruction. Even on the level of social structure, it is almost a commonplace that Arabs as a group fight among themselves more than they do for a common purpose. We are individualists, it is said by way of justification, ignoring the fact that such disunity and internal disorganization in the end damages our very existence as a people.

Nothing can be more disheartening than the disputes that corrode Arab expatriate organizations, especially in places like the United States and Europe, where relatively small Arab communities are surrounded by hostile environments and militant opponents who will stop at nothing to discredit the Arab struggle. Still, instead of trying to unite and work together, these communities get torn apart by totally unnecessary ideological and factional struggles that have no immediate relevance, no necessity at all so far as the surrounding field is concerned.

A few days ago, I was startled by a discussion programme on al-Jazeera television in which the two participants and a needlessly provocative moderator vehemently discussed Arab-American activism during the present crisis. One participant spent all of his time discrediting the one serious national Arab-American group, the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which he accused of ineffectiveness and its leaders of egoism, opportunism and personal corruption.

Although I only watched the first and last parts of the programme, I was thoroughly disillusioned and even disgraced by the discussion. What was the point, I asked myself? In what way is it useful to tear down an organization that has been doing by far the best work in a country where Arabs are outnumbered, but also where society itself and its media are so hostile to Arabs, Islam, and their causes in general?

The Al-Jazeera programme was more offensive by its gratuitous inaccuracy and the needless personal harm it did to the late Hala Salam Maksoud, who literally gave her life to the cause of ADC, and to its current president Dr Ziad Asli, a public-spirited physician who voluntarily gave up his medical practice to run the organization on a pro bono basis.

Moreover, it should be noted that given the extremely inhospitable American political setting to the Arab cause, ADC has been very successful in Washington and nationally as an organization rebutting charges against Arabs in the media, protecting individuals from government persecution after 9/11, and keeping Arab-Americans involved and participating in the national debate.

Perhaps the main reason for Arab factionalism at every level of our societies, at home and abroad, is the marked absence of ideals and role models. Since Abdel Nasser’s death, whatever one may have thought of some of his more ruinous policies, no figure has captured the Arab imagination or had a role in setting a popular liberation struggle. Look at the disaster of the PLO, which has been reduced from the days of its glory to an old unshaven man, sitting at a broken-down table, in half a house in Ramallah, trying to survive at any cost, whether or not he sells out, whether or not he says foolish things, whether what he says means anything or not. (A couple of weeks ago, he was quoted as saying that he now accepts the 2000 Clinton plan, though the only problem is that it is now 2002 and Clinton is no longer president.)

It has been years since Arafat represented his people, their sufferings and cause, and like his other Arab counterparts, he hangs on like a much-too-ripe fruit without real purpose or position. There is thus no strong moral centre in the Arab world today. Cogent analysis and rational discussion have given way to fanatical ranting, concerted action on behalf of liberation has been reduced to suicidal attacks, and the idea if not the practice of integrity and honesty as a model to be followed has simply disappeared.

As a terribly shocking instance, consider the Egyptian sociologist Saadedine Ibrahim’s fate. Released by a civil court a few months ago, he has now been tried, found guilty and sentenced to a cruelly unjustified sentence by the state security court for exactly those “crimes” for which he was earlier released. Where is the moral justification for such toying with a person’s life, career, and reputation? A matter of months ago, he was a trusted adviser to the government and on the boards of several Arab institutes and projects. Now he is considered to be a condemned criminal.

Whose interests, whether by virtue of national unity, or coherent strategy, or moral imperative, does his gratuitous punishment in this way serve? More factionalism, more disintegration, more sense of drift and fear and a pervading sense of frustrated justice.

Arabs have for so long been deprived of a sense of participation and citizenship by their rulers that most of us have lost even the capacity of understanding what personal commitment to a cause bigger than ourselves might mean. The Palestinian struggle is a collective miracle, I think, that a people should endure such unremitting cruelty from Israel and still not give up, but why can’t the lessons of living (as opposed to suicidal, nihilistic) resistance be made clearer, and more possible to follow?

This is the real problem, the absence all over the Arab world and abroad of a leadership that communicates with its people, not via communiques that express an impersonal, almost disdainful disregard of them as citizens, but through the actual practice of concerted dedication and personal example.

Unable to move the United States from its illegal support of Israel’s crimes, the Arab leaders simply throw out one “peace” proposal (the same one) after another, each of which is dismissed derisively by both Israel and the US. Bush and his psychopathic henchman Rumsfeld keep leaking news of their impending invasion for “regime change” in Iraq, and the Arabs still have not communicated a unified deterrent position against this new American insanity.

When individuals and organizations like ADC try to do something on behalf of a cause they are gunned down by troublemakers who have little else to do but destroy and disturb. Surely the time has come to start thinking of ourselves as a people with a common history and goals, and not as a collection of cowardly delinquents. But that is up to each one, and it’s no good sitting back blaming “the Arabs” since, after all, we are the Arabs. — Copyright Edward W. Said, 2002

Is America losing friends?

EUROPEANS are beginning to experience the same sensations of impotence that Muslims long have. Whatever they think or say, it is tossed in the wastepaper basket by their American friends.

In the last week or so it has become evident that the Bush Administration is hell bent on implementing a new law, part of the recent anti-terrorist legislation, that sets out in no uncertain terms to undermine the new International Criminal Court, the pride and joy of a lot of countries but of the Europeans in particular, who see it as an effective tool for deterring would-be war criminals.

The State Department has made it clear to all foreign countries that their military aid will be cut off unless — like Romania and Israel — they sign a pledge to protect Americans serving in their country from the Court’s reach. Brave Norway has told the Americans “no”, and doubtless other Europeans if asked will say the same thing. But “nos” won’t be enough perhaps. The law says, as the New York Times has just reminded us, that authority is given to the president to free Americans who are in the Court’s custody by “any necessary and appropriate means”. One presumes that means war.

Now the Europeans are beginning to understand what President George Bush meant when he said last autumn, “who is not with us is against us”. Who knows at the rate things are going there may be some briefing from some Pentagon “think paper” that will warn that Europeans are no longer to be regarded as allies. Saudi Arabia is still recovering from recent shock of being labelled by a Pentagon working party as “the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent” of the U.S. in the Middle East. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld made it clear that he did not dissent from this piece of inside advice.

It would be useful to know where the Netherlands stands in the Pentagon’s eyes. It is home of the International Court and much of its informed opinion is cool on current American realpolitik. It is presumably a wild exaggeration to say that America is going to use military force against its best friends, but nevertheless all this is leaving a strange taste in European mouths.

At best, many Europeans consider what has happened in America the last couple of years as bizarre. First, acting as if it were some insecure newborn democracy, it chooses as a president the son of the last president but one who has few qualifications other than his family name. The election itself was run in such a roughshod way that the ballot was suspect.

Then the new president appoints a lot of senior officials- vice president, defence secretary, national security advisor and many other high level appointees, who have never known war, or shed blood, much less seen corpses rotting on the battlefield or villages destroyed with the remains of children’s bodies splayed in a hundred directions.

Many of them like the president himself consciously avoided the draft at the time of Vietnam. Yet it is they who are telling the military against its better judgment that it has to gear up for a new major war, against Iraq and who knows what then? Saudi Arabia?

Then comes September 11th, followed by a commitment to “smoke out” Osama bin Laden. A war is begun against his refuge, Afghanistan, but bin Laden apparently escapes whilst at least as many innocent people are killed as lost their lives in the World Trade Centre. America — with its allies — is left trying to establish a central government in Afghanistan by cutting short-term deals with autocratic warlords, a precarious effort that Washington makes clear is a distraction from the prime (but failed) objective.

Shortly after the U.S. unilaterally raises its steel tariffs, hurting not just its closest trading partners but many of the Third World countries that finally are becoming what America always said it wanted, well on the way to becoming developed. Europe, careful not to do anything to polarise the deteriorating transatlantic relationship, forgoes its legal right to retaliate.

Before and after and in between these major events the administration takes pot shots at other causes the Europeans hold dear- the UN torture convention, the treaty on global warming, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the UN discrimination against women’s convention. At the same time it effectually licences Israel to re-take the Palestinian West Bank, with Rumsfeld now making it clear that American promises made as recently as early summer to push for a Palestinian state are now seriously in question.

No wonder that sober people in Europe are beginning to ask where do they fit in to the new Machtpolitik? According to one observer, Robert Kagan, in widely circulated essay, (see this month’s issue of Prospect magazine) an American show of power is inevitable considering that America has the weight of the world on its shoulders and is the only country powerful enough to change things for the better.

But it is not simply a question of cracking the whip in the style of the old British Empire. The world doesn’t work like that anymore, neither financially, nor socially and not even militarily. — Copyright Jonathan Power

Ashes to ashes

I HAVE decided to do it. I am going to be cremated and then have my ashes dropped over every cocktail party on Martha’s Vineyard. It’s the only way I can make all the parties held here in the summer.

I want Cape Air, the friendly nine-seat airline, to fly me.

I imagine it this way. The plane takes off from Martha’s Vineyard Airport, and Mike Wallace is in charge of dropping the ashes. As per my instructions, I want some of me to be dropped over Rose Styron’s lawn. She gave so many wonderful parties when I was alive. As I fly over, Walter Cronkite says to David McCullough, are those Art Buchwald’s ashes?”

“It’s hard to say. There are so many ashes dropping on Rose’s these days because she gives the most parties. It could be anybody’s.”

The Cape Air plane heads for Edgartown and Carol Biondi’s house. All her guests look up, and once again Mike lets the ashes float down.

“Who is it?” someone asks Carol.

She replies, “Art Buchwald. He said he was coming if it killed him.”

Everyone raises their glasses.

The pilot turns his plane towards Rollnick’s house. An Air Force jet buzzes the Cape Air plane. Mike says, “Bill and Hillary Clinton must be there. We will drop some ashes as long as it’s not a fund-raiser. Buchwald never went to political fund-raisers on the island.” Mike drops a handful of ashes just in case it’s a social gathering.

Then the pilot heads toward Chilmark and Kate Whitney’s house. He asks Mike if he still has enough ashes. Mike replies, “I still have half an urn.”

The party is in full swing and Kate is not only serving drinks but also lobster and fresh corn. Once again the crowd looks up to the sky.

“Who is it?” the guests ask the owner of a sailboat who is scanning the sky with binoculars.

He replies, “I’m almost sure it’s Buchwald.”

“It can’t be. He has maintained for years he would never come to Chilmark because you always need a map.”

“He must have changed his mind. After all, this is his last hurrah.”

Mike says to the pilot, “I still have a quarter tank of ashes in the urn. Take me over to Menemsha. Vernon and Ann Jordan are throwing a birthday party.”

The urn is almost empty and the plane has just have enough ashes left to make it back to the airport.

Mike is pleased with the evening, but waiting for his plane when they when they land is a Coast Guard officer who says Mike can’t drop ashes without a permit.

Mike just smiles and says, “I’m sorry, and if Buchwald were here he would be sorry too.” — Dawn/Tribune Media Services

A wild goose chase

THE Kashmir Committee, chaired by Ram Jethmalani, was a non- starter from day one. It began functioning after the elections had been announced. And all its efforts were concentrated on making the different parties participate in the state polls.

How could they do so when New Delhi had promised only “free and fair elections?” This was relevant till the 1987 polls. That was the last election where the Kashmiris wanted to see whether New Delhi or Srinagar had learnt any lesson from the past and whether they would hold an independent election. When it turned out to be a rigged one, a lot of the youth lost faith in the ballot box itself. This was when they picked up the guns Islamabad was too willing to supply.

The expectation from the Kashmir Committee was not the reiteration of free and fair election, but the political package it could offer. It seems that Jethmalani had no brief from New Delhi on that point. He had jumped into the fray on his own. Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani did not think there was any harm if he threw in the government’s name as long as he talked about elections and a subsequent dialogue.

True, Jethmalani got all the publicity and attention. That was because people in Kashmir cling to even a straw of hope in the sea of disappointment. But he has messed up the chances of any other unofficial team which the centre may want to have to talk to the separatists. It would be suspect in their eyes. Talks through unofficial channels have become a joke because New Delhi has used too many — K.C. Pant, A.S. Dulat and Wajiatullah — to offer too little. The Jethmalani committee has not broken even new ground.

The Hurriyat’s ‘no’ or Shabbir Shah’s ‘conditional no’ was already known. To run down the Hurriyat, as Jethmalani has done after the talks, is neither here nor there. Its credentials are not hidden. How representative is the body is in the valley can be judged from the fact that everyone from Delhi makes a beeline for the Hurriyat’s headquarters.

That the Hurriyat has Washington’s blessings may create problems for New Delhi in the days to come. America’s intentions are far from pious. Had it put pressure on the Hurriyat — on Pakistan as well — it would have participated in the elections. Secretary of State Powell’s statement that Kashmir is on the international agenda is ominous.

Against this backdrop, it is all the more necessary that the forthcoming elections in Kashmir are credible and look to be so. But the continuance in office of Farooq Abdullah at Srinagar and that of his son, Omar Abdullah in New Delhi, creates doubts. They must resign to stop the wagging tongues. The presence of foreign observers will help because they will be able to see whether fear keeps away the voters from the polling booths or whether they are themselves boycotting the election.

The violence in the valley may make foreign observers appreciate the dangers New Delhi faces because of cross-border terrorism. If the foreign media is there, besides representatives of foreign missions, how foreign observers can have an adverse effect on the Election Commission’s autonomy — a point made by New Delhi — is difficult to comprehend.

Jethmalani has also, unwittingly, underlined the separation of the valley from the rest of the state. The committee never visited Jammu or Ladakh. The Sangh parivar is advocating a trifurcation thesis. He should have denounced it. Dividing the state into Muslim valley, the Hindu Jammu and the Buddhist Ladakh is a communal proposition which will damage our pluralistic polity beyond repair. The committee should have made it clear.

The point that New Delhi has to focus on is autonomy. The state joined the Union on certain conditions. In the instrument of accession, the ruler of J and K transferred to the centre only three subjects: defence, foreign affairs and communications. Article 370 was included in the constitution to recognize the separate status of the state.

The Union has no authority to hog more subjects on its own. Only the state can do so. Sheikh Abdullah agreed to go beyond the original terms during his talks with Lal Bahadur Shastri and G. Parthasarathy, Mrs Indira Gandhi’s representative. If any more authority is required by the state, the assembly must endorse that. During the last session of parliament, both Advani and opposition leader Manmohan Singh said that there was no going back to the original status. That is not for the Union to decide. The assembly’s concurrence is essential.

New Delhi will be reneging on its promise to the state at the time of integration if the state’s autonomy is chipped off without its consent. In fact, New Delhi is mainly responsible for today’s state of things, first having its own nominee at Srinagar and encroaching on the state’s rights and then not creating the democratic character which the other states in the country enjoy.

Even a person like Jawaharlal Nehru committed the mistake of detaining the Sheikh and running the state as New Delhi’s colony for more than a decade. The latter’s fault was that he wanted New Delhi to make the undertaking given to Srinagar good. Nehru realized where he went wrong but died before he could rectify it. Nehru also realized that without the association of Pakistan, the problem could not be solved. Even though there was no cross-border terrorism at that time, the pro-Pakistan feeling was substantially visible in the valley.

When the Sheikh proposed ideas like a condominium or federation at Islamabad, General Ayub Khan, then Pakistan’s President rejected them. He reportedly argued that Pakistan would not accept an arrangement where it was at the mercy of the majority. However, before any other proposal could come up, the Sheikh returned to New Delhi because of Nehru’s sudden death.

Many things have happened since to dent New Delhi’s confidence in Islamabad. The latter violated the undertaking it gave — first at Tashkent (1966), and then at Shimla (1972) — not to try to change the status quo by resorting to arms. From the 1965 war to the current cross-border terrorism, Pakistan has defeated the letter and spirit of every agreement.

Probably it is that realization which has made General Musharraf drop the reference to the Shimla Agreement along with the UN resolutions. Once Pakistan’s foreign minister Abdus Sattar, when he was high commissioner in New Delhi, said that Pakistan had responded to India’s protests by mentioning the Shimla Agreement and the UN resolutions together. The change was visible when he was foreign minister under Musharraf.

By crossing out the minutes of the Shimla Agreement, or the Lahore Declaration, Islamabad does not help the situation. It is the violence and cross-border terrorism which must be eschewed — whichever agreement gives it validity. One bad thing that has happened over the years is the communalization of the state. Some of the Hurriyat leaders are as much responsible for it in the valley as are the Sangh parivar in Jammu. Neither Islamabad nor the Hurriyat leaders realize the effect on the subcontinent if the Muslim-majority valley were to secede from India. Firstly, will any government at Delhi allow it? Secondly, can a government doing so stay in power?

In fact, the main difficulty that the Hurriyat faces is not on the question whether New Delhi is prepared to have a dialogue with it. Its main problem is that after promising Kashmiris independence, how does it participate in the election which gives no such hope? The Ram Jethmalani committee should have realized the Hurriyat’s limitations as well as its own.

The writer is a freelance columnist based in New Delhi.