KATHMANDU, capital of Nepal, recently hosted the summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). This regional bloc is comprised of eight countries in the South Asia region including Afghanistan and Maldives.
According to press reports, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi held one-on-one meetings, on the sidelines of the summit, with all the leaders of member countries except Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. While addressing the SAARC summit, Sharif said: “My vision is a dispute-free South Asia, and instead of fighting each other we should jointly fight poverty, illiteracy and malnourishment.”
In a reaction to this, Nepal's former prime minister Baburam Bhattarai, writing in the Republica newspaper, opined that the time is ripe for India to take an advance step (in repairing strained relations). “More often than not, India-Pakistan disputes have overshadowed the organization," he wrote. Ahead of Modi's address at the SAARC summit, Sharif had reportedly said that the onus on resolving ties between the two nations lies solely with India. Speaking to reporters on board his aircraft to Nepal, he said: “Now the ball is in India's court.” Sharif said this while referring to India's unilateral decision to call off foreign secretary-level talks, which were due in August this year. This statement was the immediate provocation for Modi not to hold a one-on-one meeting with Sharif.
India has exerted great efforts to make SAARC an effective regional bloc, especially on the economic front, so as to stem the growing clout of China in the region. Perhaps this could be one of the reasons that prompted Modi to invite all the SAARC heads of state, including Sharif, to attend his swearing in ceremony in May this year. But the initiatives to improve relations between New Delhi and Islamabad made no headway mainly because of the clashes of troops on their disputed Kashmir border.
The dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir is regarded as one of the most complicated and long-standing issues in the world today. India and Pakistan have fought at least three wars over Kashmir. It has resulted in continuous hostilities and remains a stumbling block in restoring good bilateral relations between the two neighbors, which were part of a single nation earlier. The nation was divided into two at the end of a long struggle lasting for more than two centuries to liberate the country from British colonial rule.
It is also noteworthy that the partition of the country was based on the "Two Nation” theory under which all Muslim majority regions were supposed to become part of Pakistan while all Hindu majority regions would remain with India. Unfortunately, this theory was not put into practice in the case of the Muslim majority region of Kashmir.
The focal point of the Two Nation theory was overturned in the case of Kashmir with the decision of the Hindu Maharaja of Kashmir, the largest of the princely states, to join the Indian Union. This resulted in the first war between the two countries over Kashmir. Subsequently, there was an intervention of the United Nations to resolve the crisis, and the UN decided to hold a plebiscite so that the people of Kashmir would have the right to self-determination of their future whether to join Pakistan or remain with India or to become an independent state. However, the plebiscite was never held.
Moreover, the leader of the National Conference Party Sheikh Abdullah, who was successful in the elections held in the state in 1947, announced that he wanted Kashmir to remain part of India. The government of India considered the election results a virtual plebiscite on the future of the disputed region.
Now, elections to the state assembly are being held in Jammu and Kashmir, which is currently ruled by a coalition of the National Conference and the Indian National Congress. However, this time, these two parties are contesting elections separately. India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Modi, fielded candidates in all 87 assembly seats. Modi hopes that his party will secure an absolute majority in the state. His party has plans to amend Article 370 of the Indian constitution that guarantees special rights for Jammu and Kashmir. Modi blamed the ruling coalition for the state's slow growth and development, and said that corruption was rampant in the state. Addressing election rallies in the state, he promised the people of the state that his party will bring massive development to the state.
According to BBC reports, there was a huge turnout for the first phase of the elections held a few days ago. There were conflicting reports about the overwhelming response of voters. Some say that this is the people's determination to foil the attempts of the Hindu communalist BJP from winning a majority in the Muslim majority state while others say that people turned out in huge numbers to cast their ballots so as to give a bitter lesson to separatists who called for a boycott of the elections.
Irrespective of the election results, the problem of Kashmir which dates back more than 60 years will continue to remain a stumbling block in establishing fruitful relations between the neighboring nuclear powers as well as in strengthening the SAARC. Therefore, it is high time for the leaders of both countries to take bold and serious decisions to resolve this dispute. It is impossible for the region to enjoy peace and security without solving the Kashmir problem.
— Dr. Ali Al-Ghamdi is a former Saudi diplomat who specializes in Southeast Asian affairs. He can be reached at [email protected]
