Anwar Ahmad

Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has hit the campaign trail with a bang, belying both his age and image as an elder statesman. Pakistan can never get (the Indian occupied) Kashmir and better handover Azad Kashmir as well, he thundered. By the calculus of power, he is quite right. But his logic omits the basic difference in the Indian and Pakistani positions. The latter's claim to Kashmir, even the Pakistani administered Azad Kashmir, is contingent upon its endorsement by the Kashmiris in a free and fair plebiscite promised to them by Viceroy Mountbatten, India and the UN.

India can, therefore, win the entire Kashmir in a plebiscite and put the subcontinent out of its misery. Yet, despite claiming to be a more attractive economic and political proposition than Pakistan, India distrusts the Kashmiris and prefers forcible occupation.

Mr Vajpayee's also derides Pakistan, a military dictatorship, for championing the Kashmiris' right of self-determination. Again, his logic seems impeccable. But, again, an ironic paradox raises its head -- a Pakistani dictatorship champions self-determination for the Kashmiris while the world's largest democracy denies it to them. The Pakistani dictatorship allows more democracy to the Kashmiris than its own citizens, the Indian democracy blatantly rigs their elections and resorts to repression.

Which of these is the greater irony would, of course, be of scant interest to the Kashmiris. As Pakistan and India have jousted over their fate for 54 years, the luckless ones under the Indian yoke have suffered in more ways than one. Their brutalisation is the more visible and quantifiable aspect of the ordeal, even though marginally noticed by the world. At least numbers can be put on the horrendous crimes, like over seventy thousand killed, thousands raped, hundreds of houses demolished.

Completely unnoticed are the deep scars singed on their individual and collective psyche, and the dilemma of their quest for a higher national identity. Should they think of themselves as potential Pakistanis, or perpetual Indians? barring those content with local, ethnic or regional identities, this question has vexed the Kashmiris across the LoC eversince the fateful ceasefire of 1949.

Every time there is an Indo-Pak flare-up, as in 1965, 1971, 1999 and now, or a peace initiative, as in Tashkent, Lahore and Agra, Kashmiris on either side of the LoC -- the "line of blood," the APHC calls it -- are stirred into contemplating a possible new national identity.

Even an Indo-Pak cricket or hockey match is enough to expose the divided affinities in much of the Indian occupied Kashmir (IoK). When Pakistan wins, as it more often does (sports being the only level playing field it gets against India), there is celebration in Srinagar -- which, perhaps, is why the BJP government has forbidden sporting contests with Pakistan.

Amid the fears and emotions aroused by the inexplicable Kargil flare-up of 1999, Pakistan was playing India in a World Cup cricket match in England. Going around Srinagar, a Reuters' reporter felt that the Kashmiris had forgotten the shelling across the LoC and sat glued to their TV sets watching the cricket battle. Offices had closed early, the streets were deserted.

He reported that, while most Kashmiris favoured Pakistan, some families were divided. "I support Pakistan but my wife favours India", said one person as he listened to the radio commentary at a Srinagar tea-stall. This was no ordinary domestic disagreement, because the Kashmiris do not live an ordinary existence. It was the reflection of a very painful dilemma -- a conflict between the head and heart -- most Kashmiris in the IoK are enduring.

A personal experience, narrated during the Kargil crisis, needs re-telling as the Indo-Pak merry-go-round over Kashmiri seems set to take yet another turn. A few years before the rigged elections in IoK triggered the armed militancy in 1989, I was in the USA as part of a study-group from different developing countries. One participant was from India -- actually, an ethnic Kashmiri from the IoK -- and worked for the Indian government.

He spoke Urdu and, sharing also the same ethno-regional origin and culinary preferences, we were naturally drawn together. But we disagreed on many issues, most profoundly on the partition of the sub-continent in 1947. Though fortified by my counter-arguments, I did feel uneasy when he painted the Indian Muslims as hostages to Pakistan's freedom. To the end, though, I wasn't entirely sure whether his intense views were honest conviction or official compulsion.

On Kashmir, he rubbed in the "betrayals" of 1948 and 1965 and the post-1971 demoralisation. My brave vow that "We'll be back" convinced neither of us. Coming so soon thereafter, the sudden uprising in 1989 must have surprised him equally (I wonder, though, what he thinks of it now).

Giving a presentation on India, he trotted out the Indian `mantra' of the "unnecessariness" of partition and its continuation. Like most Pakistanis, I exploded. After reeling off the reasons that had driven Indian Muslims to separation, I pointed to the infuriating Indian insensitivity and revisionism on this issue as the root cause of continuing Indo-Pak animosity.

If even three wars cannot convince you Indians that we are happy the way we are, I concluded with some emotion, you need to have your heads examined. The bemused group-mates ribbed us later, saying there almost was a fourth Indo-Pak war there and then. Though GM Bhai (as I called him) absorbed it all with his customary non-committal smile, I felt strangely guilty at treating him as an Indian.

My first glimpse into the inner sanctum of his mind came from a casual remark about cricket. The Indians were then touring Pakistan, and the great Imran-Zaheer-Miandad trio had them on the mat. We have beaten the daylights out of your team, I teased him one day. To my surprise, he became serious. "Which is our team?", he asked intensely. As I searched for words, he answered himself: "We have no team!"

The topic was not discussed again. When his family joined GM Bhai, he would ask me over for the luxury of boiled white rice (the lifeblood of Kashmiris, and the bane of amateur chefs). One post-dinner discussion again meandered into Indo-Pak relations, and I complained to Mrs. GM how unfairly hard her husband was on us poor Pakistanis for dividing India.

Her reaction took me aback, laying bare the dilemma of the Kashmiri Muslims. Ask him, she said bitterly, why the name-plate outside our official New Delhi home never carried his full name but only G. M. Pundit. I dared not ask, and GM Bhai did not respond. So she went on: one day there was a knock, I opened the door to find a group of neighbourhood ladies all dressed up and carrying offerings. "Aren't you going to the Mandir?" they asked in surprise, as Mrs. GM was obviously not dressed for the occasion. It was [probably] Holi.

In that awkward moment, Mrs. GM had to "confess" that they were Muslims. His full name was Ghulam Muhammad Pundit. The last name signified his Brahmin-Hindu origin, the "telltale" first names certified him as a double pariah -- a Muslim, and that too a convert.

GM Bhai sat impassively, and I still don't know if he shared his wife's views. But she had more to say: "I never feel at home in Delhi. But it was so different when I visited my relatives in Lahore. Whichever shop we entered in the Anarkali Bazaar, salesmen said Salaam and welcomed me as Baji [older sister]. It was as if we were all one family", she said wistfully, the clouds of what-could-have-been darkening her face.

More was said which I do not recall. But I shall never forget the sadness in that room, GM Bhai's stoic silence and the prattling of the unconcerned kids.

We have never been in touch, but I think of them whenever there is an Indo-Pak contest -- on the field of sport or battle or across a table. I cannot guess about GM Bhai, but his wife's heart would certainly be with Pakistan. Now that the kids must have grown up, I often wonder who they might have taken after -- their reticent and rational father, or their expressive and emotional mother?

They, after all, are the future. Will they also remain the victims of Indian power and insecurity and Pakistani ardour and inadequacy, or be the arbiters of their own destiny? This is the essence of Kashmir's tragedy.

The writer is a freelance columnist

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