Midnight's Descendants

by John Keay

  Otherwise the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, AFSPA dates from 1958, and affords legal immunity to members of the Indian security forces operating within areas that have first been designated as ‘disturbed’. Troops in such areas may, on suspicion of hostile intent, detain or shoot any persons and enter, search and destroy any premises, all without risk of prosecution. Imposed in the face of the Naga insurgency and originally applicable only in the north-eastern states, the Act was subsequently extended to Punjab in the 1980s and to Kashmir in 1990.

  Sharmila Irom became aware of it when in 2000 a local newspaper printed photographs of ten Manipuri civilians, one of them an elderly woman, who had been shot dead at a bus stop in a place called Malom. The killers were members of the paramilitary Assam Rifles, and they presumably had their reasons. But because AFSPA affords them blanket protection, the circumstances can never be known for sure. No case can be brought, and no impartial investigation undertaken. Such, it is said, is the price that a liberal democracy must pay to guarantee the security of its citizens.

  Ms Irom disagreed, and she still does. So do many other Indians and countless human rights organisations, including that of the UN. AFSPA’s condoning of state violence may have served a purpose at the height of the Naga revolt, but it is now wholly counter-productive. Instead of deterring insurgents, it induces the climate of fear and resentment that sustains them. Without it, the north-east might be claimed as a success story. In 2013 Nagaland, along with other north-eastern states, held elections. Turnouts were high and disruption minimal. Nagas and Manipuris have done well out of ‘Shining India’. Subsidies have poured into the region and educated young people have poured out. Their missionary-taught English is put to remunerative effect in the call centres of Bangalore and the cabin-crew training schools of Mumbai. Give or take occasional resentment of these un-Indian-looking and largely Christian ‘north-easterners’, integration is working. The fragmentation of the north-east’s insurgent militias is a sign not of escalating violence but of the militants’ frustration and disarray. AFSPA has become an anachronism that the army could manage without. To end it, and with it Ms Irom’s long agony, all that is required is a little common sense and some legislative compassion.

  The same could be said in respect of Kashmir. There AFSPA is still being readily invoked, and is even more resented. Under its provisions supposed militants are shot on sight, while suspects emerge from summary detention, if they emerge at all, with gruesome evidence of mistreatment and torture. The army claims that AFSPA is essential to dealing with a situation in which Pakistan-backed guerrillas expect sanctuary from a sullen population. They eagerly credit the Act with having reduced the number of ‘terrorist incidents’, while citing any new incidents, including those directly attributable to AFSPA, as proof that it nevertheless remains indispensable. Others argue that its draconian provisions and the injustices it condones discredit the liberal, secular values that India stands for. Kashmir, they claim, can never be reconciled to Indian rule while it remains in force. Repeal is urged and revision discussed; but the solution of simply declaring all but the immediate border region as no longer a ‘disturbed area’ seems a step too far.

  For at least twenty years New Delhi and Islamabad have professedly been committed to normalising their relationship. By easing contacts, building confidence and sharing concerns, bilateral tensions have been reduced and the Kashmir issue temporarily sidelined. But tacitly it is agreed that resolving the Kashmir conundrum remains the key to Indo–Pak rapprochement.

  The current lull affords an opportunity to reconsider this assumption. Instead of deeming the normalisation of Indo–Pak relations as hostage to a solution of the Kashmir issue, the equation might be reversed: Kashmir might be seen as hostage to the abnormality of Indo–Pak relations. Kashmiris have long been saying as much, and they may be right. Afghans, too, are becoming aware of their exposure to this regional rivalry. The plight of Kashmir, and arguably of Afghanistan, is symptomatic of the hostility between their nuclear neighbours; it is not, though, the cause of it. That lies far from dormant in the legacy of Partition and the troubled adolescence of both of South Asia’s sibling states, especially Pakistan.

  Judged by its appalling record of sectarian bombings, Islamist outrages and political murders, today’s Pakistan has earned its pariah status. In Akhtar Hameed Khan’s phrasing, ‘the cutting of heads’ still rivals ‘the counting of heads’ as a means of expressing dissent. In 2013 the security forces were grappling with a new wave of insurgency in Balochistan, ongoing ethno-sectarian strife in Karachi, an indigenous Taliban based in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), numerous militias and terror cells in Punjab and the Frontier Province, and the devastating spillover from the war in Afghanistan. And all this in an Islamic republic buffeted by the wider Muslim world’s expectations of its second most populous nation, and the only one with a proven nuclear capability.

  Data compiled by a Delhi-based ‘Pakistan Terrorism Portal’ indicates that in the two-year period 2011–12 some 12,500 civilians, insurgents and security personnel lost their lives, as against over 19,000 in the period 2009–10. Catastrophic flooding by the Indus river as a result of 2010’s excessive rains claimed another 18,000 lives and displaced an estimated fourteen million people – nearly as many as the Great Partition of 1947. The UN estimated the humanitarian crisis occasioned by the floods as worse than the combined effects of the 2002 Asian tsunami, the 2005 earthquake in Azad Kashmir and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. In devising a tragedy commensurate with those already afflicting Pakistan, fate had shown the country no favours.

  Yet contrary to expectations, South Asia’s already ‘failing state’ resolutely fails to fail. In May 2011 the most wanted man in the universe was found to have spent the past five years living with his extended family in a large and conspicuously cloistered residence within a short stroll of Pakistan’s premier military academy. The government had claimed that Usama bin Laden was still in Afghanistan; the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, elements of which may have known otherwise, were wise neither to the CIA’s ploy to locate him nor to the US special forces’ plan to get rid of him; and a surveillance-conscious military somehow failed to detect, let alone intercept, the airborne raid that duly did so. For a nation shamed on all fronts by its superpower ally, this fiasco could have been the last straw. Azif Ali Zardari’s PPP government might reasonably have leaped at the opportunity to discredit the generals and rein in the intelligence service. The generals must have been tempted to get rid of a civilian government which, already mired in scandal and at loggerheads with the judiciary, was now revealed as the dupe of its US backers. And the Islamist militiamen must have stroked their beards and thanked Allah for a wave of anti-American sentiment beyond their wildest dreams.

  But in fact, though accusations flew, nothing untoward followed. The Zardari government served out its term of office; then in 2013 Pakistan went to the polls. By targeting candidates tainted with secularist sympathies, the Pakistan Taliban threatened to dictate the result. Yet the PPP would probably have lost anyway, and the most high-profile casualty proved to be Imran Khan, the cricketer-turned-politician whose party was one of those approved by the Taliban. Khan’s injuries were accidental: he toppled backwards off a fork-lift truck while being raised to a rostrum, then conducted the rest of his campaign from a hospital bed, and still did creditably. Victory nevertheless went to Nawaz Sharif and his Pakistan Muslim League-N. With an overall majority and a new line in conciliation – of militant Islamists, ISI mavericks and the military’s top brass (excluding his bête noire, ex-President Pervez Musharraf) – Sharif embarked on his third term. The only thing abnormal about the change-over was that, for the first time ever and without any obvious military interference, an elected Pakistani government had lasted its full term, honoured the result of the subsequent election and ceded power to another elected government.

  This was no small achievement. Zardari and Sharif, both of them businessmen who
se managerial skills have attracted a string of corruption charges, deserve full credit. Nor was the transfer of power their only achievement. In a vital move to underpin democratic practice, Zardari, while in temporary alliance with Sharif’s PML-N in 2010, had repealed Ziaul Haq’s Thirty-Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, under which the President might arbitrarily dismiss the Prime Minister and dissolve the National Assembly. Zardari also mollified ethnic sentiment by endorsing a move to rename the North-West Frontier Province as ‘Khyber-Pakhtunwa Province’, and by according to the once Kashmir-controlled Northern Areas a de facto provincial status as ‘Gilgit-Baltistan’.

  Sharif’s credentials are more pro-Islamic and economic. His government offers to talk with the Pakistan Taliban instead of fighting them, and to end collusion with the US over cross-border drone attacks. With the benefit of hindsight he claims that it was his efforts to open up Pakistan’s economy in the 1990s and attract foreign investment that alerted India to the benefits of liberalisation. He promises the same again. The parlous state of the Pakistan economy is to be redeemed by securing international loans, reassuring investors and addressing the chronic power shortages that condemn Pakistanis to an un-air-conditioned hell for much of every summer.

  None of this will solve the country’s long-term problems. With a population fast approaching two hundred million, and with literacy and female empowerment lagging well behind even those in Bangladesh, the state needs to slash military expenditure, create a tax base to which more than the current 0.57 per cent of the population contributes, and pour more funds into education, health and job creation. Politics needs to rid itself of its patriarchal traditions and open up to more newcomers like Imran Khan. Infrastructure, too, cries out for investment, and the environment, both urban and riparian, for regeneration and safeguards. Corruption, as ever, needs to be contained. And perhaps that most contentious question about the nature of Pakistani identity needs to be left unaddressed. Academia may agonise over it, but an answer is best consigned to the benign passage of time.

  Less remarked than the smoothness of the governmental change-over in 2013 was the near absence of India and Kashmir as electoral issues. Instead of talking up the threat from across the border in time-honoured fashion, both Zardari and Sharif pledged themselves to improving Indo–Pak relations and seeking a peaceful solution in Kashmir – in that order. The latter is no longer necessarily contingent on the former.

  India should be reassured. Pakistani incursions across the Kashmir Line of Control nowadays bring condemnation from Islamabad as well as Delhi. Suspicions of Indian support for Balochistan’s separatists receive scant publicity; and the Pakistani nightmare of India being accorded a prominent role in Afghanistan will surely be discounted once the Taliban secure a share in that country’s government.

  If Sharif’s prime ministership lasts as long as Zardari’s, and if the 2014 government in India proves as pragmatic as Atul Behari Vajpayee’s at the turn of the century, real progress could be made in repairing the divisive legacy of Partition. The sibling rivalry could be subdued, and the most estranged of Midnight’s Descendants sufficiently reconciled to direct their genius for global engagement to improving the lot of a fifth of mankind.

  November 2013

  Picture Section

  Lord Wavell, the British Viceroy, greets Mohamed Ali Jinnah prior to round-table talks with the 1946 Cabinet Mission. Left to right: Pethick-Lawrence, Jinnah, Alexander, Wavell, Cripps.

  All smiles, but not for long. M.K. (‘Mahatma’) Gandhi with Lord Pethick-Lawrence, the British Secretary of State for India, during the 1946 Cabinet Mission talks that rejected the idea of Partition.

  The Muslim League’s 1946 call for ‘Direct Action’ gave Calcutta a foretaste of the horrors of Partition. Here police use teargas to disperse a crowd bent on destroying a Hindu temple.

  The aftermath of the Calcutta killings of August 1946. Thousands, both Hindu and Muslim, perished in the worst outbreak of sectarian violence the city had ever seen.

  Despite Partition, Britain’s last Viceroy was acclaimed as one of the architects of independence. Lord and Lady Mountbatten found their carriage swamped by the crowd during India’s Independence Day celebrations on 15 August 1947.

  Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, addresses a crowd of over a million during the Independence Day celebrations in New Delhi.

  In the greatest exodus ever recorded, as many as fifteen million people fled the horrors of Partition. Here trains packed with refugees wait at Amritsar, close to the new India–Pakistan border.

  Whether travelling by road or rail, those displaced by Partition faced a dangerous trek. The refugee caravans stretched for up to twenty miles, and were easy prey. Hundreds of thousands were massacred before they reached safety.

  Female students process through the streets of Dhaka in 1953 to protest against the adoption of Urdu as Pakistan’s official language. Riots over the choice of a national language beset both India and Pakistan. Those in Dhaka would give the future Bangladesh its first martyrs.

  Demonstrators in Bombay burn an effigy of Pandit Nehru in January 1956 while agitating against the proposed bifurcation of Bombay state into Maharashtra and Gujarat.

  India found something to celebrate when in April 1953 Tenzing Norgay was one of the first two climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Unlike most previous expeditions, this one had been launched from Nepal, so announcing that country’s emergence from a century’s isolation.

  An Indian patrol passes the Panggong Lake in eastern Ladakh in 1960. The discovery that the Chinese had built a road across the nearby Aksai Chin prompted the first exchanges that led to the 1962 Sino–Indian war.

  Preparing to defend the nation. A series of Indian defeats in the 1962 Sino–Indian war brought a rush of gifts for the war effort, donors to the bloodbanks, and patriots to the recruiting stations.

  A village in Jammu and Kashmir destroyed by shellfire during the 1965 Indo–Pakistan war. The war marked the end of an era, being preceded by the death of Nehru and followed by the collapse of Ayub Khan’s autocratic rule in Pakistan.

  Back to square one. A Pakistani liaison officer shakes the hand of an Indian army officer near the Wagah border crossing after the announcement of a ceasefire in the short Indo–Pakistan war of 1965.

  Indian troops advancing into East Pakistan in December 1971 overtake a returning refugee. Several million mainly Hindu refugees had fled to India to escape the Pakistan army’s ruthless repression of the separatist movement that led to the creation of Bangladesh.

  The end of what became known as the Bangladesh Independence War. On behalf of his 90,000 Pakistani troops General Niazi signs the document of surrender beside General Aurora, the Sikh commander of the victorious Indian troops.

  Hyderabad, Thursday, 26 June 1975. The Indian Herald defies Mrs Gandhi’s clampdown on the press to print a special supplement on her declaration of the Emergency. In effect a civil coup, the Emergency’s suppression of democratic freedoms lasted until 1977.

  Indira Gandhi campaigning at Diamond Harbour, Calcutta, for the 1977 elections that marked the end of the Emergency. Despite describing herself as the servant of the people, she and her Congress Party sustained their first ever loss.

  Militant Sri Lankan Tamils undergoing training at a guerrilla camp in southern India in 1986. At this time, India was in denial over providing Tamil militants with sanctuary, and was preparing to send a peacekeeping force to Sri Lanka.

  Young recruits, some little more than children, undergoing basic training in Sri Lanka by a member of the LTTE, or Tamil Tigers. By 2004 the Indian peacekeeping force had been withdrawn, and the Sri Lanka war was edging towards its cataclysmic conclusion in 2009.

  Once New Delhi’s protégé, the Sikh leader Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale (seated, with bodyguard) found sanctuary within the sacred precincts of Amritsar’s Golden Temple. His reign of terror was brought to an end in June 1984, when the Indian army launched ‘Operat
ion Bluestar’.

  One of the Golden Temple’s towers pitted by shelling and machine-gun fire during ‘Operation Bluestar’. At the revered Akhal Takht the destruction was much worse. In the ruins were found the bodies of Bhindranwale and his closest associates.

  Kashmiris burn the Indian flag in March 1990. Mounting unrest over the Indian military presence and the heavy-handed manipulation of the state government was about to climax in a decade of confrontation.

  One of many protests against the Indian army’s presence in Srinagar. To contain the intifada-like insurgency and track down infiltrators from Pakistan, up to 400,000 regular troops and paramilitaries were deployed in Kashmir in the late 1990s.

  6 December 1992. Militant kar sevaks of the ultra-Hindu VHP attack the walls of the sixteenth-century Babri mosque in the UP city of Ayodhya.