The Hindu : Maintain the larger perspective

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Nov 28, 2002

Opinion

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Maintain the larger perspective

AT A TIME when the Centre ought to be seen concentrating on ways of stepping up vigil against heightened militancy in Jammu and Kashmir, as manifested most disturbingly by the heinous strike on the Raghunath temple in Jammu last Sunday, it is deplorable that the ruling coalition should be engaging itself — and that, at the level of the Deputy Prime Minister — in a totally unnecessary, pointless and unseemly squabble over the question whether the new PDP-Congress Government got New Delhi's "clearance" while releasing from prison certain separatist leaders and militants under detention. In Parliament, the Union Home Minister, L. K. Advani, was insistent that the Centre was not "consulted" by the Mufti Mohammad Sayeed regime and, two, that an official communication had been sent to the State administration cautioning, in effect, against any "haste" in setting such persons free, although he did concede that the State was well within its powers to act on its own in such matters. But Sonia Gandhi, as the head of a party that forms part of the State Government, was equally assertive that the `release' had been cleared by "Central intelligence agencies" — a claim Mr. Advani has chosen to dismiss as "baseless" — and her colleagues have since come up with some hard "facts" in support of their case. With the party challenging Mr. Advani's statement and declaring its intention to haul him up under Parliamentary rules, the blame game seems endless.

At the political level, the BJP and its partner in the ruling National Democratic Alliance — the National Conference — have from the beginning been critical of the PDP's declared policy line of reviewing the detention of secessionist leaders and militants against whom there have been no serious specific charges as a prelude to their release where warranted. And this clearly is a salutary initiative forming a critical component of the package which the PDP-Congress coalition's Common Minimum Programme envisages for winning over the alienated sections of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. In fact, both the BJP and the NC had, during the recent poll campaign, accused the PDP of having struck a "deal" with the subversive elements in its attempt to capture power. It is against this political backdrop that one has to see the BJP leadership's insinuation of a nexus between the perceived spurt in militant violence (over the past one week) and the release of detained `militants' by the new Government. While Mr. Advani himself has scrupulously avoided endorsing such a construct, for obvious reasons, quite a few of his party colleagues in Government have been quite uninhibited about pushing the `link' theory. And the irony is that, in the absence of any authentic information, one does not really know how many (if at all) among those set free from prison so far are in fact hardcore militants. What is public knowledge is only that some half-a-dozen high-profile separatist leaders, including Yasin Malik, have been released on parole.

All this is not to discount the need for mutual consultation between the Centre and the State Government, given especially the current political context that leaves a lot of scope for misunderstanding and genuine misgivings or reservations while seeking to neutralise the militants' challenge of the type faced in Jammu and Kashmir, what with its highly sensitive and somewhat vexatious cross-border dimension. The point is that the ultimate objective should not be sacrificed at the altar of unnecessary partisan politics-driven squabbles. Nor should it be held hostage to narrow considerations of realpolitik. And the row that has been kicked up now over the new regime's action in releasing "militants" carries the real risk of snowballing into a major confrontation to the detriment of the larger cause of combating militancy and, if not checked, it may well spell disaster for the traumatised State whose people have only recently, in a show of exemplary courage, registered their faith in democracy with a lot of apparent hope. Commendable indeed is the way the Chief Minister has responded (in the Assembly on Wednesday) to the evolving situation. Restrained and positive-sounding, Mr. Sayeed has committed his Government to a non-confrontationist approach vis-a-vis the Centre.

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