Kashmir has for long been a virtual industry for all sorts of out-of-work politicians, former officials, ‘civil society’ activists and organisations; even journalists. Suffused with self-importance, routinely a bunch of such guys get together and undertake a study tour of Kashmir and come up with a report that says nothing new, makes no great revelation, and breaks no new ground in terms of coming up with a practical, workable and implementable solution to the ‘problem’ in Kashmir. While these reports keep harping on the ‘problem’ in Kashmir, the contents of such reports never really define the ‘problem’ clearly. All they do is to lay out a litany of complaints – some genuine, some generic and not unique to Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), but most of them puerile, petty, and even phony – which are supposed to be illustrative of the ‘problem’ in Kashmir. As for the recommendations, they are so pedestrian that the less said about them the better.

One such report has recently been brought out by a group of people led by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s member of Parliament and former Union minister, Yashwant Sinha. The report basically regurgitates everything that the delegation was told by people it met. It isn’t quite clear from the report if any of the worthies comprising the delegation tried to clear or correct the misconceptions and misperceptions harboured by their Kashmiri interlocutors. Given the profile of the delegation of “concerned citizens”, chances are that there was no push-back from them. What is more likely – at least, that is the impression that one gets from reading the report – is that instead of engaging in a dialogue with their interlocutors, it was essentially a monologue in which the Kashmiri interlocutors said what they wanted to say. And the so-called “concerned citizens” tacitly – if not openly – seemed to endorse whatever they were told as if it was the unalloyed truth.

Normally, reporting all of what is said is the correct thing to do. But when a report is being prepared, the authors must separate the chaff from the grain by rejecting patent falsehoods that have been peddled to them. Perhaps that was expecting too much from a delegation of disgruntled elite who love to take pot shots at their favourite object of hate, which is not the terrorists or separatists, but the elected government of India and that of J&K.

According to the report, Kashmiris say that Kashmir is a political problem that needs a political solution, that there is a need for a ‘one time political settlement’ to the ‘political issue’. But what is this ‘political problem’? What exactly do they mean by ‘political problem’? How do they define this problem? Is the ‘political problem’ actually ethnic, religious, or linguistic? Or is it, more than anything else, psychological? Without a clear articulation and identification of what the problem is, how can there be any solution that is acceptable to all stakeholders? And frankly, none of these busybodies active on Kashmir have ever given a cogent and coherent definition of the problem, much less a solution.

When a report talks of a ‘one time settlement’, or for that matter about the ‘aspirations’ of Kashmiri people, what exactly is it that they have in mind, if at all they have something in mind? Is it just saying or reporting something for the heck of it or have they applied their mind to the issue? Simply parroting words like ‘political problem requiring political settlement’ is a seductive slogan, very liberal, very politically correct, but because it is so general and so lacking in specifics, in substantive terms, it means absolutely nothing. Without being overly uncharitable to ‘concerned citizens’, it does seem that they are surreptitiously pushing the separatist agenda without appearing to so do.

The Sinha delegation report states that Kashmiris say India has failed them, that a sense of discrimination pervades the Kashmiri minds, that there is a history of broken commitments, that ‘India hasn’t done enough to keep Kashmiris with it’, that ‘there is a sense of betrayal against India’. One member of the delegation appeared on TV channels and lamented about the past injustices – stolen elections, political engineering and all the usual stuff that is repeated ad nauseam. But the way this luminary spoke, it seemed that it was all the fault of the current dispensation. This also seems to be one of the underlying themes of the report, which uses Kashmiris to claim that things have deteriorated since the Narendra Modi-led government assumed office. That most of the past ‘injustices’ and gratuitous ‘indiscretions’ committed by the government of India – incidentally the report conflates GOI with India, thereby betraying the mindset that authored the report – were almost all committed by so-called ‘liberal’, ‘secular’, ‘left-of-centre’, ‘tolerant of dissent’, ‘non-fascistic’ governments, is something that is conveniently left unsaid; not just in the report but also by other detractors of current government.

That there is some amount of discrimination against the Kashmiris is quite true, and even understandable to an extent. There is a certain stereotyping of Kashmiris in rest of India because of terrorism. Any landlord will be a little chary of letting out his house to a young Kashmiri whose antecedents he cannot vouch for. The fact that many Kashmiri youth come with their Islamist exclusivist mindset and behave provocatively in other parts of India – remember the azadi slogans in Jawaharlal Nehru University, the sloganeering and scuffles during the Amnesty meeting in Bengaluru, the student clashes in a Meerut college and in Mewar university – also does nothing to endear them to local populations. But the report doesn’t speak of this. What it speaks of is the complaint that PM didn’t go for Mufti Sayeed’s funeral, but went to Jayalalithaa’s; that PV Sindhu was felicitated, but not the 8-year old Kashmiri girl Tajmul Islam who won a gold medal in World Kickboxing, and so on and so forth. Ideally, the ‘concerned citizens’ should have informed their Kashmiri interlocutors of the time when Prime Minister Modi spent his Diwali to monitor flood relief in Kashmir, when the whole of India celebrated the Indian Administrative Service topper from Kashmir or the young Kashmiri who won a reality show on TV, and that it is fallacious to compare an Olympic silver medal with a tiny tot winning a gold in kick-boxing.

The bit about ‘India having failed Kashmiris’ or not having done enough is at best a half-truth. The fact of the matter is that it isn’t India that has betrayed Kashmir, but Kashmiris who have betrayed Kashmir by falling for the propaganda of Pakistan, acting as Pakistani puppets, buckling under Islamist pressure and in the process forgetting and forsaking their own unique Islamic heritage and traditions. India, on the other hand, has committed mistakes but has also done hell of a lot to try and make up for its mistakes in Kashmir. In terms of expending both blood and treasure on Kashmir, India hasn’t spared any quarter and to not recognise this fact is nothing short of a travesty.

Whether it is in terms of fiscal grants to the state, whether it is in terms of special programmes to integrate Kashmiri youth in national mainstream, whether it is in giving a special constitutional status to Kashmir which gives the state a level of autonomy that no other Indian state enjoys, and in a range of other things, India has done more than any other country would do to try and win the hearts and minds of Kashmiris. To be sure, there would be serious problems in delivery and implementation of many government programmes. But that is another matter, one that isn’t unique to Kashmir but is a pan-India issue. For instance, the crib about Industrial Training Institutes would be no different in Kashmir than it would be in, say, Bihar. Be that as it may, it is important to also ask the Kashmiris as to what they have done to integrate themselves in India’s mainstream.

The report talks about the absence of cinema halls, sports infrastructure, even libraries, crumbling government school and college infrastructure. But cinema halls weren’t closed by GOI or even by the state government. They were shut down by the Islamists against whom most Kashmiris are not willing to take up cudgels. The absence of libraries or the education infrastructure is again something that isn’t the fault of either India or GOI. This is something that the state government, elected by the people of Kashmir, should be addressing. But here is the problem: the Kashmiris expect the Centre to deal directly with these issues. When the Centre tries to deal directly with these issues, it is accused of interference and undermining provincial autonomy. Basically, the Centre is damned if it does, and damned if it doesn’t!

On the security front, the ‘concerned citizens’ swallow and vomit the typical propaganda about pellet guns being the biggest issue as though if the pellet guns were not used, there would be peace and tranquillity in Kashmir. Hogwash. The fact is that pellet guns are not the villain, the people they are used against are. It would have been proper if Sinha’s team had also tried to find out from law enforcement officials the circumstances under which these weapons are used. But perhaps that was expecting too much from these guys, simply because it would spoil the narrative they were trying to build. In most of the cases, the pellet guns are used as a weapon of last resort against a murderous mob, which gets dangerously close after all other methods of crowd control fail. The choice before the security personnel is to either abdicate their posts and surrender, or use a non-lethal weapon – yes, it is a non-lethal weapon, not the most perfect one, but also not a lethal one – and secure their positions and save their lives. It is spurious logic for Kashmiri intellectuals to compare crowd control methods used in Haryana with those used in Kashmir. The fact is that unlike J&K, Haryana is not prone to regular disturbances or terrorism and therefore the police force is not equipped with pellet guns but with real guns. This is the reason why during disturbances in Haryana, within a few days nearly a score or more people died in police firing. In fact, all over India, the weapon of last resort against violent mobs is live weapons, not pellet guns like in Kashmir.

While there is a lot more in the report to join issue with and unceremoniously debunk, especially suggestions that instead of opposing CPEC India should participate in it (what does becoming part of CPEC mean anyway?), its recommendations are mostly so hackneyed and general that they would be applicable everywhere in India. For instance, improving human rights situation or undertaking police reforms or greater interaction between civil society and district authorities are something that should happen everywhere. Other recommendations are somewhat strange especially given the sort of xenophobia that exists in Kashmir. How can private investment be promoted in the face of such xenophobia? Who will want to invest in Kashmir without some sort of property rights?

The final recommendation is about a multi-dimensional dialogue, including with the Hurriyat, which as the report slyly points out is also part of the agenda of alliance of the BJP-PDP government. One would really have no issue in a dialogue with even the Hurriyat if they were independent agents and not Pakistani puppets. Any Hurriyat leader who has tried to toe a line independent of Pakistan hasn’t really lived to tell the tale. As a result, no purpose will be served in talking to proxies, who cannot deliver on any deal they might reach with GOI. What is more, any dialogue has to be within the ambit of the Indian constitution. There can be no question of the GOI negotiating or even discussing any secession of Kashmir. If the Hurriyat is ready for both these conditions, a dialogue is not only possible but might also be desirable. As for a multi-dimensional dialogue, it is already happening at various levels, but how effective it will be in changing the warped mindset among many Kashmiris is an open question.

It would perhaps be more useful if, rather than wasting everyone’s time in producing utterly useless reports, some of the people for whom Kashmir has become a hobbyhorse which they ride when they have nothing else to do, started to move away from paying homilies and speaking in generalities and came up with more specific and sensible suggestions. That is of course assuming that they are truly ‘concerned citizens’.