When It Comes to Kashmir and Pakistan, Modi Is No AB Vajpayee

Vajpayee’s 3Cs – courage, conviction and consistency are missing in Modi’s Kashmir policy.

(Photo: Lijumol Joseph/ The Quint)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has long held the ambition of being recognised as another Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Though the extent of the former PM’s bold steps on Kashmir are debatable, in public perception he is acknowledged as having made serious efforts to address Kashmiris’ angst. Because of Vajpayee’s goodwill and the image of being the ‘right man in the wrong party’, Modi wishes to emulate him. But can he?

While interviewing Modi in the summer of 2012, with a lot of trepidation I probed about the infamous Vajpayee advisory on following Raj Dharma. In his keenness to claim that scorn was not heaped on him by the then PM, Modi virtually guided me to view the video of the press conference at Ahmedabad airport that Vajpayee addressed in March 2002 after visiting Godhra and the relief camps.

Modi got Vajpayee wrong and only a rare politician would have guided a person writing an unauthorised biography to it. The video, depicts Vajpayee’s certainty of the “message” he had for Modi. Follow Raj Dharma (science or religion of governance) and “do not discriminate between people on the basis of birth, caste and community.”

Modi’s Discomfort

Humble in his choice of words at that juncture, Vajpayee said that he too was “trying to do so”. Discomfort got the better of Modi at this point and he timidly said that he too was doing so. Then came the final straw: “I believe that he (Modi) is also the doing the same.” The impact of the words was felt in the silence that ensued before he said: “bahut-bahut dhanyawaad.”

Such was Modi’s desperation to get a certificate of good conduct from Vajpayee that he steered me to watch a video that I may not have otherwise viewed and depended on newspaper reports of the press conference. Consequently, Vajpayee’s nuanced critique of Modi would have been missed.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi chairs an All Party meeting on Kashmir, in New Delhi on 12 August, 2016. (Photo: IANS)

Un-Vajpayee-like Campaign

Modi’s 2014 campaign was un-Vajpayee-like. The extent to which he fuelled the sentiment of Hindu triumphalism in the rest of India may be debatable for some, but the strategy in Jammu and Kashmir was to polarise between a Muslim-dominated Valley and Hindu-dominated Jammu region.

To bolster support in the lower part of the state, he pledged to “review” Article 370 in an election rally in December 2013 in Jammu.

Yet in the first sign of the duality that would be part of his stance on crucial issues like communalism, normalisation of the J&K situation and relations with Pakistan, Modi did not walk the complete talk on the BJP’s old line on scrapping the contentious Article 370.

Blow Hot, Blow Cold

Since May 2014, Modi has swung like a pendulum on these issues. He invited SAARC leaders for his inaugural but remonstrated Nawaz Sharif during his tête-à-tête. He chose to break dialogue over the Pakistan foreign secretary expressing keenness to speak to Hurriyat leaders but allowed this later.

He dropped by at Lahore though there was little preparation for elevating the dialogue to an interaction at the highest after Pakistan military’s tepid response to the Ufa meeting. The faux pas of the recent Pakistani snub to Rajnath Singh raises questions if it makes any sense for Modi to travel to Islamabad for the SAARC summit due later this year. In his pursuit to balance between a hard line and a soft line, Modi has done little but score self-goals.

No Roadmap for Kashmir

The same appears to be the case in J&K. He used Vajpayee’s three phrases (Insaniyat, Jamhooriyat and Kashmiriyat) but without any roadmap. While Rajnath voiced the government’s commitment to initiate political dialogue with “moderates” and “other organisations”, his ministerial colleague, Jitendra Singh, expressed worry at the rise of another category of Indians: “intellectual terrorists”.

He is reported to have said that a section of the Indian intelligentsia does not wish to close chapters and that they dig up graves. The phrase used by the junior minister in the PMO was recently introduced to Indian political discourse by filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri whose contentious film, Buddha in a Traffic Jam, aims to “expose the nexus between NGOs, Naxalites and the academia.”

PMO Minister’s Diatribe

Jitendra Singh accuses people voicing contrarian arguments on Kashmir as being motivated by the desire to “sell books” but ignores the fact that after Agnihotri accused Hardik Patel and Kanhaiya Kumar (what’s the connection?) as intellectual terrorists, he raised Rs 1.5 crore for the film. Is this not selectively labelling, a charge that is constantly made by the likes of the minister against adversaries?

Regime Double-Speak

In this regime, double-speak begins at the top. Modi turned poetic to say that youth who should have laptops and other gizmos in their hands now wield stones. He does not mention that eyes which should see Kashmir ki wadiyon have been blinded forever. If selective silence is the message from Modi, others will follow suit.

Vitriolic Speeches

The Modi regime was stirred from its somnambulism by Mehbooba Mufti’s statement after meeting Rajnath when she invoked Vajpayee’s legacy. She said that J&K must be used as a bridge between India and Pakistan and not remain a cause for dispute. Yet, both Modi and Rajnath laced their speeches with vitriol. Singh’s statement significantly was made around the same time as the National Investigation Agency’s claim that the LeT was fermenting trouble again with Islamabad’s assistance.

Blow-Hot-Blow-Cold Approach

• NDA stint began by inviting Nawaz to Modi’s swearing-in, relationship peters out with Modi asking Pakistan to crack down on militants.
  
• Indecisiveness evident with the Indian government calling off dialogue on the issue of Hurriyat meeting but gives a go-ahead later.
  
• Rajnath raises a hue and cry over Pakistan skipping to talk about Kashmir at Ufa yet, Modi pays a surprise visit to Pakistan in December 2015.
  
• Rajnath snubbed by Pakistan during his recent visit as Indian media was prevented from covering his speech.
  
• Confusion that prevails over adapting a hard line and a soft line marring India’s bilateral ties with its neighbour.
  

No Clarity

Modi has pledged to revive Vajpayee’s path without having clarity on what the former PM did. It needs to be recalled that assembly elections were held in the second half of 2002 when National Conference – a member in the NDA government – was not very enthusiastic. Vajpayee had no qualms that an adversarial coalition (then) comprising PDP and Congress formed a government. In that backdrop, he visited Srinagar in April 2003 and offered his hand of friendship to Pakistan though it had been barely 16 months since the Parliament attack that led to the Indian sub-continent being declared as the most dangerous place on earth.

To address the torment of protestors in Kashmir, Modi needs to think out-of-the-box. For any leader to become another Vajpayee-like statesman, courage, conviction and consistency on J&K must be marshalled.

Three Cs is the perfect alliteration for Modi if he wishes to follow in the former PM’s footsteps. So far, he has displayed none.

(The writer is an author and journalist based in Delhi. His most recent books are ‘Sikhs: The Untold Agony of 1984’ and ‘Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times’. He can be reached at @NilanjanUdwin)

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