SOUTH ASIA: Opinion Poll on Kashmir Weakens Pakistan’s Case

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Jun 4 2002 (IPS) - The newly released results of an independent opinion poll indicating that that less than six percent of people in Indian Kashmir would, given a choice, opt to join Pakistan is good news for India, which plans to hold elections there in September.

Political commentators here said the poll, commissioned by a group of British parliamentarians, and conducted in the last week of April by MORI, a London-based agency, should be an eye-opener for Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, who is convinced that Kashmiris would overwhelmingly vote to join his country if India allowed them to decide the issue at a referendum.

On Tuesday, Musharraf, under pressure from the international community to stop cross-border terrorism in Kashmir, aired his view of the dispute at a televised session of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence- building in Asia (CICA) summit, now underway in Almaty, capital of the central Asian republic of Kazakhstan.

Musharraf told delegates that while terrorism had to be stamped out “we cannot condone for any reason the rapacious polices of certain states that forcibly occupy territories and deny freedom to people for decades on end with total disdain for charter principles and decisions of the United Nations”.

The reference was to India whose Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee could be seen by television viewers sitting across from Musharraf at the session. Vajpayee reiterated the Indian position that there could be no dialogue with Pakistan over Kashmir until terrorism in the territory first ended.

“Global peace has remained hostage to the expansionist ambitions of such states and their ruthless campaign to suppress through brutal force, the legitimate struggles of people to gain their internationally recognized fundamental right to freedom and self-determination,” Musharraf continued.

While Musharraf claims to be supporting a freedom struggle in Kashmir, the fact is that Pakistan has fought three wars with India to gain complete possession of the former princely state which stands divided between the two countries by the Line of Control (LoC) marking the point where their armies fought each other to a standstill more than 50 years ago.

India has refused to budge from the position that Kashmir, though Muslim-dominated, is integral to its secular polity. On the other hand, Pakistan, which was carved out of British India as a homeland for Muslims, believes that Pakistan is incomplete without the Muslim-dominated territory.

When the British handed over power to Pakistan and India in 1947, the princely states were given the choice of merging with either one or the other of the successor states and Kashmir’s Hindu ruler, after holding out for some months, formally acceded to India.

Pakistan, which failed to secure Kashmir from India through warfare, also lost the Muslim-majority argument in 1971 when its eastern province broke away and became Bangladesh with military support from India.

The 1971 war which ended disastrously for Pakistan also paved the way for the Shimla Agreement between New Delhi and Islamabad the following year whereby the two countries agreed to respect the LoC in Kashmir and also settle all outstanding issues peacefully and bilaterally.

By 1990, a movement for independence from Indian rule by Kashmiri groups turned militant and was taken advantage of by Pakistan’s powerful and omnipresent military which was believed have supported the secessionist groups with arms, training and later men.

India reacted by moving in the army, brutally repressing dissent of any kind. It was accused of helping to rig the last elections held five years ago which resulted in the pro-India, National Conference party of chief minister Farook Abdullah coming to power.

Before long, Kashmiri groups fighting for independence found themselves sidelined by pro-Pakistan groups who unleashed a “reign of terror” in the valley and did not hesitate to eliminate moderate leaders seeking a political settlement. Their most recent victim being Abdul Ghani Lone, assassinated by masked gunmen at a rally in Srinagar, last month.

It is little wonder that the MORI survey showed little support for any merger of Kashmir with Pakistan and actually showed 65 percent of people preferring that the state continues to stay within India.

Predictably, pro-Pakistani political leaders in Kashmir reacted strongly to the poll results. “This poll has been conducted by a particular agency with malafide intentions to discredit our movement,” said Abdul Ghani Bhat, chairman of the All-Party Hurriyat Committee (APHC), umbrella organisation for political parties in the state

Bhat said if 61 per cent of the people in the state preferred that Kashmir stayed on with India, then it was all the more reason for New Delhi to hold a plebiscite in Kashmir according to a United Nations resolution dating back to 1947 and which of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said last year was not implementable.

The demand for a plebiscite does not have uniform support in the Indian part of Kashmir which is not a homogenous ethnic or religious unit and Pakistani rule would never be accepted in the Buddhist-dominated Ladakh region or in the Hindu-dominated Jammu region.

What’s more, the MORI survey showed that more than 90 percent of people in the state were against any partition along religious or ethnic lines and wanted better interaction with Kashmiris living across the LoC in Pakistan-controlled territory.

Most people in all regions wanted an end to infiltration from Pakistan and an end to violence and believed that the correct way to bring peace to the state was through democratic elections and economic development.

They were also opposed to a military solution to the problem and felt that they would suffer the worst in the event of a war breaking out between India and Pakistan over the territory.

Like the U.N. resolution for a plebiscite, the MORI survey did not offer its 850 respondents spread over 55 sites across the states the choice of being citizens in and independent Kashmir.