What do we have to hide, let's talk Kashmir: Amarjit Singh Dulat

Bengaluru: With a Pakistan based terror group’s 72 hour siege of Pathankot airbase putting a huge question mark on where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s newfound Pakistan policy is headed, even as he is faced with a possible break with the People’s Democratic Party with which the BJP had forged an unlikely alliance in Jammu and Kashmir, Modi faces two of the toughest challenges to his leadership since he swept to power 18 months ago, says Amarjit Singh Dulat, one of India’s foremost spymasters.

“This is not the Modi of 2015. This is a far weaker Modi. He’s lost two elections and is gearing up for the next one in UP. I believe, right now Modi is at his most vulnerable. He must drop being in poll mode. He must now focus on being a leader, put his vision into place, ” said A.S. Dulat, former head of Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW).

“The first 18 months in office are critical for any prime minister. This is the moment. Now that he has been to Lahore, he needs to stay stuck in the relationship, stay the course on Pakistan. He must give it top priority, as he must Kashmir. He ignores Jammu and Kashmir at his peril,” Dulat said, as speculation rages, on the behind the scenes talks between the Indian and Pakistani National Security Advisers that has led to the unprecedented agreement to “jointly” defer Foreign Secretary level talks.

“Pathankot is a game. And it’s far from over,” warns Dulat whose recently released book, Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years is the ultimate insider’s take on the state and its many players, many of whom Pakistan has assiduously cultivated in a bid to foment an insurgency designed to derail India’s economic resurgence.

Asked why Indian agencies refrained from seeking out Kashmiri leaders on the other side of the border like Sardar Abdul Qayyum, he recounts how the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir leader on his first visit to India seemed open to finding a solution and then on his next visit had moved closer to then Pakistan President Musharraf’s position, the formula that nearly ended the Kashmir dispute.  

“This side of Kashmir is a handful. It requires constant attention. Even when militancy wanes, no prime minister should lose sight of it,” he warned.

The book, comes just months before the passing of the PDP leader and J & K Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, and the hardening stance of his daughter and successor Mehbooba Mufti over continuing with the alliance.

Dulat who believes Mehbooba is a tougher nut to crack than her father, notes with a chuckle, “Muftisaab took two months to woo the BJP and stitch up the alliance with the BJP, now the shoe’s on the other foot, it’s the BJP which is wooing Mehbooba.”

Dulat makes two critical points during this interview in Bengaluru. First, he denies that in 2002, R&AW helped midwife the PDP as a counter to Farooq Abdullah’s National Conference. “On the contrary, the Vajpayee government didn’t want Muftisaab at all. Delhi wanted Omar Abdullah as chief minister.”

Saying so in his book didn’t win him any plaudits in the Mufti household! He says he tried to ensure he wasn’t too critical of anyone. Except, he does go public with the Vajpayee government’s privately held view that it was wary of the PDP and in particular airs NSA Brajesh Mishra’s strong reservations over Mehbooba’s ‘soft separatist credentials.’

Conversely, Omar Abdullah – whom Dulat sees as the leader with the most potential in J&K because of his honesty and transparency – also believes Vajpayee’s pointman on Kashmir, Dulat, was responsible for his party’s poor performance in 2002.

“That simply wasn’t true. The NC won the highest number of seats in the assembly, but didn’t have enough to form the government and because it was part of the NDA government, the Congress wouldn’t support it,” he said, describing Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s move to support Mufti instead as “inspired,” while also saying that the possibility of a new alliance being formed in the coming weeks and months or even fresh elections was all too real.

On the charge that he worked against the NC, by directing the armed forces, which traditionally escorts voters under attack from militants to the polling booths when it is considered safe, to take more voters from the PDP areas to booths while leaving NC voters cooling their heels at home, the former R&AW chief would have none of it.

“Neither the armed forces nor I played any such role,” he said. “It was a free and fair election. The results showed there was space for another political formation, and for Muftisaab whose lifelong ambition was to be chief minister, this was the only way he could have done it, by breaking away and launching his own party.”

Asked if he understood what was behind Modi’s reluctance to use the Hurriyat as an excuse to scuttle talks with Pakistan, he pointedly refers to his book cover. Recounting how he hunted high and low until he could find the right photograph, it shows former prime minister Vajpayee with two of the more famed Hurriyat leaders Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Abdul Ghani Lone before he was assassinated, when the Hurriyat were invited to the Prime Minister’s Race Course Road residence where the separatists opened up and told him exactly how they felt.

“Mr. Vajpayee was completely silent, he heard them out but in characteristic fashion, he didn’t say one word,” reveals Dulat.

PM Modi’s Pakistan policy broke with Vajpayee’s on talking to the Kashmiri leadership which included the separatists, and has instead chosen to reach out to the Pakistan prime minister directly, with many on the inside saying Modi’s confidence stems from the fact that Washington was pressuring the Pakistan Army to refrain from destabilizing J&K. Hence, the attacks on Indian Punjab!

Dulat says that India should recraft its strategy if and when official talks do get underway. “Every time we say we want to talk terror, Pakistan says it wants to discuss Kashmir. We have made it amply clear that Kashmir is a bilateral matter, that Kashmir is an integral part of the Indian Union; That there’s no going back to the UN Resolutions, which is no more than a ploy by Islamabad to internationalise the matter anyway. In reality, it wants status quo as much as we do. What do we have to hide? Call their bluff. Let’s talk Kashmir.”