G-20 Summit in IIOJK: a new low in our Kashmir policy

If we fail to protect our national interests, we would render ourselves weak and vulnerable. So, if the first principle of geopolitics is that ‘location matters’ I think the second principle should be ‘to never stop thinking about the given location in strategic terms’. The geopolitical significance of Kashmir both for India and Pakistan is phenomenal. For both the countries it is not a national interest but a vital national interest – defending which both countries would even choose to go to war. They have already done that – having fought three wars over this contentious issue.

Given this background, it pains my heart to learn that India is holding a G-20 summit in the disputed territory of Kashmir next month. In August 2019 India took away from the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) the constitutional protection that guaranteed its limited autonomy for the last eight decades and made the only Muslim majority state in India a union territory to be directly governed from New Delhi. Back in 2019 this process was termed a master stroke by the government of PM Modi to ‘overhaul India’s relationship with the disputed territory of Kashmir’.

The world was slow to fathom the real Indian strategic designs behind this move and it was only with the passing time that the world has realised the potential of this move to stand out as a real game changer in the geopolitics of this region. The very fact that the core of the world, the G-20 economic forum finds no harm in attending the G-20 conference organised in a disputed territory speaks volumes about the distance that the Modi government has covered in showcasing Occupied Kashmir to the world as not a territory where the Indian military engages in violation of human rights on a daily basis but as an ideal resort where such a significant global event can be organised.

Not only this, but the fact that the top 20 countries of this global economic forum have no issue with Pakistan’s reaction clearly demonstrates the new low that our foreign policy or Kashmir policy has hit. The concept of scrapping of the Kashmir related constitutional provisions is a matter that the Modi government has sold well to the world. From the Indian point of view the scrapped constitutional articles were preventing the Kashmiris from knitting together with the rest of the country. Four years later, when the G-20 conference is taking place and when the news will be flashed as headlines in the newspapers and electronic and digital media all across the world it will not be Occupied Kashmir knitting together with India but disputed Kashmir that would take one giant leap to knit together with the rest of the globe. International relations scholars all over the world believe in the theory of unhampered global trade dovetailing with peace.

India with one stroke of strategic brilliance has brought the top 20 countries that drive global trade to the land of Kashmir. The message that India wants to send out to the world is that Kashmir is not at war but at peace and India is in control of what it is doing and no more stoked by militancy and terrorism that plagued the region for decades. The Indian hope is that the successful G-20 Kashmir global exposure would catch the eyes of the foreign investors and would accelerate the process of integration of Kashmir with the rest of the world. Insurgencies once they begin are difficult to control, given this premise India has done well to be where it stands today as far as handling the issue of Kashmir is concerned.

As a great power India over the decades has managed to achieve what Pakistan could not – creation and maintenance of domestic calm and stability. Unlike Pakistan, India has believed in the concept of ‘ounce of prevention is better than the pound of cure’. It is only the economic policies that can form the core and mainstay of such a cure and Pakistan as a state unlike India has an economic policy that has not been able to bear the heat of its political instability and has totally melted down. Middle class which is the nucleus of any social, political or economic transformation in any country is with great speed shrinking in Pakistan. Compare this with India where the share of middle class has more than doubled – from 14% in 2004 to 31% last year. This is not the end.

The Indian middle class is projected to rise to 63% by 2047. Where would Pakistan’s middle class be by 2047? Today in Pakistan everything and anything hurts and everybody is hurt with what is happening in this country. Hope has been overtaken by anger and while anger takes time to build it can overflow in a moment. So, why would the State look up to such an overflow of anger? And why is the State allowing the temporary political actors to play with the permanent constitution of the State which clearly is our life line? Why is the government showing absolute contempt for the people?

Why are the perpetrators and committers of criminalities being allowed to overtly subject people to maltreatment when their only fault is that they want to rise up and challenge their national despots? In our neighbouring country that we consider as our arch rival the emphasis is on raising the living standard of the common people. In Pakistan, the emphasis by our national despots is to transfer national wealth to their offshore bank accounts or to their cronies who help them create an environment of despotism under which they rule. In Pakistan under the new rules of the game, to be jailed you don’t have to be a threat you only have to be a critic. People give many reasons for the public uprising during the Arab Spring in the Middle East but there is one that resembles the most in what is happening in Pakistani politics.

All the old dictators in the Middle East were grooming their sons to take over from them. Tunisia’s corrupt president Zine al-Abidine had his wife Leila Trabelsi, Colonel Gaddafi was grooming his son Saif-al-Islam and Hosni Mubarak was preparing Gamal. It is said that many people who rose against the old depots order in the Middle East was realised that not even the death of their ageing despots would free them. Is a similar realisation being felt by the people in Pakistan? By holding G-20 conference in the disputed Kashmir region, India has elbowed out Pakistan’s Kashmir policy to the sideline. With our hands full of unresolved domestic politics and issues no one knows how and when we will give the much-needed attention to our vital national interests.