WHILE addressing a public gathering at Uri, India-occupied Kashmir, Farooq Abdullah advocated an Ireland-type settlement model to resolve the Kashmir imbroglio.

Northern Ireland’s population is approximately 55 per cent Protestant and 45pc Catholic, and the two communities placed their emphases on different elements of the problem.

The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 had five main constitutional provisions: (1) Northern Ireland’s future constitutional status was to be in the hands of its citizens. (2) If the people of Ireland, north and south, wanted a united Ireland, they could have one by voting for it. (3) Northern Ireland’s current constitutional position would remain within the United Kingdom. (4) Northern Ireland’s citizens would have the right to ‘identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both.’ (5) The Irish state would drop its territorial claim on Northern Ireland and instead define the Irish nation in terms of people rather than land.

For any solution, India must first begin to talk. It can discuss model solutions presented by peaceniks. Here is a ­ bird’s-eye view: (a) Status quo (division of Kashmir along the present LoC with or without some local adjustments to facilitate the local population, (b) Complete or partial independence (creation of independent Muslim-majority tehsils of Rajauri, Poonch and Uri with Hindu-majority areas merged in India).(c) Plebiscite to be held in five to 10 years after putting Kashmir under UN trusteeship (Trieste-like solution); (d), joint control, (e) Indus Basin-related solution, (f) Andhorra island (g) An Aland Island-like solution and (h) Permutations and combinations of the aforementioned options.

An independent Kashmir, as a neutral country, was the favourite choice of Sheikh Abdullah. From the early 1950s to the beginning of the crisis in 1989, Sheikh Abdullah supported ‘safeguarding of autonomy’ to the fullest possible extent.

Abdullah irked Nehru so much that he had to put Abdullah behind the bars. Bhabani Sen Gupta and Prem Shankar Jha assert that “if New Delhi sincerely wishes to break the deadlock in Kashmir, it has no other alternative except to accept and implement what is being termed as an ‘autonomy plus, independence minus’ formula, or to grant autonomy to the state to the point where it is indistinguishable from independence”. Sans sincerity, the only Kashmir solution is a nuclear Armageddon. Or, perhaps divine intervention.

Saman Malik

Islamabad

Published in Dawn, January 6th, 2019