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Bury It, Still Hissing, Under A Rock

What better tribute to Republic Day, to the men who shaped this nation whom we only find platitudes for these days, than to extend the cease-fire in Kashmir? You can have the parades down Rajpath. I'll nurture the flicker of hope in my breast the cease-fire brings. Hope for peace and an end to the constant killing in our northern reaches. Hope that instead of an endless war, we can buckle down to building the country our Constitution envisaged.

So yes, I fully believe we must extend the cease-fire. I am glad Vajpayee and his government have done it and I hope they will have the wisdom and courage to stay the course. The way I see it, this cease-fire is the PM's greatest achievement by far. He needs to be applauded for it, encouraged to keep it alive. And if it does lead us ultimately to a lasting peace, it would indeed be a far finer tribute to the Republic than any number of parades are.

Of course there are the doom-merchants on both sides, who would lose a major reason to exist if peace came to Kashmir. That there are always people who will violently oppose an end to hostility seems something of a war truism to me, even if I have never been close to a war.

Which is why you find columnists frothing at a time like this. "The fire-spitting PM," Mr Arvind Lavakare tells us, "is suddenly displaying the meekness of the old and the infirm." And all this, because of Vajpayee's "unilateral cease-fire against Pakistan's terrorism." Men like AL know that if the bogey of Pakistan dissipates tomorrow, they will have their task cut out, finding the next evil bogey.

Far easier to work us all up into hostile hysteria, to ridicule peace as the weak-kneed effort it decidedly isn't.

Which is why, too, the death-merchants of the Lashkar e Taiyba and its assorted cousins have stepped up their carnage: nearly 350 (122 civilians, 74 security personnel and 146 militants, according to The Indian Express of January 25) have died at their hands since the cease-fire began last November. For its part, the LeT knows that peace in Kashmir will render them irrelevant, and what will they then do? Far easier to keep trumpeting the jihad, to drive more and more ordinary youths into suicidal assaults in the name of some always-elusive greater glory.

I want to emphasise that word "easier." For keeping hostility raging is truly the easier, the things-as-they-are, way. There is all this macho bluster about battle, but by now it should be clear to anyone who is willing to think. The real courage, the real fibre, lies in bringing an end to war that has crippled two countries, over a sixth of humanity, for half a century.

So the real test for people who want to find peace is to ignore the opponents. To show that they are, by definition and inclination, the greatest threats to peace.

This is why two particular aspects of this cease-fire are so gratifying.

First, that our current army chief, General S Padmanabhan, welcomes it. On January 12, he told a New Delhi press conference that the cease-fire is "a good thing" and it has produced a "huge burgeoning of hope [in Kashmir]. He hopes that the cease-fire "will lead to something more hopeful and concrete." Padmanabhan has also spoken elsewhere about how Kashmir needs a "political" solution, not a "military" one.

How refreshing to hear words like these from the highest-ranking soldier in the country. I believe he says them because he recognises and agonises over what the rest of us pay so little attention to: the daily bleeding in Kashmir. For it is not just the occasional Kargils in which soldiers die.

Padmanabhan's brave men die every single day, as do more ordinary people in the state. Look at it this way: if 350 have been killed since the cease-fire began, that's almost six a day. Which means it's a good bet that somebody died violently in Kashmir as you read these very words. If that's the situation during a cease-fire, how much more awful must it be when there isn't one?

It's easy to say that our soldiers are defending our borders, and because they are, the rest of us can live the lives we choose. It's easy to applaud them for doing their jobs so well. But how many among us are willing to question these words of supposed glory? How many are willing to ask, why has this gone on for 53 years? When will we measure glory not by mourning the soldiers who die for the country, but in terms of how many live for the country? For us? That is the spirit, it seems to me, in which Padmanabhan spoke about Kashmir.

Second, there's an astonishingly revealing little quote I found in a Times of India article (January 24). Siddharth Varadarajan writes that over the last two months [the period of the cease-fire], several Pakistan-based militant commanders acknowledged [to Varadarajan] that their movement had indeed become weak. ... They, however, were confident that "Indian atrocities" would solve this problem.

Think for a moment about what's being said here. According to militants themselves, the cease-fire has meant that ordinary Kashmiris are losing faith in the militants ("their movement had indeed become weak"). Yet these commanders are sure that India will resume its "atrocities", which they think will renew popular support for the militants ("solve this problem", if you please).

To me, there couldn't be a stronger reason to keep the cease-fire going. As people see that the violence they suffer from comes from only one side -- the militants -- that side inevitably, inexorably, will lose popular support. If the militants are actually waiting for "Indian atrocities" to "solve" this problem of dwindling support, taking away even the chance to accuse Indians of atrocities -- which a cease-fire does by definition -- will unerringly undermine them.

In short, the cease-fire is the surest way to destroy the militants.

Besides, this is really what Padmanabhan meant by speaking of a political solution in Kashmir. By now, it should be clear: for every terrorist who goes down to our guns, there are several more apparently willing to follow in his footsteps, blow themselves up in a suicide attack, set off bombs in the middle of Srinagar. How do you fight such a battle militarily?

Faced with the Hydra that sprouted two or three new heads every time he crushed one with his club, Heracles found his answer eventually. He "severed the immortal head ... and buried it, still hissing, under a heavy rock" (Robert Graves, The Greek Myths). Just a myth, no doubt, but the lesson Heracles learned in his battle is simple enough to be mightily relevant today. Another of those war truisms: cut your adversary off at the root and you defeat him. Chop off the militants' very reason for being -- the support they think they have among the people of Kashmir -- and we defeat them. That, by the militants' own admission, is what this cease-fire is doing.

Half a century of fighting fire with military fire, as we have done, has only left Kashmir burning and bleeding. It's time to look for other answers. Today, we have a not-so-common combination of an enlightened army chief and leaders in both countries whose political compulsions, whatever they are, make them think of a cease-fire in Kashmir. This is too good an opportunity to miss. We do need another answer, yes. Persisted with despite the peddlers of hostility, this cease-fire is that answer.

Dilip D'Souza