Election Results Enhance Stability In Both New Delhi and Islamabad

By M. M. Ali

India is an ancient land with late 20th century problems. Its organization as a secular democracy is challenged by religion-based political parties; its aspirations for a liberated free-trade economy are slowed by realities on the ground; and its image of peace and harmony is tarnished by increasing evidence of human rights violations. Not everything, however, is going downhill. India is a vast country that can often project many faces simultaneously.

Back to Basics in Kashmir

Hazratbal is the most sacred Muslim shrine in the Indian-held part of Kashmir. It holds what is said to be a hair from the beard of the Prophet Muhammad. The Indian government charges that the mosque also has become a sanctuary and ammunition depot for Muslim fighters seeking the liberation of Kashmir from Indian hands. As such, Indian forces claim, it has been at the center of a major upheaval in which more than 2,000 people have been killed and thousands more have been injured over the past three years in the Kashmir Valley.

India and Pakistan have fought two serious wars over the 46-year-old Kashmir dispute, which originated with the division of most of the South Asian subcontinent into India and Pakistan in 1947, largely on the basis of Hindu or Muslim majorities. The then princely states were given the option of joining either of the two major countries, or remaining independent. Three states presented an anomaly. Hyderabad and Junagarh had Muslim rulers but their populations were mostly Hindu. Bids for independence by both rulers were annulled by India through military actions. Kashmir, on the other hand, had a predominantly Muslim population and a Hindu ruler. His accession was accepted by India. Unlike the other two states, however, Kashmir bordered both India and Pakistan. As a result, both countries now occupy separate portions of Kashmir, separated only by a United Nations-placed dividing line. The issue was supposed to be settled by a U.N.-supervised popular plebiscite among the people of Kashmir.

During extensive disturbances this fall, Indian troops encircled the Hazratbal shrine on Oct. 15 and demanded that its occupants surrender. The siege continued for four weeks and 100 people were killed before an agreement was reached to allow safe passage to the men, women and children inside if they handed over their arms to the encircling troops.

The siege, which the mass-circulation New Delhi weekly India Today called ''Operation Blunder,'' came at a delicate time in Indian political life. Prime Minister J.V. Narasimha Rao's government was facing perhaps the most crucial electoral test of his administration in the Hindu-based Bharatiya Janata Party strongholds in north India. Rao's secular Congress party was narrowly clinging to power at the national level in New Delhi.

If the army were ordered to storm the Hazratbal mosque in Kashmir, as was done in the case of the Sikh Golden Temple in Punjab some years earlier, it could result in hundreds of deaths and an international furor that would be exploited by the BJP to its electoral advantage. If New Delhi were to give in to the Kashmiris inside the shrine, however, the domestic political backlash might be even more favorable to the BJP.

In compromising, the Indian prime minister put a bold face on a difficult decision.

''Kashmir will soon be restored to its earlier status of paradise on earth,'' he declared. Kashmiri freedom seekers, however, interpreted the Hazratbal outcome as their victory, and the Narasimha Rao government braced itself for a Hindu backlash.

New Delhi meanwhile reacted negatively to a statement in President Bill Clinton's speech to the United Nations that "bloody ethnic, religious and civil wars rage from Angola to Kashmir." Indians also took exception to an Oct. 26 statement by Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robin Raphel that the U.S. did not consider the Maharaja of Kashmir's accession to India in 1948 to be final. Although the statement only reiterated standing U.S. policy of the past 46 years, it unleashed a storm of defiance in the Indian media and prompted an Indian government protest to the Department of State.

Washington did everything to explain its position short of what India wanted–a retraction and an apology. Explained correspondent John Anderson in a report from New Delhi in the Nov. 7 Washington Post, "Raphel's comment is technically correct ...The agreement stipulated that when Pakistan–which still controls a third of Kashmir–finally withdraws, a vote will be held among Kashmiris to decide their future. "

That there is any "shift'' in the U.S. policy toward South Asia is doubtful. It appears, however, that the Clinton administration wants to take a fresh look at a major problem underlying chronic instability in the South Asian region, but frozen during the Cold War. With the Aksai China problem still troubling relations between India and Pakistan as well as China, and with the emergence of independent Central Asian republics, Kashmir has attained an added significance as a potential time bomb threatening the entire subcontinent.

Because nuclear weapons capability exists on both sides, the Kashmir dispute could escalate unexpectedly into a nuclear exchange. Compromise settlement proposals have been examined in London and Washington in recent meetings in which Indians, Pakistanis and Kashmiris all have participated. Now, after elections in India in which the Congress Party fared well, against all expectations (see below), and after the formation of a new democratically elected and potentially stable government in Pakistan (see below), perhaps the United States is well advised to set the stage for a serious dialogue aimed, in Prime Minister Narasimha Rao's words, at re-establishing Kashmir as "a paradise on earth. "

Elections a Plus for Stability

India's "Hindi-belt" northern states of Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi, with a combined population of 225 million people, are the locus of a recent resurgence of religious fervor spearheaded by the Hindu rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This fervor exploded into the demolition by Hindu militants of the 16th-century mosque at Ayodhya in 1992. Other religion-based issues that raised the decibel level at the elections included the deprivation of the scheduled castes, the Daltis and the "untouchables" who form the lowest strata of a Hindu society dominated by the Brahmin class at the top, and the place and position of the Muslim minority that is the target of the BJP in its bid to establish "Ram Rajya" or "Hindu rule." BJP candidates also hoped to take advantage of the declining political fortunes of the Congress Party in recent years.

Before the provincial assemblies were dissolved by the president of India last year following widespread communal disturbances, the BJP had formed governments in Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. (Delhi did not yet have the status of an independent state.) This year's election returns were a surprise to those who expected a BJP landslide in the Hindi belt. BJP will be able to form governments in Delhi and in Rajasthan, but Congress will form the governments in Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh and will support the Samajwadi Party and the Babujan Swaraj Party in forming the government in Uttar Pradesh.

There also had been predictions that the elections would be marred by widespread communal riots. Except in Madhya Pradesh, where a major incident resulted in fatalities, no significant problem was reported during the polling. Overall, the elections were a disappointment for BJP, and the Uttar Pradesh results a real setback. The other reality that emerged is that Congress still remains a force to contend with. The biggest loser in all areas is the Janata Dal, which had championed the cause of the depressed classes. For all purposes, it is gone as a political entity in north India, and the Brahmins and the Thakurs still are calling the shots.

Steady Economic Privatization

Although India's much publicized privatization goals have yet to be met, the government is adhering to the schedule to which it is committed with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. A status paper released by the Ministry of Finance in New Delhi states that India's foreign debt has reached $85.4 billion. The debt service charge alone stands today at $6.83 billion, which is 25.7 percent of the government's total receipts.

Noting in the status report that India's debt-GNP ratio amounts to 29 percent, Finance Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh writes that external debt is not an "evil" in itself, so long as it is used efficiently. India had hoped to repay the external debt through increased exports, he said, but suffered a drop in exports to markets in the former Soviet Union following the political breakup of the U.S.S.R. Despite its adherence to schedule, India still has a great deal to do to attract more foreign investors and to increase confidence among domestic entrepreneurs so that both can play their necessary roles in building a dynamic free market economy appropriate to the world's second most populous nation.

Pakistan's New President is Bhutto Political Ally

The Oct. 6, 1993 election that brought Benazir Bhutto back as Pakistan's prime minister after more than two years in opposition may not have established a clear majority government, but it did break the cycle of mid-term change. The element of instability that has existed was further reduced with the election of Bhutto's nominee, Sardar Farooq Leghari, as president.

However, the continued unpredictability of the political climate was demonstrated during the two weeks that preceded the Nov. 13, 1993 presidential election. With public promises of mutual respect, it was hoped that Bhutto and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (now the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly) would agree to a compromise candidate for the office of the president. Interim President Wasim Sajjad, although a Nawaz man, was mentioned as the possibility.

Such hopes vanished when Ishaq Khan, Nasrullah Khan, Akbar Bhugti, Gowhar Ayub and Farooq Leghari also filed their nominations. The first two weeks of November witnessed some of the most cynical maneuvering and horse-trading in recent memory. In the end, only Wasim Sajjad and Leghari remained in the field. When Benazir Bhutto threw her full weight behind Leghari, he defeated Sajjad by a 274 to 168 vote margin.

Expressing her joy at the presidential election results, Prime Minister Bhutto said: "The election of Sardar Farooq Leghari as president for five years is a vindication of our struggle to establish democracy . . . and provide stability to Pakistan. " Leghari, in a subsequent statement, assured the prime minister he would respect the wishes of the National Assembly (legislature) in the formation of a government–a direct reference to the dissolution of the National Assembly first by former President Zia Ul-Haq and then twice by Ghulam Ishaq Khan in recent years, which threw the country into political turmoil. Now with a prime minister and president both from the People's Party, there appears to be much greater hope of political stability in Pakistan than the close vote in the October elections originally indicated.

M. M. Ali is a professor at the University of the District of Columbia.