Nepali Times

The decision of India’s Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government to surreptitiously hang Afzal Guru, the man accused of planning an attack on the Indian parliament in 2001, has undermined New Delhi’s moral high ground in dealings with South Asian neighbours.

The execution was intended to blunt an offensive by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but is going to portray India as hypocritical, richly deserving of the sneers this act is bound to evoke in the neighbourhood.

For a moment, assume Afzal Guru was guilty and ask the question: was it in India’s interest to send to the gallows a man whose fate had become a barometer of New Delhi’s attitude towards a long-suffering people? The government, quite obviously, knew the answer. Why else would it have clamped curfew on large parts of Kashmir Valley as jail wardens marched Guru to his death?

Not commuting to life imprisonment, the death penalty will reek of hypocrisy to India’s neighbours. This is a government that never tired of lecturing Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on the need to cobble a political settlement with the alienated Tamil population. LTTE cadre were killed in cold blood at the end of the war, triggering accusations of war crimes against the Sri Lankan army.

The Indian government, of which Pranab Mukherjee was a key player and who as president rejected Guru’s mercy petition earlier this month, chose to remain silent on Sri Lanka, quite rightly realising it can scarcely be seen to be interceding in favour of a secessionist movement. Secession and terrorism have been India’s bane as well, prompting it to counter the twin menace through tactics which are at times in gross violation of human rights.

Yet, to appease its allies from Tamil?Nadu, the UPA government mounted pressure on Rajapaksa to devolve power to the North and East of Sri Lanka, once the bastion of the LTTE, for removing the root cause of alienation of the Tamils. The Lankan president did not play along, correctly calculating that he didn’t have to compromise at the time he had stymied the separatist tendencies of the Tamil population. This provoked the UPA government into voting against Sri Lanka in the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva last year.

Guru’s hanging should prompt Rajapaksa to harp on New Delhi’s propensity to lecture others on the virtues of reconciliation and political settlement without pursuing these policies in its own dealings with groups alienated from the Indian state.

Kashmir has simmered for much of India’s post-Independence history. Over the last two decades particularly terror groups and the Indian security forces have matched each other in barbarity, raining untold misery upon the Valley. However, with support from Pakistan for terror groups tapering off, and Kashmir experiencing tenuous peace there was hope of New Delhi initiating a genuine reconciliation process.

Not only has New Delhi interpreted the lull in Kashmir as vindication of its policies, India has now roiled the emotions of Kashmiris as well. It is still too early to tell what their reaction to the hanging would be, as they are literally locked up inside their homes because of the curfew. But Chief Minister Omar Abdullah did say: “Generations of Kashmiris will identify with Afzal Guru.” His death, so to speak, will become the symbol of the capital’s colonial attitude towards Kashmir. Should there be an outbreak of street-protests, be sure Rajapaksa is bound to snigger at New Delhi’s righteousness.

You wonder, too, what the political parties of Nepal have to say on India mounting pressure on them to recognise the aspirations of Madhesis. Opposed to identity-based federalism, the NC and UML have often heard India haranguing them into accepting the idea which they believe is inimical to their country.?Perhaps they too would want New Delhi to accommodate the aspirations of Kashmiris or for that matter, some of the people of India’s Northeast, before it nudges them to tread what it thinks is the path of sagacity.

Clearly, the Congress and BJP feel Kashmir and its people are subservient to their goal of winning the 2014 general election. Anxious at the outcome of the BJP’s likely projection of Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate, the Congress had little compunction in sacrificing a Kashmiri, Afzal Guru, whose hanging the BJP had been demanding for long.

As for the repercussions of the hanging, well, the Kashmiris can always be fired upon and silenced. Their vote against the Congress or BJP doesn’t mar the electoral chances of these parties, for the state has just six seats in a House of 543 members. It is from such cynicism and divisiveness that the Indian Republic needs to be rescued.

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