Future of India and door to freedom

‘India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the Equator.’
Winston Churchill, during World War II
Dr. Omer Akhtar
Prescience? Maybe. A few years after this statement, the British Empire folded up, and the ‘Jewel’ in its crown, India, split into two. The painful, incomplete, Partition of the Indian subcontinent lingers on today in every walk of life in South Asia. For Kashmiris, it is the 60-year old unanswered question of their loyalty; to the concept of ‘secularism’ or ‘religion.’
In that single question lies the root of the conflict in Kashmir. It remains an existential crisis between two countries, descended from thousands of years of painful history, and torn apart by the even more painful recent past. Until there remains a Muslim-majority state outside of Pakistan, and until there remains a violent Muslim majority state inside India, both concepts would remain unsuccessful. A peaceful Kashmir outside Pakistan, with the inhabitants proud Indians, would be the death-knell to a nation founded on the principles of a ‘Muslim’ homeland. A violent secession from the Indian Union of Kashmir, will be death-knell of an India founded on principles of equality of religion and freedom of expression.
As long as the conflict remains, both countries will continue to survive. The day a status-quo is accepted by either party to the dispute, a violent string of events will ensue in either of the countries that will see the more compromising of the two nations engulfed in fatal civil strife. There has to be a fundamental alteration in the psyche and principles of the two nations for this conflict to be resolved.
The question therefore, is: When will such a fundamental alteration occur in India? The answer: soon.
India faces a multitude of crises this day. It languishes at 127th (0.619) in the UNDP analysis of the Human Development Index, it is at 147th in Adult literacy rate (61%), around 16% of its children are involved in child labour, according to CRY.org, the Urban-Rural divide is fast growing. At the same time, it has demonstrated a remarkable resilience to hold itself together through tumultuous times. The response of the BJP-led governments to terrorist attacks notwithstanding, the general public of India tends to see through the malicious intent of the powers-that-be and not allow the response to such terrorist attacks to degenerate into an all-out communal war.
India’s Major Problems
An identity crisis has set in India over the last twenty years of reforms. While the urban India identifies itself increasingly with the West, bringing in modern requirements to a traditional society over a single generation, the rural India has still to contend with the age-old problems of water scarcity and drought, land-ownership and debt, ill-health and disease, and of basic education. The Urban-Rural divide has grown many times over in the past decades of reform, which have been elite-urban-centric. Recent estimates have put the rural household income at less than a thousand rupees a month, around half of the national average, and around a third of the similar income for an urban household. Life expectancy at birth in rural areas is 58 years, and it is 65 years in urban areas, the percentage of households in lower income groups is around 65% in rural areas, and it falls to 35% in urban areas. Around 70% of urban households had access to safe drinking water, but the figure was only 17% of rural households in 1999. Infant mortality rate, a figure that is believed to best reflect the status of a country’s economic development, was 69 per 1000 births in rural areas, but only 44 in urban areas, according to an article in the Indian Journal of Paediatrics in 2003. An analysis of history shows that a deprived section of society in any country tends to rise up against the discrimination, often in violent ways.
The first signs of such a ‘peasant revolution’ are beginning to emerge. The Naxalites, born out of a land dispute in 1967 in West Bengal, have spread their tentacles to more than 150 districts over 12 states in India, and their activities were responsible for the deaths of more than 3000 people in 2007, including more than 500 police officers. The situation is worst in the new tribal state of Chattisgarh, where the government has pitted civilian against civilian in the form of the Salwa Judum (like the VDC of J&K). This policy has resulted in wide-spread lawlessness, with many prominent socialist leaders now behind bars without trial, on flimsy grounds, of being associated with the Naxalites. Naxal violence remains in the deep recesses of the country, where vast swathes of land are miles away from the writ of the government, and in rural areas, where more than 70% of India’s population lives. 
So where is India headed?
Recent elections have shown the developing pattern of people voting in national elections on the lines of state aspirations, which was most pronounced in the Lok Sabha elections of 2004. Regionalism has assumed a major role in politics, with separatist violence in the North-East, North and in small pockets throughout the country. Communal violence claimed more than 10000 lives in the decade up to 2003, more than all the deaths due to terrorism. The rise of the Hindu right, and Muslim fundamentalism will have gory results in the future. The battle used to be concentrated among the poor and downtrodden, Gujarat has brought communal violence to the fore in the mind-set of young, educated Muslims and Hindus throughout India. Only exemplary, visionary leadership can save India from a civil war. And, Allah-forbid, if a BJP led government is elected with a majority, which is likely now more than ever, disaster will ensue. After all, the BJP has openly supported Mr Savarkar’s statement, ‘India is a Hindu nation, and all inhabitants should follow Hindu culture and customs. Those who do not, are not Indians; they are foreigners.’
Are we really going to see a civil war?
Chances now are more than ever. An increasingly restless and threatened Pakistan will invest in the newly-rising Islamic fundamentalists of Bangladesh, and export them across the border to flame violence in India. This will be only too easy with a BJP government at the centre, and the pervasive feeling of insecurity and discrimination among many Indian Muslims. How the battle will take place and how the frontlines will be drawn can only be speculated on, but the Muslim ghettos of the major cities are being targeted for increasing surveillance, police patrolling, and random raids. The North-East will continue to boil, with separatist violence flaming now and again, only to be crushed under the boots of the suppressive Indian Army.
So what becomes of Kashmir?
In 1987, no one even predicted that a strong, united nation like the Soviet Union will collapse like a heap on itself. There remains a very real prospect that this can happen to India. In 1992, after a trip to Kashmir, a Congress MP from Mumbai met me at the airport at Srinagar. During our short conversation, he mentioned an important thing: “We do not want to see India break-up like the USSR did into small fragments, but it can happen.” This is a very real possibility, and it is a major reason why India needs to hold on to Kashmir at all costs. Its very survival depends on it. But while India’s defence establishment may pump in crores into its forces in Kashmir, its rural population continues to starve, die, and remain underdeveloped, while its urban population thrives. At some point of time, the poor will ask why, ‘For what? Kashmir?’ No matter what the economic indicators show, they do not reflect the fear, hatred and scorn in the hearts of many young Indian Muslims and Hindus, after all, they are no indicators of social integration, happiness, and contentment.
So should we wait it out, keep Kashmir strong, and keep the flame of freedom burning? Or should we continue the way we are, accepting our fate, the status quo, and settling for anything?
My answer: take a lesson from the Indian freedom movement. India owes its freedom to a short, moustachioed, crazy, racist, German. He was called Hitler.