Sajad Lone article by Globe and Mail Canada

Separatist hoping to effect change from the inside
STEPHANIE NOLEN
April 17, 2009
SRINAGAR, INDIA -- When Sajad Lone lays out his reasons and his plans over tea and biscuits in his chic living room, it all sounds eminently practical. Ingenious, even. And it's only when Mr. Lone sits back to chew, and the shadow of a helmeted guard with an AK-47 posted outside falls through the window, that one recalls just how heretical his words are.

Mr. Lone, 42, is a Kashmiri separatist, the scion of one of the great separatist families in this region's long struggle for independence. As of this week, he is also a candidate for parliament. Indian parliament. The parliament of what he normally describes as the occupying power.

"There are impediments to running," he notes dryly. "Taking the oath under the Indian constitution, for one. And second, there is a lot of stigma attached to running - it's not a good thing."

Indeed. His father, Abdul Gani Lone, was assassinated in 2002; the killers were never formally identified but are widely believed to have been Islamist militants. The elder Mr. Lone had enraged them by calling on "foreign" fighters to get out of Kashmir - but he was also rumoured to be considering the same sort of entry into Indian politics that his son has now announced.

For the son, the decision to run in India's month-long national election, which began yesterday, comes from a belief that what has been tried up until now has not worked. When India was partitioned in 1947, a line was drawn through Muslim-dominated Kashmir, putting roughly half of it in Hindu-dominated India. Since then, Kashmiris have agitated - either to join Pakistan, or for total separation. Pakistan and India have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir; the region remains a glowing flashpoint between these two nuclear powers.

The fight for Kashmiri separation became a militant insurgency in the late 1980s, and, since then, tens of thousands of people - mostly civilians, 90 per cent of them, as Mr. Lone notes, poor people - have died in the fighting. Pakistan arms and trains militants, sending them over the Line of Control to destabilize its more powerful neighbour. India's security personnel have repeatedly been implicated in gross human-rights abuses in Kashmir.

Yet for regular Kashmiris, the result has been only violence, dislocation, economic isolation and a decline in all social services. They are no closer to self-rule. The fighting has subsided in recent years, there is tentative calm here in the capital and the once-flourishing tourism industry is cautiously reawakening - but with 500,000 Indian troops in the region and barbed wire and bunkers on every street, life is far from normal.

That makes it time, Mr. Lone argues, for radical change. Such as sending a separatist to the Indian parliament - much, he notes, like the Bloc Québécois model, something he studied in making his plans.

"We've tried every trick in the book - an armed movement, stone-throwing, shutdowns - we're always talking to each other, or at each other," he said. "It's time to go there [New Delhi] and talk to them. ... Let's reorient the struggle from the street to Indian institutions."

His natural constituency is not large - asked about his candidacy, a group of underemployed Kashmiri vendors in the market around the corner simply shrugged - but what sets Mr. Lone apart is that he is articulating new strategies for resolving the Kashmir crisis. Analysts say that makes him popular with young people in particular, and could give him an edge over the other candidates in his riding, all of whom have long histories of working with the Indian state.

Mr. Lone has a prescription for the Indian government: First, institute what he calls "complete internal transparency," so that all laws that apply to Kashmir are drafted by Kashmiri legislative bodies, independent of the Indian central government; second, allow Kashmir to handle its own external and economic relations; and third, allow economic union with the other - that is, Pakistani-controlled - side of Kashmir, so that anything produced here can move duty-free to the other side. "That would mean a huge change in the GNP and employment levels," he said.

Under his plan, Kashmiris would have the ability to travel back and forth across the border to the Pakistan-controlled side with just an ID card. And he wants Kashmiris to have control of their own natural resources, which happen to include the glacial reserves that are the source of huge quantities of India's fresh water.

All of this, of course, rather than separation, or continued agitation for it. "Let's try this for 30 years. If people are comfortable with it, then this is the solution. And if not, we'll revise."

He believes that in another generation or two, "economically secure Indians will be more confident," without what he describes as the paranoia that shapes much of the thinking of political leaders who still have personal memories of partition.

Amitabh Mattoo, a Kashmiri politics professor who until recently sat on the advisory board of India's National Security Council, believes the outcome of parliamentary elections doesn't mean much in Kashmir - given the calls to boycott from some groups and powerful backing from Delhi given to others - but that Mr. Lone, a powerful speaker in English, Kashmiri and Urdu, might have the ability to "generate a euphoria or a sense he could make a difference." But Prof. Mattoo warned that the political greenhorn will have trouble overcoming the established patronage networks of the existing parties.

Mr. Lone knows it. "India will be happy if I fight and happier if I lose," he noted with a grim smile.

Last fall, his party, the Jammu and Kashmir People's Conference, like other separatist groups, ordered Kashmiris to boycott elections for the state assembly. His own sister defied the call to run as a candidate, and roughly half the population cast ballots. Mr. Lone, like all other separatist leaders, is quick to argue that "people voted for day-to-day governance, not for India," but also frank enough to acknowledge that the failed boycott call showed that his movement is out of step with what the population wants.

Mr. Lone, florid and jowly, slick in a black blazer and black jeans in a region where most men still wear the traditional wool pehran robe, is married to Asma Khan, whose father founded the militant Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front. They have four-year-old twin sons. But she is a Pakistani citizen, and the Indian government will not give his family permission to come to India, he said; so he sees them only twice a year.

Mr. Lone was educated in Britain and went on to run what he describes as a "trading business" in Dubai and Saudi Arabia. He returned to live in Kashmir only in 2000, and entered politics only after his father's murder. That leaves some other Kashmiri politicians openly scornful of his credibility.

"He's unknown to Kashmiris, a businessman trying to make the Kashmiri cause good business," said Asiya Andrabi, founder of the militant Dakhtaran-e-Millitat (Daughters of the Nation). "He can join Indian politics - he's fit for that."

Mr. Lone's older brother Bilal is a leader in the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, an umbrella organization of separatist groups that is maintaining its boycott for these elections.

Oberoi Surinder Singh, a Kashmiri writer, reckons this is canny strategy - one brother maintains the hard line, but the other gets into the game "so they can do something for a very backward constituency, so their cadres do not give up and move away."

While Mr. Lone's campaign clearly relies on a lot of people who don't normally vote (that is, separatists) coming out on polling day, Mr. Singh thinks he just may gather up enough youth who are hungry for change.

"If given a chance I think this person can turn his theoretical ideas - not 100 per cent but at least 50 per cent - into practicalities," said Mr. Singh. "He's a vision person. He can see beyond the mountains."

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By the numbers

Running an election in the world's largest democracy generates some pretty big numbers. These are some:

543- Number of constituencies up for election.

43 million-Increase in the number of electors since the last such election, in 2004.

82 per cent-Number of electors whose photos are printed on the election rolls, to help reduce voter fraud.

141,402Increase in the number of polling stations since the last election, for a total of 828,804 this year.

6-Number of voting days, spread over 27 days.

1,368,430-Number of electronic voting machines used in the election.

1,033-Candidates for one single seat during the 1996 election - the most ever. The ballot was a booklet.

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