For some time now, a perception has been gaining ground – the perception that the three-year old India-Pakistan composite dialogue process aimed principally at exploring a lasting solution to the bilateral dispute over Jammu and Kashmir is going slow after a promising start. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s speech at the University of Jammu  on Sunday has virtually come as a confirmation of that perception. He “hoped” a day would come when the troubled state would become a symbol of peace, not of the unending cycle of conflict and war between the two countries. It is not for nothing that the Prime Minister has not been able to undertake his long-talked about bilateral visit to Pakistan. The fact is that there isn’t anything positive emerging from the negotiating table for Dr Singh to contemplate a visit that could be termed a landmark visit.

Yet, the Prime Minister utilised the occasion to reiterate his government’s framework of engaging Pakistan and the people of Jammu and Kashmir to achieve the goal of peace and development in the state and normal relations with the neighbouring country. The framework is categorically rooted in the understanding that terrorists must end their blackmail tactic in the state using fear as their weapon. And there is no question of redrawing of boundaries and the Line of Control (LoC) will continue to be  relevant but it would more and more become a line of peace that enables free flow of ideas, goods, services and peoples between the divided Kashmirs. 

These goals are worth pursuing. Considering the fact that until three years ago nobody could have even given a thought to the idea of a bus service across the LoC, they are achievable. Having said that, it is important for Dr Singh to ensure that sections of political groups, represented mainly in various splinter Hurriyat Conference groups within Jammu and Kashmir, participate in a reconciliation process that his government set in motion two years ago through the Round Table Conference mechanism. These groups continue to lend political sustenance to acts of terrorism in the state. In its internal dimension, the process of normalisation would always remain incomplete when there is political patronage of violent methods. Their advocacy of separatism is what has damaged Jammu and Kashmir’s potential to become what Dr Singh describes as the finest example of the idea of India. Much as what the Prime Minister would like us to believe, today’s Jammu and Kashmir is far from being that example.