Kashmir in comparative perspective

 

State assembly elections were held in Jammu and Kashmir in the months of September-October 2024. These were the first assembly elections in over a decade, and the first since the territory's special status was revoked, its statehood withdrawn, martial curfew imposed and over 300 political leaders detained or under house arrest in 2019, at the behest of the central government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The INDIA alliance, consisting of the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (JKNC), the Indian National Congress (INC) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)), won a majority of seats in the elections, winning 49 of the 90 seats for which elections were held, with the JKNC winning the highest number of seats. We at “Les Forums France Inde” take this opportunity to discuss with Professor Sten WIDMALM his book, “Kashmir in comparative perspective”, which was first published in the year 2002. The book focuses on the political history of Jammu and Kashmir, in particular after India’s independence and later goes on to compare the conflict in the state with the ones in the states of Tamilnadu and West Bengal. He argues that the breakdown of democracy was not initiated by groups in Kashmir deciding to pursue a holy war. Rather, the decision to resort to violence was the result of the breakdown of democracy.

Anubandh : How do you assess your book today, which you had written in the year 2002, keeping in mind what has happened in between in Kashmir?

Sten : Self-evaluations are often very risky and one has to be careful about that. If I had to do things differently today in the revised version of this book then I would discuss with more emphasis the instrumental use of religious identity in politics. I would also discuss Pakistan more than I did in the book and also the role of war in Afghanistan. There are so many things that are interconnected in this complicated conflict and that is why it is hard to solve it as well. Hopefully we get a little wiser as we get older. These are few things that I under estimated the power of.

Anubandh : When you talk about Pakistan, I remember reading in the book that United States was keener that Pakistan gets Kashmir so that it could possibly establish some military bases there to counter Russia. Do you agree?

Sten : Now you are talking about which period?

Anubandh : I believe it was the initial period, just after 1947, after the Independence of India and Pakistan.

Sten : Ah then…but then everybody’s mindset was different as well. At that time there was the United Nations (UN) resolution that could have worked as well. The relationship of United States vis à vis Pakistan and India has changed a lot since then.

Anubandh : Before I begin asking you more questions, I would like to tell you that this book is interesting for people like me, of my generation.  For example, I am from Maharashtra (India) and when I was growing up the news that came to us about Kashmir was not always very clear. In general, we did not and do not have enough access and knowledge about what really happened in Kashmir. So, I really appreciate your book for bringing us the ground realities.

My question to you is about the very first state election that the state of Kashmir had in the year 1962 while most of the other Indian states had it in the year 1952. Why did it take so long for Kashmir to have its first election? What really happened from 1947 to 1962? 

Sten : Well, of course, the first war between India and Pakistan in 1947 did play into this. The war never went away, not completely. The whole situation from 1947 to early 1948 was quite instrumental for derailing the possibilities of trusting institutions from the central government towards Jammu and Kashmir. This is an area which sort of hanged in the balance and it became contested very quickly in the way that the relationship between Pakistan and India evolved. Kashmir became a flashpoint and geo strategically a most important point in the whole region here. As it is not just India and Pakistan fighting each other but also China looming in background, all the time, and this impeded the possibilities of developing democracy that was planned for Kashmir and the whole idea of giving regional autonomy and all that. Jammu & Kashmir has the most extensive freedoms compared to other states in India, in terms of regional autonomy but it became also a state which could use its independence, its autonomy the least because of the recurring conflicts. And this is actually what plagued the whole situation from independence and it is still the main problem. It is a terribly sad and tragic development there. As there is so much of the democratic rights and the possibilities for economic prosperity that has not been able to developing this region because of the conflict there. But I am not saying it was only because of the power games at the national level. There were also local forces which put their interests first. They pursued politics that was conducive to reconciliation but sometimes also to confrontation. It is pretty complex but that’s the whole point of the book. The various interviews with key players that I could collect in the 1990s during my dissertation are part of this book. And they give different views and perspectives on this conflict.

Anubandh : If we talk about the results of the 1962 state elections in Kashmir we see that the Indian National Congress (INC) did not contest and the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (JKNC) party headed by Gulam Bakshi had a clear majority winning 70 seats out of 75. These elections are considered as not being free and fair. Interestingly, as you mention in the book, Jawaharlal Nehru had said to Bakshi that he should have conceded few seats (to the opposition) to prove his political legitimacy.  What do you think about these first elections in Kashmir?

Sten : It seems to me that in a way, the take off for democracy in Jammu and Kashmir looks more like Pakistan than India. You have a rocky start. There was this conflict and in Pakistan there were assassinations. This whole project of establishing democratic ethos is very very hard when all the emotions are so strongly caught up with what was happening during the partition and what comes after that with the subsequent conflicts between India and Pakistan. This was pushing down democratic freedoms and the real possibility for an opposition. And it pushed up some kind of nationalism which was not conducive for integration with the rest of the country. So, it was a troublesome and rocky start and it continues then like that in the subsequent elections.

Anubandh : Before the elections of 1967, there was the war between India and Pakistan in 1965. In the book you also mention the crisis that erupted when the relic in the Hazratbal Mosque in Srinagar was stolen. Could you please tell us more about that period and the election outcome? 

Sten : First of all, the influence from Pakistan was pretty great and it was an important part of the conflict then. But there was also pressure from China. So, India felt like it was boxed in. So it created a tug of war between the central government and the local political forces in Kashmir. Nobody trusted each other. That’s the simple description of the whole situation. In such a tense atmosphere, any kind of rumour, like the Hazratbal crisis, could set off a conflict which is grave and that can spread quickly. One that could have been hard to handle and it could have spread across the border. So, this was the climate at that time.

Anubandh : Before we move to the elections of 1972, I would like to ask you about Sheikh Abdullah. He was the central figure in the politics of Kashmir. He was imprisoned by the Dogras (Hindu ruling dynasty of Kashmir), by Jawaharlal Nehru, by Lal Bahadur Shastri and also by Indira Gandhi. His coming out of jail and returning to it was quite frequent and it influenced the politics of the state.

Sten : At that time, it affected very much as far as what was happening there and the role of National Conference (NC) and how it was shaped. And if you look at later times, you have many contestants from Jammu and Kashmir, political contestants who were going to and coming out of jail. But it did not have the same effect. In those times, in my reading, Sheikh Abdullah was the uniting force. For the (Kashmir) region, he had the ability to unite people around him. He had that type of power. And if you look at more recent events, in the last 30 years, there were a lot of people who were going in and out of jail but they couldn’t capitalize on it politically, in the same way as Abdullah did. And that has to do with the entanglement with Pakistan and the fact that people were quite tired as well with the conflict there, the whole thing about how you should regard this separatist movement, and so on…In my opinion, people are quite divided about this. Maybe they were not so much (divided) at that time. May be there was a chance for independence then. It is hard to say whether that wasn’t established. If it was seen as a real possibility and reality. May be if it was, in any time, then it was in those times. People then could unite more for such reasons. 

Anubandh : If we look at the results of the 1967 elections, then we see that Congress won 61 seats out of 75, giving them a clear majority. National Conference won 8 while BJS (Akhil Bharatiya Jana Sangh) which was affiliated to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at that time also made an entry into the political contestation. Now before the 1972 elections, we had in 1971 the conflict that resulted into the creation of Bangladesh. And in the 1972 elections, the main political party of Kashmir, the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (JKNC) was banned from contesting. Given this background, how do you assess and look at the elections of 1972, as well as the prelude to it?

Sten : There was a great fear at that time because of the whole situation in Pakistan which was severely destabilized and had actually broken up. The East and West Pakistan solution did not work. Of course, India had its interest, but it was also afraid, the central government of India was very much afraid that the agitations and the kind of things that led to the independence of Bangladesh could produce repercussions (in Kashmir). And such repercussions could be supported by Pakistan as well. So, the border towards Pakistan became essential than keeping up democratic rights (in Kashmir) and so on…This was an absolutely crucial time. And the whole affair with the previous war was contributing to the fact that democracy could not thrive at that time. So that is just an outcome of the bigger conflict, I would say.

Anubandh : As you point out in your book, the most outstanding elections in Kashmir were those of 1977. They were among the most free and fair ones. At that time, there was a government of Prime Minister Morarji Desai at the center. And you make an interesting observation when you say that for the free and fair elections to happen in Kashmir, it was as if Congress had to go away from power in the center. In these elections we see that Congress did not fare well while National Conference got the majority. What are your takeaways from the election of 1977 that you qualify as the best one?

Sten : Yes, the Congress party had become a hegemonic power. And you had the emergency which contributed to cutting down political freedoms and it created tension within India which were dangerous for democracy. It was a kind of downward spiral. But at the same time, it revitalized democracy as well.  Because you could see that in various parts of India a lot of local political groups formed their own ways or movements as a kind of a counterweight towards the Congress party. So, from the grassroot level, you could see that democracy started working better after 1977. This is in a way a good thing as people are mobilized and the hegemonic power of the Congress party in many ways is broken. Because too much of time under hegemony is not good. For instance, we have the same thing here in Sweden with social democracy. I mean they ruled unchallenged for years in Sweden and it had terrible consequences for our democracy. But in any case, in India, you could actually see how the country waking up a little bit more and this gave birth to the local parties, to a large extent. You got so many local parties coming into politics after 1977. And this went on, all the way forward and went up even more in the 1980s. And also the Congress party had to rethink its strategy. It had to wake up and had to realize that it might have to work in different ways and so on…But from 1977 onwards, for a period of about 6-7 years, you had a remarkably freer political culture. If you look at the municipal level, you could see that people were working across political boundaries. You could see Muslims, Hindus working together, across party lines, in a way that I can’t find any records of before and it is hard now a days as well. You could then see (political) cooperation across ethnic barriers. This is documented also in the book. It means something. It means that when democracy is working then it is really hard to start separatism.  

Anubandh : You are right as in the book you quote a very interesting interview with Amanullah Khan of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF). You mention that he had sent some boys from United Kingdom to Kashmir in 1983 in order to assess the ground situation and to see if it was favorable for separatism. And the observation was that it wasn’t! They could notice that people were busy with their daily lives, they were doing business, and they did not really feel concerned (about separatism) …While the situation later in 1987 changed when he had again sent some boys to Kahshmir. So that’s a kind of a remarkable testimony or a proof (of changed political climate in Kashmir in those years).

Sten : Yes. It is a kind of a proof. But you have to be a bit careful as well so (that) one doesn’t over interpret it.  Because in social sciences we also discuss the relationship between structures and individual forces and how they work together or not. And to some extent, it is true that there has always been an interest in Jammu and Kashmir for separatism. And it gets traction whenever there is a bigger conflict and so on. For instance, as was the case during the Hazratbal crisis. But you can see during the early eighties that they were not getting support for a violent uprising. Agency can play a role, and it certainly can make a difference in such situations. But the effect of agency is very much conditioned by what goes on in general. For instance, if you would have today a separatist movement in southern part of Sweden, which does not really trust Swedes from other parts of the country, nothing would happen with that. There is absolutely no way that it could get support. Just a few may be and so on…Here we have a little antagonistic relationship between the north and south (of Sweden) as we do….You know we actually had a partition in 1905…But still we do not go on war with each other….and we would not do it even now…that would involve NATO, but even before Sweden joins NATO, this would not happen. You just can’t have a separatist leader popping up, asking people to take up the guns and do something…there has to be something around it…the situation, the context….

Anubandh : Let’s now move to the elections of 1983. This was the first election when Farukh Abdullah (son of Sheikh Abdullah) fought the elections. His party, the National Conference (NC), got a majority with 46 seats, although there was violence and (allegations) of rigging. But broadly, his victory was accepted by the opposition political parties. And then we move to the 1987 elections. A lot of things happened in between. Importantly the assassination of Indira Gandhi. What do you think about this period and about the elections of 1987, which as you said in the book, had a kind of an election cartel between the main opposition parties i.e. Indian National Congress (INC) and National Conference (NC)? They kind of made a pact, sharing seats between them, even before the elections could happen. This ruled out the possibility of any political competition.

Sten : If you can actually point out an important mistake made by the Indian National Congress (INC) and National Conference (NC) then that’s one. I mean, take for instance in Sweden today, if you have an Alliance between the Social Democrats and the moderate party and all, it will be seen as a complete betrayal. Or if you go to India today and you have an alliance between the BJP and the Congress party, then what’s the point of (having elections)? So that’s the extent of how the democratic ethos was betrayed in a way. This is also supported by Amanullah Khan by how he described the situation (during this period). He said that after the 1987 elections he had no problem recruiting young men in this area for an armed uprising. They were completely disillusioned. People just said, “to hell with democracy”. Because they did not trust it anymore. The trust capital of whole of the institutions was spent.  And after that, to keep up the borders, you only had the monopoly of violence to rely on. And that only escalates the conflict when the parties are so far from each other. So, this put a spin to the whole thing and it comes back to what I said before. Now the situation was ripe. Now you have a context where people think that no, democracy is not a thing that we (want)…there is no point supporting democracy. So, (what do we do)? This is a terrible situation that developed then.

Anubandh :Ok. But on that I do have a small remark. In spite of the fact that we had this election cartel between the Indian National Congress (won 26 seats) and the National Conference (won 40 seats) during the elections of 1987, the voter turnout was quite high at 75%. Further, the opposition parties (to these two main parties) did participate in the election, although it was very difficult for them to contest. So, how do you explain this (seemingly) high participation by both people and the opposition parties?

Sten : I mean still people wanted their voices heard. But the thing is that if you have an election system like the one which is used here in India, where you have the exaggeration of the majority such that the largest party gets proportional seats larger than the share of votes, then an election cartel accentuates this. This is of course very hard for anyone to reconcile. Because even if some people are going out there to mobilize and all, then ok. That is true but for smaller parties, they try to mobilize but that pays off almost nothing. As you can see in the chart that (you) showed earlier. The reward for the established parties is quite high but for the smaller parties the punishment is quite significant. As you can see the (smaller party) JMI/MUF got just 4 seats while Congress got 26 when both of them had the same percentage of votes at 20%! So, that’s the effect I am talking about. People could not know this (in advance) …. they could not imagine this… because everyone is not an extremist in Jammu and Kashmir…But the people wanted to vote for somebody who would be seen as someone going a little bit further than the National Conference (NC) was doing at that time. They would have an option there to vote. But for a more progressive or going on for a stronger alternative in terms of emphasizing autonomy of the region or (for) the alliance with Pakistan, depending on how you see it….. But in any case, there would be someone to vote for…. But it would become evident for the voters after the election count that it was no point at all going to the election booth if they didn’t vote for the cartel.

Anubandh : Ya…I think you raised an important point when you said that not everyone knew about the existence of this pact (between the Indian National congress and the National Conference) while they went to vote. I will now share my last slide from your book which kind of summarizes these elections, based on different criteria. Do you have a comment on this?

Sten : The point I am trying to make here is something about this context which we spoke about before. I bring these three particular points about “Organizational Stability”, “Secular Politics” (and the third one, “In favor of democratic competition”). There has been a tendency to say that well the religious roots run so deeply that you have to have somebody who understands the Muslim identity. This is not necessarily true. You have many religions in Jammu and Kashmir, and you have a type of Sufism which is extraordinary…well, which I mean it has become now less represented after what has happened in the region and so on…But people were ok with secular politics as long as institutions worked. So, if you had organizational stability then secular politics was also something possible in this particular region.  You should not assume that ethno-politics is the only way out or forward and so on… Because that is something that you hear more of today… So, in any case, you have a favorable condition for a democratic competition, then after that, the organizational stability declines, so you have a decline of democratic institutions coming on…this is been stepped up in 1983, 1987 and in 1989. This sort of undermined the possibility for secular politics. It still worked in 1983 to some extent, making people to go on and vote and all…people still went to vote in 1987 but after that people gave up on democracy because they saw too much of those things that happened during the elections of 1987 but also afterwards. The whole situation became infected and you had this direct interventions from the central government and all kinds of things happening there….then later on Jagmohan’s policies and so on…When I came to Kashmir for the first time, that was in 1988, after the 1987 elections and you could certainly pick up on the dissatisfaction, and the resentment towards the center at that time. I was a Swede, and then they would say, if you are Swedish then you are welcome but people from the rest of India were described as foreigners but in a negative sense. I was a foreigner too but in a positive sense still it (Kashmir) was part of India.

Anubandh : I guess, with this, we have a fairly good idea about what happened in major elections in Kashmir until 1987.

Sten : And also, I just want to emphasize that if some of the listeners are not so up to date with what happened in the history of the conflict there is that after the election in 1987, the whole thing, the whole situation really becomes accentuated with the level of violence. So, in the early 1990s the scale of the conflict got escalated considerably. You have a lot of people who went across the border to get the training in Pakistan. And you have also shootings. You have terror attacks and all those things. So, this is stirring up from the situation which was much more peaceful before in the 1980s, until we had this situation that was derailed from within, to a large extent at that time in Jammu and Kashmir.

Anubandh : True. Violence erupted and things went out of hand after this period of 1989. In your book, you talk about two major concepts i.e. “Voice” and “Exit” to explain that how it is important to have these channels for any democratic set up to succeed. Before we take a look at the examples of Tamil Nadu and Bengal, could you please explain these concepts, and then we move on?

Sten : Well, we start with corporations. And Albert Harshman studied corporations and how it was possible to create loyalty towards a product from the customers’ perspective. And he broke it down into two very important components. It is not rocket science. It is very simple to understand. If you have a product and if you wish to keep the success of selling your product, then the customers should have options for “exit” and “voice”. Because otherwise, you will not understand in the corporation why people stopped or why they keep buying, increased buying or decreased buying your product. When it comes to “voice” then it means that you should be able to complain or to give the positive feedback as well. So, the producer can listen to the voice of the consumer. And you will find directly from them why it is appreciated and why it is not. Now the second thing is “exit” and that is what you have (in order) to have some competition to make it meaningful to understand the needs of the customers. Because that makes it possible for the customer to turn to other products and that is a pretty important signal, if let’s say people are starting to buy a different type of soap, then you need to understand the reason for that. That’s what competition does to a system. It can create loyalty; it can create as well, if you don’t do it right, disloyalty. But the thing is that there is this thing about competition which is important to make everyone become better. This was then applied to democratic policies and how democracies evolved. And this was supported by Stein Rokkan, the Norwegian political scientist who developed these ideas in a book called “State, Nation and Class”. And he described that this is the whole thing with democracy as well. If you are going to have a stable democracy, then you need “exit” and “voice”. It means that if you have “voice” then people can actually voice their opinions within their parties and say that they can engage themselves in the party. They can say what they want and that their interests and needs will be channelized upwards. You know, that is what with the whole idea about the democratic voice process and having political parity. And if that does not work, they can switch the party! Maybe they just change their minds and realize that I am

not a socialist anymore, now I need to make money for my pension, then they turn to themselves to make money for the pension. So, then they may turn into the exit thing and may vote for someone who lowers taxes instead of keeping them high and so on or whatever….so, this is the thing and you can apply it to democracy….Are you going to be loyal? Well, it depends on “exit” and “voice”.

Anubandh : Right. And these two aspects were in a way denied in Kashmir. People could not really go to courts or to police, there was no redressal to (their complaints) … you also talk about the internal democracy within political parties…But now, if we apply these two criteria to the examples that you talked in the book …(first) of Tamilnadu, where there was a demand for a separate country, Dravidnadu. I think, this was in the 1950s. Please tell us about this example and why it did not go the way Kashmir went.

Sten : The whole north-south divide in India, it was, I mean it is still there…at least, some of it….but it was very much alive after partition. And it was not an easy thing for Jawaharlal Nehru to keep the whole country together. So, the language question, the status of the languages to regional level was something which was heavily contested and there was a plan in order to sort of devalue the southern languages. The Dravidian movement, the regional movement at that time was considering the options of trying to go against the sitting government in the center in such a way that you could see the seeds of separatism sort of having a chance to get ripe and it was diffused….I mean, if you simplify things: The Congress party realized that it could not establish itself as a very strong party in the region but it could be in alliances but it meant that you had to negotiate solutions as well and you could not just say that language policy would be as straight as they had meant it to be…so they simply had to change the course…that’s what Nehru did. So, therefore the most threatening idea of separatism was diffused in that way. Because it was realized by the central government that you cannot pursue the type of policies that they meant and they needed to pursue, but it wasn’t politically possible. So, after they realized that they could find solutions and move forward. And then the alliance policy. Whether they liked it or not, the Congress party still had a great influence because they became more skillful in negotiations.

Anubandh : Right. And you maintain in the book that the political system survived and the loyalty to the political system survived in Tamilnadu in that period. And the central government played within the framework of the established democratic institutions which really helped. As a result, DMK, the main political party in Tamilnadu also respected the democratic setup. And gradually, the people were not really for this demand, and it was given up. Now talking about Bengal, you said that during 1966 to 1977, that period was quite crucial in Bengal. And yet, Bengal did not go the way Kashmir went, or even if we compare it with Tamilnadu. The degree of separatism was non-existent or was very low. You talked about the way land reforms were implemented, especially when bureaucrats and peasants were made to work together. The democratic process was more important than the extent of the land reforms themselves. Could you talk a bit about the Bengal example?

Sten : Well, the Bengal example is important because there was a change in politics in there that was crucial in the way that political parties got their things together and they managed to pursue more coherent politics.  And some would say that they were even too successful in West Bengal. The communist party was too successful actually in creating unity, so it (actually) squeezed out decisions in different ways. But so much has changed since then as well. The central government was really afraid of the rulers of West Bengal. They  just  said that, we  are  doing  things this way and you can’t just pull the chief minister here and do whatever you want and impose Governor’s rule or President’s rule. So that is something the Congress felt that they could not push West Bengal around anyway they would have wanted to. For the central government, the whole situation was also of course influenced by (West Bengal’s physical) proximity to Bangladesh. I mean, if that region was sort of to go off and if you were doing something wrong and so on…that was of course feared. So, it seems that there was also this sense in the central government regarding the geopolitics and the fear for some type of a separatist movement…but it did not come from there…it actually came from Maoists (Naxalites/insurgents) from other places and it became a different story. I am not going into it now, but it wasn’t in the government of West Bengal. But in any case, the whole balancing of things…there were nationalists there …who were dreaming of or going back to Ravindranath Tagore as a kind of Bengali nationalist sentiment of that sort…My grandmother actually met Ravindranath Tagore when he was visiting Sweden for the Nobel prize in literature. We have a photo of this visit at home. in any case… haha… that was just a parenthesis…In any case, West Bengal was an interesting example to showing that how the whole thing of separatism could be deflected and turned away. It is a pretty important lesson for all those who think that as long as you have ethnic differences and different types of nationalism at the local level that (it) will definitely just spiral into something like one separatist movement. It won’t necessarily… you can have regional pride and it doesn’t spiral into separatism. I think that there is lesson from all the three cases that is something that needs to be learnt in India and in Sweden, both, and at other places as well. In Sweden, for example, we have a lot of debate here about how important it is to negotiate a solution. There may be an over emphasis on negotiated solutions in politics here. We had it for a long time. And it seems that sometimes the idea of democracy for some people is that the purpose of democracy is to eradicate the differences of opinion. And I think, it is something that (Mr. Narendra) Modi is thinking as well in India. That you just have to set the boundaries for democracy really hard and then everybody should just fit into that, whether it is negotiated or not actually, it can also be just decided by the central government. In any case, that is a way (to) get away from differences. Right? But the thing is that, thinking that is the purpose of democracy, then that is an authoritarian idea. If you go too for..I mean, it is a good thing if you can agree to cut down on the use of fossil fuels for example. I mean, it is in all our interest to do that. Now if you can negotiate that and you think the same about such issues, about crucial issues, (then) that’s a good thing. But you also have to realize that democracy is about living with differences. You can have agreements, but an agreement does not mean that you should eradicate differences. You can keep your identity, and you realize that if I make much more money than you do or vice versa then it is clear that we have different interests. It is very simple. But we may negotiate a solution about what the tax level should be. Just because we have differences in income, or differences in backgrounds or something else, it does not mean that we have to try for coming to a situation where we should not talk about differences anymore. Because differences are something that happen all the time. And this was also something that Albert Harshman was very much aware of. He says that the point with these things that I am talking about when I say that loyalty, exist and voice go together…I mean democracy is not always a bumpy road… it is not about eradicating differences. That is the point. You don’t find the definition of the purpose of all politics in democracy. Democracy is about creating freedom so we can decide our purpose together or in fights, which are controlled.

Anubandh : So, negotiations are a very important part of a democratic process, this is what I take away from what you just described. My very last question to you is why you think that the case of Punjab was not apt to compare, because it also has a very large-scale violence and separatism. Did you consider it or not?

Sten : Of course, I thought about it a lot. I mean, why resistance disappeared in Punjab?  Of course, people were tired of the politics of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale but there was quite a horrible ending to the separatist movement in Punjab. Because most of those who were pushing it or were active in it, they were killed and a lot of them went to prisons and all, but it was very very violent. So, it was easy to get a bit of better illustrations for peaceful solutions to use the Tamilnadu and West Bengal cases. Of course, you could use Punjab as an example for a fascist solution. You are just going by force and doing something. But if you want to look at other options, there are other things one can learn from India, may be that could work better. I think this is how I thought when I chose my reference points in comparison. 

Anubandh : Professor Sten Widmalm, thank you very much. Do you have a last word to conclude this interview?

Sten : Well, I think that it is very hard now to analyse the whole situation in the region. Because of what happened after the whole state was split up (in 2019). So now all the logics of the conflict have changed dramatically and it takes time before you can sort of evaluate what is happening for the prospect of democracy here. It is very hard to imagine a situation about whether democracy would go faster or move forward in this particular region compared to the rest of India. Because now the rest of India is in a more crucial situation with regard to democracy as we can see if we look at varieties of democracy and how it is measured…how democracy is measured there…so, I would say that the situation is even more complex now. 

Anubandh : Thank you very much for talking to us, for sharing your views. I hope to continue talking to you in future. Thanks again.

Sten : Thank you for having me.

 

Sten WIDMALM is a Professor in political science at the Department of Government, Uppsala University, Sweden. As a comparative political scientist he has worked extensively in South Asia, parts of Africa, and several countries in Europe. His research has focused on political tolerance, democratic development, conflict studies, crisis management, decentralization, and corruption, mainly employing qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Sten WIDMALM is the author of many renowned works, including “Political Tolerance in the Global South – Images from India, Pakistan and Uganda”; “Decentralization, Corruption and Social Capital – from India to the West”; and “Kashmir in Comparative Perspective – Democracy and Violent Separatism in India”. 

Anubandh KATÉ is a Paris based engineer and co-founder of the association, “Les Forums France Inde”.