What India is getting wrong on the Kashmir

Guardian column says India's policies in the Kashmir account for the recent unrest, despite New Dehli's claims to the contrary:

In an echo of Iran's lost "green revolution", the youthful protesters organised using text messaging and social media such as Facebook and YouTube. Their wrath focused in particular on the so-called "black laws", otherwise known as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, that authorises Indian security forces to stop, search, arrest and shoot suspects with impunity. As the beatings, detentions and curfews made matters worse, chief minister, Omar Abdullah, elected in 2008 as Kashmir's bright new hope, fell back on an old expedient – requesting army reinforcements from Delhi.

Despite plenty of evidence that the unrest was both spontaneous and rooted in decades of neglect, discrimination and repression of Jammu and Kashmir's Muslim majority, the Indian government has also stuck to an old story: blaming Pakistan. Delhi has repeatedly accused Islamabad of covertly backing efforts by militant Islamist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, held responsible for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, to destabilise Kashmir. Now it says that Pakistan, switching tack, is at it again.

The longer-term indictment is that India works the political disconnect too much and the economic reconnect too little:

But Delhi's blinkered Kashmir policy since partition in 1947 – ignoring UN demands for a self-determination plebiscite, rigging elections, manipulating or overthrowing elected governments, and neglecting economic development – lies at the heart of the problem, according to Barbara Crossette, writing in the Nation.

The violence "is a reminder that many Kashmiris still do not consider themselves part of India and profess that they never will," she said. "India maintains a force of several hundred thousand troops and paramilitaries in Kashmir, turning the summer capital, Srinagar, into an armed camp frequently under curfew and always under the gun. The media is labouring under severe restrictions. Torture and human rights violations have been well documented." Comparisons with Israel's treatment of Palestinians were not inappropriate.

India's failure to win "hearts and minds" was highlighted by a recent study by Robert Bradnock of Chatham House. It found that 43% of the total adult population of Kashmir, on both sides of the line of control (the unrecognised boundary between Indian and Pakistan-administered Azad Kashmir), supported independence for Kashmir while only 21%, nearly all of whom live on the Indian side, wanted to be part of India. Hardly anyone in Jammu and Kashmir wanted to join Pakistan.

The problem with this path, of course, is that proud India is strong enough to prevent any such splitting.  Fine and dandy, as the economic viability of any such breakaway state is likely very low.  But that reality doesn't obviate making the locals happy, and India has failed at this for reasons unrelated to Pakistan's meddling.