India's new belligerence towards Pak is unhelpful: Christopher Snedden

Australian scholar Christopher Snedden, author of 'Kashmir: The Unwritten History', has spent several decades researching the dispute that bedevils India-Pakistan relations. The defence expert, who teaches at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, Honolulu, tells Anahita Mukherji why both countries seem content to let the problem fester.
Why is it that India and Pakistan can't seem to be able to solve the Kashmir issue?
There is no pressing need, great imperative, or dire circumstance compelling India and Pakistan to solve the Kashmir dispute.Both nations have functioned reasonably well since 1947 despite having limited contacts (which worsened after the 1965 war), despite having invariably poor relations, and despite maintaining heavily armed militaries along the India-Pakistan border and in J&K. Both nations suffer from a major trust deficit and neither is prepared to make meaningful concessions that might lead to a resolution. Additionally, there is little or no international interest in the dispute. Finally, there aren't enough people in both nations publicly, forthrightly and persistently demanding that their leaders resolve this issue, and do so now.
There is a view that India and Pakistan should stop obsessing over Kashmir, and instead improve trade ties so that the border dispute is rendered irrelevant.
This is possible, but it first requires Pakistan to grant India the 'Most Favoured Nation' status that would normalize their trade regime and enable cross-border trade to flow in a regular and regulated way. India granted Pakistan this status in 1996; but Pakistan has been unable to reciprocate because the term suggests that it is doing something extraordinary for India, which it is not. MFN is simply diplomatic language for normalized trade. By granting MFN, some Pakistanis also feel that they may lose one of the few cards or incentives that Pakistan has to play with India. Improved trade and economic ties may help to improve the India-Pakistan relationship, although there is no guarantee of this.
India cancelled talks with Pakistan over its ambassador's meeting with Kashmiri separatists. The ambassador has said there should be dialogue between all the stakeholders in Kashmir. Your comments.
Given that Kashmiri separatists had talked with Pakistani high commissioners before on a number of occasions, this seemed a petty reason that India provided. It was unfortunate to see the talks cancelled, particularly after there had been some hope that relations might improve after Modi and Sharif met in Delhi and seemingly got on well.
If the Pakistan high commissioner said "there should be dialogue between all the stakeholders in Kashmir", then this is to be welcomed. Some of these stakeholders, of course, don't want J&K to join either India or Pakistan -they want independence. This is problematic for them as the only factor India and Pakistan agree on is that neither J&K nor any part of it can become independent.
More likely, Abdul Basit was reiterating Pakistan's long-held position that the UN supervised plebiscite should be conducted so that all of the people of J&K can decide whether their state, in its entirety, will join India or Pakistan. For some Pakistanis, Kashmir is not a territorial dispute but a dispute involving the 'right of self-determination' for J&K's citizens. Unstated in their argument is a belief that Pakistan would 'win' any act of self-determination, although a Pakistani 'victory' has never been certain.
Do you think Modi's approach to Kashmir will be different from that of his predecessors?
It already appears to be far more hardline. While Modi is successfully reaching out to all of the other South Asian nations, he is resorting to what appears to be a narrow, almost uncompromising, approach to Pakistan. This may change after the Haryana, Maharashtra and J&K elections, but it remains to be seen. Modi may be reflecting the position of elements in the current government, and amongst its harder-line supporters, who want India to deal with Pakistan more firmly. In the current environment of increased armed exchanges across the LoC -where it is impossible to determine who starts such exchanges and why -India's stance appears to be excessively belligerent and unhelpful.
Your research has shown that the Kashmir dispute began not with an invasion from Pakistan, but with protests from within Kashmir, by the people of Poonch and Mirpur who wanted to liberate themselves from Maharaja Hari Sigh. What are the implications for India and Pakistan?
My research shows that there are three parties to the Kashmir dispute: India, Pakistan, and the people of J&K -who I call 'J&K-ites'. It confirms that it was J&K-ites who started the actual dispute over whether J&K should join India or Pakistan and that J&K-ites' activities started soon after Partition and were underway well before both the Pukhtoon invasion of J&K on October 22, 1947 and Hari Singh's accession to India on October 26, 1947.The Kashmir dispute is a dispute over J&Kites' land, a further factor that makes them an integral party to it. India claims the troubles in J&K began when the Pukhtoons invaded it. Pakistan has surprisingly acquiesced in this claim. Their mutual stance has enabled both nations to successfully sideline the people of J&K from all attempts since about 1949 to resolve the Kashmir issue. History shows us that India and Pakistan can't, or won't, resolve it. I therefore suggest that they enable J&K-ites -who have the knowledge, will and desire to resolve the Kashmir dispute -to do so.