Washington: Accusing Indian government of being "inaccessible" and "unresponsive" to local needs, a study by the Congressional Research Service has blamed New Delhi for the previous conflict in Punjab and the current tension in Jammu and Kashmir.

These conflicts are "the result of centralised power operating in a predominantly heterogeneous society", said a Library of Congress study, last updated in 1995 but still present on the US state department website.

"Although tensions...have important historical roots, they have been fuelled by controversy over the policies of India's Central government. Opposition is built up on the feeling that political power in New Delhi is inaccessible and unresponsive to local needs," it said.

In each case, the Congress (I) leadership attempted to intervene in the conflicts "to advance its partisan interests only to have its intervention backfire and aggravate regional tensions," the study said.

The Kashmir crisis of the 1990s, the study said, is "reflective of trends occurring throughout the Indian polity; the increasing intervention of the Central government in local affairs, the resort to coercion to resolve social conflict and maintain social order, and the increasing political assertiveness of the Indian public."

The study concedes that the state acceded to India "when Kashmir was under attack by a Muslim paramilitary force supported by Pakistan" and that "the conflict assumes considerable symbolic as well as strategic importance because, as India's only Muslim majority state, Jammu and Kashmir validates India's national identity as a religiously and culturally diverse society held together by a common history and cultural heritage."

PTI