The unending story of Kashmir

Author: M V Kamath
Publication: Organiser
Date: September 8, 2002
 
Introduction: Delhi will walk the extra mile if only the Hurriyat leaders come to realize that their happiness and prosperity lie with Delhi and not with Islamabad, that the Kashmir Valley can blossom again if its people refuse to give aid and shelter to the murderous terrorists from across the border. It may be, then, that Pakistan will wither and fade away or break into pieces.

For sheer impertinence and effrontery, Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf is hard to beat. The man came to power after a military coup and has as much right to rule over Pakistan as any usurper of a throne. Speaking on Pakistan's Independence Day the visibly terrorised Chief Executive Officer, afraid of his own people, had the cheek to dismiss the proposed elections in Jammu and Kashmir as "a farce"; coming from the lips of a man with no respect for elections it is hilarious. Forget the fact that every "elected" Government in Pakistan has been overthrown by the military. There has never been an "election" in Pakistan occupied Kashmir whether under international monitoring or otherwise. The people of Gilgit and Baltistan have long resented their ambiguous status in Pakistan. They do not want to be even part of so-called Azad Kashmir and have been clamouring for a separate status. A statement issued by the Balwaristan National Front, representing the people of these two areas specifically says:. "The people of Gilgit and Baltistan no longer have even the rights they had under the (previous) Maharaja's rule. They want liberation from foreign (Pakistan) rule." Musharraf says the struggle for the "self-determination" of the Kashmiri people can never be compromised", and he spoke about the rights of his brethren across the border. Obviously he does not want to remember what his army did to put down the right of self-determination of his other brethren across the sub-continent and how many women in East Bengal were raped and how many men were killed. Nor, obviously, does he want to remember how many the Pakistan Army killed in five years to put down a rebellion in Baluchistan, where other of his "brethren" wanted freedom. Musharrafs memory is short. The truth is that whatever his friends in Beijing and Washington may think, Pakistan is an artificial state sustained on hatred of India. In his last days even M.A. Jinnah, the state's founding father was to realise that Pakistan was a grave error. According to an article published in Peshawar's Frontier Post by Mohammad Yahyajan, the NWFP Minister for Education, during his last days Jinnah did feel he had committed a blunder. Down with serious illness in a health resort in Baluchistan he was visited by his Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan. Seeing him, Jinnah is reported by his personal physician Col. L. Bux as saying that he was convinced that he had "committed the biggest blunder" of his life. Jinnah reportedly added: "If now I get an opportunity, I will go to Delhi and tell Jawaharlal to forget shout the follies of the past and become friends again." There is no reason to doubt the quotation. Pakistan today, as it always has been, is a nation without roots and if Musharraf does not know it, he knows nothing. He is crying like a child for its broken toys. For all his apparent power, the man cannot address a public audience. He made his Independence Day speech indoors to a select audience in the wake of militant threats to assassinate him. And this is a man who talks of democracy. The best thing that he can, in the circumstances do is to admit that Pakistan has been a grave blunder and seek Delhi's forgiveness for all that has gone wrong in the past. A Pakistan confederated with India can then thrive and prosper and make the follies of the past half a century as a bad dream. Pakistan was created and sustained by Britian, the United States and the western powers to maintain their toe-hold in Central Asia. For them Kashmir was a convenient excuse to hold India to ransom. Now that the Cold War is long over, Washington does not know how to handle the menance it had long nurtured. Writing as recently as 1991 Christina Lamb, a correspondent of the London-based Financial Times was to say in her book Waiting for Allah that "in the space of forty-five years Pakistan has gone from a nation searching for a country to a country searching for a nation." And she said: "Things are so bad that many talk with hope of an Indian invasion, wanting to be a part of the country their fathers fought to separate from." According to knowledgeable sources, that reflects public opinion to this day. Such being the case Pakistan has no locus stands in Jammu and Kashmir, whatever the Hurriyat leaders may say. We are told that Kashmiris want "autonomy" but no one has yet define what that "autonomy" is supposed to be. Not even Rain Jethmalani who is heading a private Kashmir Committee to neogitate with the Hurriyat leaders has any clear inkling of what "autonomy" is supposed to be. As it is, Jammu and Kashmir has its own flag and under Article 370 the powers of the Indian Parliament to make laws for Jammu and Kashmir are limited and the provisions of Article 238 are not applicable to it. The Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Act 1976 is applicable all over India but it is not extended to Jammu and Kashmir, primarily to protect the vested interests of the ruling elite. What justification is there for giving one scat in the Legislative Assembly for 73,000 of the Kashmir Valley population and one for 90,000 of the population of Jammu? If self-determination is what Jammu and Kashmir wants, Jammu and Ladakh will quickly opt out of the Jammu and Kashmir State. The term "self-determination" is an overworked one whose relevance died a long time ago after it was first proposed by US President Woodrow Wilson under wholly different circumstances. If tomorrow the Hurriyat agrees to participate in the elections and then further agrees to go by democratic conventions as to who should govern Jammu and Kashmir within the framework of Indian sovereignty and tells off Pakistan and its mad ruler Musharraf, peace will prevail again. Ale graceless western powers led by the United States have to come to terms with their own sins of the past when they propped up successive military regimes in Islamabad to fight their wars against communism and this message India must convey to them in no uncertain way. India has no prejudices against the Kashmiri people. They are its own even as are the over four lakh Kashmiri Pandits who had been driven out of their hearths and homes on pain of being killed and their womenfolk raped, in a mindless attempt at ethnic cleansing. Jethmalani claims that his committee has been successful so far. Delhi will walk the extra mile if only the Hurriyat leaders come to realise that their happiness and prosperity lie with Delhi and not with Islamabad, that the Kashmir Valley can blossom again if its people refuse to give aid and shelter to the murderous terrorists from across the border. It may be, then, that Pakistan will wither and fade away or break into pieces. It does not deserve any better fate. Its best hope lies in making peace with India which would be only too happy to clasp Pakistan in its arms like a long lost brother.
 

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