Author: Arvind Lavakare
Publication: Organiser
Date: May 21, 2006
URL: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=131&page=38
Introduction: They go hysteric on dargah,
their silence deafening on Hindu carnage
The latest carnage of 35 innocent Hindus in
Jammu and Kashmir is part of the scene that's all so deja vu since the last
20 years or so.
First came the TV news, the tragic images
and the screaming newspaper headlines thereafter.
Then came the immediate flying visits of VIPs
to the massacre sites, their public appeal for communal harmony, their announcement
of financial relief to the families of the victims, their condemnation of
the incident and their proclaimed resolve that New Delhi will not be bend
by the perpetrators.
Quickly followed the hand-wringing, rationalising
editorials interspersed with human interest stories, hospital pictures, and
police/army reactions-cum-speculations.
Within a week, the whole episode went-off
the national radar, and it's back to square one: the terrorists ready with
plans for more terror attacks of one kind or another, in Doda or Udhampur
or elsewhere, smug and secure that this Indian nation of ours is just too
soft, impotent in giving "an eye for an eye" and, instead, remains
naively susceptible to yet another carnage with its attendant replay.
The only difference this time around is that
no outfit was boastful about committing what it did, though the finger yet
again points to one of those evil jihadi outfits nurtured by Pakistan. Then
there is the other conspicuous element this time of our National Security
Adviser's cryptic reaction that "We will send an appropriate message"
even while avowing that "The peace process will continue."
What, pray, is an appropriate message, Mr.
NSA? And to whom would it be given? Chewing on a betel-nut or something like
that in his car while answering the media's questions, all that Mr. NSA disclosed
was that the PM would not be going to Pakistan in June as was earlier believed.
Was that the "appropriate" message? We don't know.
We don't know because the incumbent UPA government,
that otherwise preens itself for having created the Right To Information Act,
doesn't believe in disclosing the whole truth to the people of India about
anything - even about the civil energy nuclear deal with the USA and veiled
negotiations to withdraw our Army from the Saltoro Range.
The fact of the matter is that an appropriate
message to Pakistan is indeed an imperative now for the Indian nation. And
that message should be blunt: India's unilateral decision to freeze the entire
peace process until Pakistan gives solid evidence that it has permanently
wound up every single one of its terrorist camps of which the government of
India has concrete proof that it has shared with the USA but not, alas, with
its own people. The imperative message should be that till Pakistan gives
proof of having kept its words given in the Islamabad Declaration in January
2004 that it will not allow its territory to be used for terrorist activity,
India will just not have anything further to do with Pakistan in any sphere,
be it Bollywood, or cricket or talks on Track II.
Simultaneously, our government must let our
people know of the extensive network which Pakistan's ISI has cunningly spread
in our land. When he was Home Minister in the NDA government, L.K.Advani had
assured us of a White Paper on the subject.
The argument against issuing such a White
Paper was said to be that it would pre-empt the elimination of the ISI network
by our forces. In the four years since Advani's unkept assurance, there is
nothing to indicate that our forces have killed the ISI's octopus. Now, our
people should no longer be kept in darkness regarding just how much the ISI
has soured our soil. That's the only way to convince our people that there's
simply no percentage for India in exhibiting Mughal-e-Azam in a Lahore theatre
or letting Sehwag score a triple century in Rawalpindi or in lighting candles
at the Wagah border every year.
Regarding Jammu and Kashmir too, we must forthwith
stop hiding behind meaningless CBMs and fond hopes of a peaceful solution
to that 59-year-old issue. We must send a message to Pakistan, with a copy
to the entire world, that we have always known that Pakistan wants to somehow
wrest the Kashmir Valley from us whatever the disguises it may have put on
its core objective.
Right from the third week of October 1947,
when Pakistan sponsored a tribal invasion into Jammu and Kashmir and all through
the United Nations debates, the six Summits with our Nehru government as well
as the intervening wars it waged till its two Summits with the NDA government,
and the subsequent talks with the UPA government, Pakistan's sole goal has
been to seize control somehow over the territory that legally belonged to
India since the Kashmir Maharaja signed the official Instrument of Accession
on October 26, 1947. Contrary to what some Pak propaganda has said, that signed
document is neither fiction nor a forgery; it exists in the safe-keeping of
our Ministry of External Affairs which must now put it up on the government's
website and copies of it made available to anyone.
It's high time, therefore, that we tell Pakistan
that the subject of the alleged Kashmir Valley dispute is now permanently
closed. We must tell them that the only thing we are willing to negotiate
on that subject is a legal international agreement accepting the existing
L.O.C. as a permanent border between the two countries.
A message is also needed to be sent to all
the secessionists (called "separatists" all along by the unthinking)
and to the Hurriyat, quite a few of whose leaders have been investigated by
various intelligence and revenue agencies for the lavish lifestyle they lead
and for the mysterious sources of their livelihood. They must all be told
publicly that this nation has had enough of their tantrums and that this nation
has spent, in handling them, millions of megawatts of energy that would have
been better utilized in attending to the problems of other states who owe
unconditional loyalty to the theme of India that is Bharat. They must be told
that if they wish to run the affairs of Jammu and Kashmir state, the only
way they will be allowed to do so is if they win the State Assembly elections
as per Constitutional laws prevalent in India that is Bharat. If they don't
like this message, they should be told to migrate to Pakistan or wherever
or risk going to the jails here.
Finally, a message must also be given to the
Abdullah dynasty's National Conference and the Mufti dynasty's PDP. They must
be publicly told that because of the combination of its own State Constitution
and Article 370, Jammu and Kashmir is the most autonomous State in India and
that there is therefore simply no question of granting any further autonomy
to that State unless the same is given to all the other states that comprise
the territory of India.
They must further be told, in public again,
that because of the unbelievably munificent financial aid given from the Central
budget (at the cost of depriving really poor states like Bihar), Jammu and
Kashmir has the lowest proportion of population living below the poverty line-just
three per cent! Such pampering, they must be told, will no longer be permitted
and Jammu and Kashmir must learn to live within its own means or else open
the Jammu and Kashmir State to the rest of India's world-class entrepreneurial
skills.
Once the above two messages to the National
Conference and PDP are made known across the length and breadth of Jammu and
Kashmir, the people there will realize that, if they feel alienated and deprived,
the villain of the piece has along been the utter, all-round failure of successive
state governments rather than New Delhi. It is critical for this to happen.
All the above suggested responses to the latest
terrorist carnage in Jammu and Kashmir are admittedly radical, but we live
in times of "out of the box thinking", don't we? Besides, be truthful:
just what has been achieved by the Pakistan policy we have followed for the
last 59 years? It is always Pakistan that has thrust its agenda on us, and
we have merely responded - passively. Result: Pakistan still hates us and
remains determined as ever to bleed us with a thousand cuts while we cringe
for its friendship.
Almost the same has been the case with Jammu
and Kashmir that too has enervated every government in New Delhi. Imagine
the fact that all the selective provisions of the Constitution of India that
are today applicable to Jammu and Kashmir State are with the concurrence of
the ruling government of that State-no provision has been thrust on it. And
it is because even Indira Gandhi could not get that State to give its concurrence
for the relevant clause in the Forty-second Constitution Amendment Act of
1976 that the Preamble of the Jammu and Kashmir State Constitution does not
proclaim that state to be secular!! Again, like several laws enacted by the
Indian Parliament, the Right to Information Act is not applicable to Jammu
and Kashmir State because that State government is not willing to have it-for
reasons kept secret from the rest of India. One suspects that the ordinary
people of Jammu and Kashmir are not at all aware of all this. Time has come
to banish that ignorance. These facts must now be communicated across the
whole of Jammu and Kashmir and the rest of India.
How is Pakistan likely to react to all of
the above with increased cross-border terrorism? When did would animosity
and hostility against us ever decrease? Will Pakistan dare the whole world
and engage in a nuclear retort? Unlikely if it has sense enough to realize
that such action would boomerang in seconds and end up being a massive fidayeen
attack in which the bomb man also dies. Really, we've now had enough of Pak's
evil eye on us and of Jammu and Kashmir leaders' arrogance.
(The writer can be contacted at Flat 202,
Dosti Erica, Antop Hill, Wadala (E), Mumbai 400 037.)