Author: Tavleen Singh
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: October 16, 2011
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/lets-talk-about-kashmir/860418/0
Prashant Bhushan got thrashed by thugs last
week. Thugs will be thugs, alas, which is a bore. It would have been better
if Bhushan and his Leftist fellow travellers were challenged verbally on their
preposterous position on Kashmir. How dare they ask for a plebiscite? Do they
not see that regular elections have nullified the need for one? Are they suggesting
that all the elections held since 1947 were fraudulent?
Only those who have no idea of Kashmir's history
will say that none of them were. There were many fraudulent elections and
this is something that India needs to be eternally ashamed of because it never
helped India's case. But, far too many well-meaning Indians, like Bhushan
and his friend the ex-novelist, remain stuck in a time warp and nobody drags
them out of it for reasons of political correctness. This lethal disease has
become worse since Inquilab-e-Anna because to say anything against a member
of Anna Hazare's exalted team these days invokes charges of being corrupt.
It was only after the thugs did their damage
that I first heard what had annoyed them enough to start beating up Bhushan
and his pals. After interminable visuals of them being roughed up on all the
news channels, I still did not understand what provoked the violence. Finally,
on one channel, I spotted a tiny clip of what Bhushan said in Srinagar. I
do not know when he said what he did but admit that what he said got on my
last nerve. What is his reason for wanting a plebiscite? Now at the end of
the most peaceful summer Kashmir has seen in years? Have Bhushan and others
of his ilk become accidental victims of a conspiracy to restart the violence?
It is beginning to seem that way to me and, in my opinion, that is not just
anti-national but evil.
As someone who has covered the Kashmir problem
since the days when it was neither fashionable nor safe, I began to detect
signs of a conspiracy to make trouble when Mehbooba Mufti started charging
Omar Abdullah with murder. I witnessed first hand her father's role in the
creation of the current phase of the Kashmir problem (quite different to the
historical problem), so I am continually suspicious of Mehbooba's political
ideas and motives. She may not remember, but I remember with painful clarity,
that it was her beloved Daddy who advised Indira Gandhi to topple Farooq Abdullah's
government in 1984.
Mufti Sayeed was at the head of the group
that said the 1983 election was rigged when it should have been clear to anyone,
except the most blinkered, that the National Conference did not need to rig
an election that came just months after Sheikh Abdullah's death. His son would
have won without even needing to campaign but Mrs Gandhi was misled by people
who included Mufti Sayeed. The toppling of Farooq's government was the beginning
of the Kashmir problem as we know it today. In my view, the historical problem
died with the Indira-Sheikh accord in 1974.
It is now nearly twenty years since the current
problem began. And, this is almost the first peaceful summer the Kashmir Valley
has seen since then. This seems to infuriate people like Mehbooba. So she
took to the streets to protest against the alleged murder of a National Conference
worker in the Chief Minister's back garden. If Omar Abdullah wanted to murder
one of his party workers, would he be foolish enough to do it in his own garden?
Mehbooba and her gang of noisy protesters
failed to bring the stone-pelters back into the streets of Srinagar but she
succeeded in attracting media attention. Self-appointed experts sped off to
the Valley and returned to write long, silly pieces based on unsubstantiated
charges. And, as usual, the news channels went nuts. The Chief Minister was
charged, tried and found guilty on national television with some anchors using
tactics that would have put inquisitors in medieval inquisitions to shame.
They shamed me as a journalist because when journalists turn interviews into
inquisitions they cross a very, very dangerous line.
To return to the plebiscite question. For
those Indians who believe that a plebiscite is still the solution to the larger
Kashmir problem, may I suggest that they summon up the courage to go further.
Let them say loudly and clearly that every election in Jammu & Kashmir
has been rigged and let them prove this because it will prove that Indian
democracy is a sham. For my part, I am sick to death of educated, intelligent,
supposedly informed Indians saying things about the Kashmir situation that
are dangerously untrue. If there is ever to be a lasting solution to our most
difficult political problem, it will come after many seasons of peace. To
disrupt the first such season harms Kashmir and it shames India.
- Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter@tavleen_singh
