At centre of EU MPs’ visit, think tank that backed all govts

A dozen years after it was set up, its founder Govind Narain Shrivastav set up a newspaper in Delhi called New Delhi Times.

EU MPs at the Dal Lake in Srinagar on Tuesday. (Express photo by Shuaib Masoodi)

From the the 1980s, IINS has focused on the Non-Aligned Movement, participating as an “observer” at Non Aligned Meetings across the world, travelling to scores of capitals for summits, ministerial meetings and so on.

In the 1990s, IINS had a new pre-occupation. It was the decade when militancy in J&K was at its peak, with Kashmiri youth crossing over into PoK where they received arms and training and crossed back into the Indian side. IINS organised conferences on topics such as Democracy and Human Rights, Media in Conflict Situations, Mass Media and Human Rights, Human Rights and Terrorism and the like.

More significantly, it sent a delegate/delegates to every session of UN Human Rights Council from 1994 (when it was the UN Human Rights Commission), attending both the NGOs conference as well as the main sessions. In this period, IINS also applied for “consultative status” to Economic and Social Council, a UN organisation that invites and encourages NGOs to apply for such affiliation in order to give them a voice and a “stake” in UN deliberations. It is the highest recognition granted to NGOs by the UN and allows them to take part in sessions across UN organisations.

IINS received this affiliation in the 1998. The website does not say who runs the organisation after Shrivastav’s passing in 1998 but it has offices in New York, Geneva, and Vienna to coordinate its work with the UN.

According to the website, it also has a regional office in “five other countries”.

Another Delhi think tank that raised Kashmir-related issues regularly at international forums in the 1990s was the Himalayan Research and Cultural Foundation, established in 1989. It was granted an affiliation as an NGO with “consultative status” to ECOSOC in 1995.

Headed by Professor R Warikoo, a Kashmiri Pandit who taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University, it is essentially a one-person operation. On its website, HRCF describes itself as “a national level multi-disciplinary research, cultural and development facilitative organisation set up by eminent area specialists, environmentalists, development experts, literateurs and cultural personalities” for “initiating, coordinating and promoting the systematic and micro-study of various issues pertaining to the Himalayan and Trans-Himalayan regions in South and Central Asia or parts thereof, connected with its environment, biodiversity, regional development, human resources, history, art and culture, language and literature, social structures, economies, human rights, peace processes, geopolitics etc.”

European MPs at Dal Lake in Srinagar on Tuesday. (Express Photo: Shuaib Masoodi)

Warikoo retired two years ago from JNU’s School of International Studies. He brings out a quarterly journal called the Himalayan and Central Asian Studies, and has travelled many times to attend the sessions at the Human Rights Council at Geneva. He has also participated in NGO conferences there.

He was at the Human Rights Council session in Geneva this September, accompanying the BJP’s Kashmir head Khalid Jehangir, who castigated Pakistan and said the Centre revoking the special status had nothing to do with religion.

“HRCF is a self-supporting non-governmental organisation set up in 1989 by eminent academics, litterateurs and cultural personalities and is devoted to study of Himalayan and trans-Himalayan region in South and Central Asia… I, as an area specialist on this region, have been running it with the support of fellow academics and colleagues. Due to lack of any political or official support, we have not been able to grow commensurate with our human capital and intellectual output, which is our strength,” said Warikoo.