Opinion Lets talk about the K word
So,President Obama came and went and no mention was made of what everyone has mysteriously taken to calling the K word.
So,President Obama came and went and no mention was made of what everyone has mysteriously taken to calling the K word. Why can we not call it Kashmir and why do we not have the courage to talk about it with anyone who wants to? It is true that we have exhibited remarkable ineptitude in handling the problem,but in the face of armed insurgencies,financed by an enemy country,even the best governments have difficulties. It is because the Government of India behaves as if it is guilty that charges of human rights abuses become credible in the eyes of the world.
Interpreting Indias silence as guilt,sundry Pakistanis,and Indians who make a living out of writing bad things about India in foreign newspapers,get away with charges that are almost too ludicrous to answer. For instance,the charge that stone pelting children are being mowed down on a daily basis by soldiers. For instance,that all would have been well in the Kashmir Valley if Omar Abdullah had only had the sense to go and pay condolences to the family of the first child who was accidentally killed by a teargas shell in June. If all it took was one incident for violent protests to begin,there must have been something really bad going on under the surface but serious politicians,like Mehbooba Mufti,routinely make this charge.
Before sitting down to write this piece,I spent a few hours doing some research on our Kashmir problem and made a startling discovery. Pakistan has since 1947 had a consistent and clear Kashmir policy and India has not. Zulfikar Ali Bhuttos speeches,available on YouTube,show him making that famous speech at the Security Council in which he describes Kashmiris as part of the people of Pakistan in blood,in flesh,in geography,in history. When he went to Shimla,as a defeated Prime Minister,he talked of peace with honour and managed to get Indira Gandhi to allow Kashmir to be mentioned in the agreement they signed. Every Pakistani ruler,military or civilian,has repeated ad nauseum that until Kashmir remains disputed there can be no peace with India.
In contrast we have Indias dithering,inconsistent approach to Kashmir. You have Jawaharlal Nehru greeting Sheikh Abdullah like a long lost brother in 1947 and then jailing him for 18 years. You have Indira Gandhi coming to an agreement with the Sheikh in 1975 only to start harassing his government from the moment it was formed. More recently we have seen the same sort of indecisive policy from whichever government has been in power in Delhi. Atal Bihari Vajpayee had a real chance to come up with a new approach,one that showed less guilt and more moral fibre,but all he did was continue with the Congress Partys very confused Kashmir policy.
In the nineties came jihadi terrorism,exported as moral support from across the border,and again we did nothing but hesitate. While going through my earlier writings on Kashmir,I came across this paragraph that appeared in this column on May 21,1995. A day after the Charar-e-Sharif shrine was burned down,a Pakistani gentleman by the name of Maulana Mohammed Farooq,leader of the Harkat-ul-Ansar militant group,warned us from Islamabad that India should remember that the fire of Charar-e-Sharif will not be confined to Kashmir alone. Now this fire will burn Delhi and Bombay.
What did we do? We dithered till Bombay (by then Mumbai) burned. It is as if our only policy is to do nothing and hope for the best. Why are we so afraid of discussing Kashmir? Why should we not be able to say loudly and clearly that what we face in the Kashmir Valley is an armed insurgency led by Islamist groups who are not very different in their ideology to the Taliban next door. Kashmirs so-called freedom movement has been replaced by this new jihad which threatens not just India but the world. Why are we so afraid of stating in simple words that there will be no more changing of Indias borders. Those who want to go to Pakistan or join the jihad in Afghanistan are free to go but they cannot take with them an inch of Indian territory.
So let us not hesitate any more to mention the K word whenever anyone wants to hear it. And,when we do we should add that the basis of the discussion,its pivot,is that Indias borders will not be changed. Once that is clear we should be more than willing to discuss human rights abuses,autonomy and related matters. We need to repeat loudly and often that there was a sixty per cent turnout in the last election. Does this not tell us what most Kashmiris want?
Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ tavleen_singh
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