A teacher once gave a picture of an elephant to members of various nationalities and asked them to write an essay about the picture. The American wrote an essay stating that how elephant could be used to make money. The British composed one on the role of elephant in the colonial rule. The Indian transcribed one on the status of elephant in the Indian mythology. The Pakistani wrote an essay on the elephant and the Kashmir Dispute. Jokes aside, there is hardly an arena in our lives that is not touched by the Kashmir dispute.
Twenty Kashmiris were shot dead on April 1 in the part of Kashmir occupied by India but it is not breaking news; it is one in Pakistan. A person is shot dead in New Delhi or Mumbai by the police and the Indian media will be discussing it for days. Unarmed demonstrators in Kashmir are shot with pellet guns and live ammunition but it goes unnoticed. There is something bizarre about the phenomenon. The media in India claims to be much more liberal and free than the one in Pakistan but it needs to realize that the latter is not instructed by the ISI or the military authorities to highlight the developments in Kashmir. It is something that almost all Pakistanis feel strongly about.
It is true and unfortunate that the news relating to Kashmir is repetitive and many a times identical. As a result, after a while one becomes numb to the daily atrocities and even fails to notice them. But shooting down 20 Kashmiris in one go is rare and thus becomes a front page news.
Majority of the Indians, except of course the people of Kashmir, believe that Pakistan is behind all the turmoil in the State and if somehow Pakistan’s intervention is removed, normality can return to the State. It is important in this respect to point out that the people killed on April 1 were all from Indian Kashmir; none were from Pakistan. Similarly, while checking in the past the DNAs of people discovered in the unmarked mass graves in Indian Kashmir, overwhelming majority were found to be locals and not “Pakistani terrorists.” Pakistan can train the militants; it can supply them arms and ammunition (how it is done is beyond my comprehension as there is an electric fence at the LoC and it is perhaps one of the most fortified borders in the world) but it cannot bring out hundreds of thousands on the street to attend Burhan Wani’s funeral. If Indians attribute this to the success of Pakistan’s propaganda then they definitely are overestimating our policy-makers as we know them better.
The fact is Pakistan was taken by surprise when the current chief minister’s sister, Dr Rubiaya Syed, was kidnapped in December 1989, and militancy was revived. Pakistan took a while to recover from this bolt from the blue. However, India immediately blamed Pakistan for the unrest. Since 1989, India has amassed a massive force in Kashmir and has declared the entire State a `disturbed area’, put it under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act and enacted a whole hoard of draconian laws. More than 100,000 have been killed and many more injured since 1989; it is not all Pakistan’s doing.
India is proud of its democratic credentials and makes jokes about the repeated military’s interventions in our polity. But the Indians fail to explain the way the people of Kashmir have been treated since independence, and then since 1989. The people of Kashmir do not desire to be part of India for whatever reason. I have not been to the occupied Kashmir and so cannot say for sure if the Kashmiris desire to be part of Pakistan or simply be independent. But this is for sure that India is nowhere in the picture.
There are more than 600,000 Indian troops stationed in Kashmir. The Indian Army is one of the best armed in the world. So there is no doubt that it can control the unarmed civilians, just like the Israelis can control the Palestinians in the occupied areas. But for how long? The people throwing stone at the Indian troops and the police in Kashmir, and burning Indian flags, and waving Pakistani ones, are mostly born after 1989.
Waves after waves of these youngsters will keep coming on the street. They do not come out and protest because they are being trained by the Pakistanis or the ISI, or they are being paid by anybody. They simply want freedom, just the way Indians wanted freedom from the British; or the Scottish from the English; or the French speaking from the English speaking ones in Canada. Pakistan is not supporting all the freedom movements of the world. This phenomenon has its own dynamics, and cannot be crushed by lethal force. Otherwise, Jalianwala Bagh would have ended the freedom movement of the Indians.
India is a democracy, and it should fulfill the pledge made by none other than Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India, on November 2, 1947, when he had said:
“We have declared that the fate of Kashmir is ultimately to be decided by the people. That pledge we have given, and the Maharaja has supported it, not only to the people of Kashmir but to the world. We will not, and cannot back out of it. We are prepared when peace and law and order have been established to have a referendum held under international auspices like the United Nations. We want it to be a fair and just reference to the people, and we shall accept their verdict. I can imagine no fairer and just offer.”
It was not Pakistan but India that referred the Kashmir dispute to the United Nations. And the UN Security Council passed several resolutions calling for holding of a referendum in Kashmir.
India should genuinely and sincerely hold talks with the people of Kashmir and Pakistan to achieve a permanent solution to this problem. The people of Kashmir deserve better; they have suffered enough. And the people of India and Pakistan ought to have peace so that we could move forward. Otherwise, we all would be discussing the same issues even 100 years from now while the world will have moved far ahead
The Last Stop 