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| Separatist leader Mirwaise Omar Farukh |
In calling off
the Secretary level talks with Pakistan the government of India has done what
virtually everyone in the country would applaud. Despite protests and flag
meetings, the firing from across the border has continued without any let up. A
couple of our border guards were killed and the civilian population along the
border has been terrorised. They suffered injuries, their houses got
bullet-ridden and they are being prevented from going about doing their normal
business. Not satisfied with these transgressions the Pakistani High
Commissioner invited the “separatist” leaders of Kashmir, allegedly, for
consultations and went ahead and met them a few days before the secretaries-level
talks scheduled for the 25th August. This the High Commissioner did
despite the Indian government asking it not to meet them. Naturally, the Secretary-level
meeting for continuance of the long-disrupted dialogue was called off.
One wonders what
kind of consultations the High Commissioner conducts with the “separatists” and
on what matters. Such meetings are against protocol as also highly improper for
the High Commissioner as he thus meets secessionists in the host country. Is it
to foment more trouble for disrupting the peace in the Kashmir Valley or to
organise violence? Since the Pakistan High Commission chooses to meet only them
and not the elected representatives of the Jammu & Kashmir Assembly it
clearly tries to promote its interests through them. But they, having a
minuscule following, are unable to swing opinion in favour of Pakistan. It is not known how the meeting would have, as
claimed by Pakistan, facilitate the peace process in the Valley when the
intentions behind it are not quite honourable. Is Pakistan really interested in
peace in Kashmir? Had it been so it would not have kept the LoC hot and pumped
in terrorists engaging the Indian security forces almost every day.
All these years
the Indian governments have taken a generous view of these “separatists”. They
have been allowed to pursue their own respective secessionist persuasions
largely unhindered as long as they did not threaten the Indian State’s
interests and security. They have been able to organise demonstrations and even
indiscriminate strikes affecting normal life and business on the slightest of
pretexts. The strikes were largely successful because of the violence that
follows non-compliance of their dictat. The Indian government was so soft that
it even allowed them to visit Pakistan for discussions with Pakistani leaders.
Yasin Malik, Chairman Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front, who advocates
separation of Kashmir from India, was seen during his last visit even sharing a
platform with Jehadi leader and patron of Lashkar e Toyeba, Hafiz Sayeed, who spits
venom against India and considers it his enemy and is known to have organised
the Mumbai terror attack of 2008. Any other country would have put Yaseen in
the jug on return but he was allowed to get back to Kashmir
Obviously, the
current dispensation in India is not inclined to take things lightly. It gave a
tough message to the Pakistan High Commissioner to either talk to the
government of India or talk to the “separatists”. It was made clear that Kashmir
was a bilateral issue and no third party could be introduced into the processes
of negotiations. Yaseen Malik’s belief that people of Kashmir have a right to
be part of any negotiated settlement cuts no ice. The then Maharaja of Jammu
& Kashmir, on insistence of Indian prime minister Nehru, had to consult the
most popular people’s leader Sheikh Abdullah even in those feudal days before
deciding to accede to India when the state was under imminent threat of
being overrun by the Pakistan Army-backed raiders. The stakes of Kashmiri
people were taken into account, therefore, at the very outset and they
eventually became Indian citizens. Repeated consultations with every rising generation
with harebrained ideas are neither feasible nor necessary. Besides, the
negotiations are between two countries; people of the state cannot figure
anywhere in the talks. The meet on 25th August, however, did not
even have Kashmir on the agenda.
The “separatist”
Hurriyat leaders feel that in calling off the talks the government has
“sidelined” the soft “Vajpayee approach”. The meetings with the High
Commissioner, they said, were aimed at “consolidating the different voices, the
way forward and how we can make a breakthrough”. The question, however, is who
do they represent apart from themselves? They think their calls for
demonstrations and shut-downs have decent response, but, most of the people
obey their dictat not voluntarily but out of fear for their lives. None would
join their demonstrations or participate in their calls for complete shut-downs
if the element of force of a few misdirected goons controlled by the Pakistan
Army’s intelligence wing the ISI is taken away from them. A vast majority of
Kashmiris desire a peaceful and normal life to carry on their respective activities
in a tranquil environment. In election after election they have voted in their
representatives in the Legislative Assembly where none of these “separatists”
ever registered their presence.
It had always
been felt that by being indulgent towards the “separatists” the Indian
government was attempting to strengthen the hands of the civilian government in
Pakistan. It was also felt that it would, in all probability, open up roads to a
peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue. Unfortunately, it is not so. From
what Prem Shankar Jha, a very senior journalist and a one-time intermediary of
the government of India with the Hurriyat “separatist” leaders, has written
(Op-ed, Times of India, August
21,2014) it is clear that they are nothing but
pawns in the hands of Pakistan’s ISI. One of them had confessed to him while
not pursuing the line suggested by Jha that if he and others met the Indian
prime minister before meeting the visiting Pakistani prime minister at Delhi (in
2005), he would be killed. Jha has asserted that whoever among them ever talked
of return of peace in the Valley or of resolution of the Kashmir problem within
the Indian Union had been eliminated by ISI agents.
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| Separatist leader of more virulent type, Jeelani |
Despite the
affront, the then Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, did not oppose the
“separatists” meeting the Pakistani Prime Minister. Nonetheless, it is
absolutely clear that being foot-soldiers of the ISI, the “separatists” would
never allow resolution of the so-called dispute simply because their masters in
Pakistan’s ISI do not wish it. They are proxies for it in Kashmir and the High
Commissioner gets the directives from it to meet them. Backed as they are by
the ISI, they would in no way be able to strengthen the civilian dispensation
in Pakistan and if they wished to do so they would just not be allowed.
Having regard to
all that has evolved over the years, the tough action of the current Indian
government cannot but be praised. It had extended the hand of friendship even
as it took office and yet the same has been veritably spurned. A rethink in the
matter, however, should only be on its own terms – putting the “separatists” in
their own place.
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