| Gen Bakshi wants BJP Govt to act fast, tough in Kashmir | | Time is running out | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, Apr 20: Mejor General (Retd) GD Bakshi, who has been putting things in perspective since years now and disapproving of the New Delhi's policy towards Pakistan and Kashmir, the other day, urged the Government of India to abandon its soft approach and adopt a pro-active approach to save Kashmir for India and India itself.
He said: "In military terms, we (army) judge situations by the end results…As a military man, may I tell you, when I tell you that the end result is (this): in 1990, we saw 350-400 thousand people of a particular denomination (in this case Kashmiri Hindus) driven out of Jammu and Kashmir. Circa 2016, instead of seeing anybody go back, we have seen 2,000 more non-Kashmiri students driven out for waving the National Flag, for shouting slogans about the nation..."
General Bakshi, a patriot of patriots, didn't stop just there. He further said: "The problem is the battle of narratives.
The best way to solve a problem is to face it squarely. Don't push it under the carpet. We are losing the battle of narratives. The narrative is now in Delhi; it is in Hyderabad… The narrative is in Jadavpur University in Calcutta. We are facing an Arab Spring...There is an attempt, and there are foreign elements involved in it, to question your nationalism. Forget about the battle in J&K; fight the battle here in Delhi; fight the battle in JNU…You cannot separate these narratives. When somebody shouts here, 'Afzal hum sharminda hain, tere qaatil zinda hain (Afzal, we're ashamed that your killers are alive),' iska matlab kya hua, saahab? Aap keh rahe hain ki Supreme Court ke judge jinhon ne yeh sentence diya, abhi tak ham ne unko maara nahin. Unko maar daalo! (What does this mean? You're saying that the Supreme Court judges who have given this sentence (to Afzal Guru) should be killed. Kill them!) If this is not incitement for violence, what else is?"
In other words, General Bakshi, who fought for India in Jammu and Kashmir for several years and witnessed his soldiers making supreme sacrifices for the national cause in the state, didn't mince words. He warned the authorities that the nation would break into pieces in case they continued to deal with secessionists in Kashmir and elsewhere in the manner they have been dealing. Sad, there appears none in New Delhi who would appreciate what the General said about the dangers which confront the nation in general and J&K in particular. The main point is that we have in the country a political class which is fighting against its own country and strengthening the anti-national forces.
The BJP is no different. It has two concepts of nationalism, one that it applies to J&K and the other it wants the rest of the country to appreciate. The BJP wants stringent action against those in the rest of India who raised anti-India slogans but as far as Kashmir is concerned, it says waving Pakistani flags, shouting anti-India slogans and organizing anti-India events is not a new phenomenon. The BJP wants the media, especially the electronic media, not to highlight what the Kashmiri separatists at the behest of Pakistan and other hostile nations do in Kashmir to challenge the Indian state. |
|
