news details |
|
|
| J&K symbol of secular India and, hence, non-negotiable | | | RUSTAM
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, June 2: Had Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru rejected the advice of Lord Mountbatten, the free India's nominated Governor-General with no plenipotentiary powers, and not taken at his behest the issue of Pakistani aggression on Indian territory in Jammu and Kashmir to what Sardar Patel described as "Insecurity Council" (Security Council) and a disturber of peace", when the Pakistani soldiers were in "headlong retreat", things perhaps would have been totally different.
Islamabad has no locus standi whatever in Jammu and Kashmir except as the "aggressor", and the only outstanding issue that now remains to be resolved is for Pakistan to vacate "Azad Kashmir" and Northern Areas, which are under its illegal occupation. As this could not be achieved through peaceful means for 63 years, India has no other alternative but to explore other ways in order to take back the areas the Indians nations rightfully claims to be its.
If Turkey could invade Northern Iraq to "pursue Kurdish rebels" and if Israel could hold on to the strategic Golan Heights, which is undoubtedly Syrian or annex territories in Southern Lebnon as a security zone, why can't India occupy Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir and the Northern Areas? India must implement the unanimous resolution passed in the Parliament in 1994 and take concrete measures to evict trespassers from the Indian soil. Besides, India must tell Pakistan in clear terms that New Delhi would not tolerate any attempt to destabilize the country by aiding or abetting terrorism in the Valley and other parts of the country.
India, in addition, should explode the myth that Pakistani no-holds-barred propaganda blitz has fostered about Islamabad's interest in granting the right to self-determination to Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistani propaganda machinery has done all this to keep the world in the dark about the truth in this regard. Here is what Ghulam Mohammad Sadiq, a colleague of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah till August 1953, disclosed. According to him, prior to the Pakistani aggression, the National Conference sent him to Pakistan, where he urged its leaders to "recognize the democratic rights of the people for self-determination and to abide by the sovereign will of a free people on the question of association with either of the Dominions (India or Pakistan). I met Pakistan's Prime Minister and other ministers. But it was of no use." Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, another senior leader of the National Conference and who replaced Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah as Wazir-e-Azam of the state on August 9, 1953, asserted in November 1947: "The Pakistani leaders…have said that unless Sheikh Abdullah pledged to Pakistan that the National Conference would solidly vote for the state's accession to Pakistan, they could not agree to a referendum. The suggestion was totally unacceptable to the National Conference."
It was this animus the Pakistani rulers, including Jinnah and Liaqat Ali, had for the popular leaders of the Valley that was behind the "stubborn Pakistani rejection of all the US attempts in the fifties at demilitarization of Kashmir to prepare the ground for a plebiscite.
The conflict between India and Pakistan over Jammu and Kashmir constitutes one of the two highly sensitive issues, which have the potential of jeopardizing the country's unity and integrity and secular interests. The other is the highly irrational, rather dangerous, manner in which our policy-planners in New Delhi and opinion-makers have been viewing the political scene of Jammu and Kashmir or have been seeking to hold the border state aloof from New Delhi. And, ever since the state's accession to the Indian Dominion. The second issue is even more sensitive, which, if not handled properly and holistically, would seal the fate of Jammu and Ladakh and several religious and ethnic minorities in the state.
Hundreds and hundreds of political essays on the genesis of and solution to the Kashmir issue have appeared in national dailies and journals of repute during the past about 20 years. Nearly 300 books on the same theme and during the same period have also come out. All these works were an attempt to express deep anguish over what happened in Kashmir after 1989 and suggest measures designed to restore peace and normalcy there. Nothing wrong. It was only natural. (To be continued)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
STOCK UPDATE |
|
|
 |
| BSE
Sensex |
 |
| NSE
Nifty |
|
|
| |
CRICKET UPDATE |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
