Time to learn from Mistakes

When it comes to New Delhi all the agreements have been made only to break them.
 

The situation we have witnessed lately is not an emotional outburst as some would make us believe. I think it was volcanic in many respects. Accumulated anger, New Delhi’s continued political blunders, ignoring people’s democratic aspirations and presuming that putting the real issue under carpet, offering occasional doles or telling people that development and good governance were the answers all these and many more decisions taken in the name of restoring normalcy ultimately burst the dams of patience and you had almost a million people on the streets. An average Kashmiri youth felt insulted and humiliated when Azad called every Kashmiri corrupt or declared to a borrowed crowd from New Delhi that Tulip Garden was the ultimate that had brought peace and harmony to the State and that there was nothing like a Kashmir Issue and it was only in the minds of a vested interest! As one Kashmir watcher has said in an article that New Delhi never had a clear Kashmir policy today, yesterday or the day before. But it could not have been so bankrupt politically to send a political novice like Azad to our State who neither understood the sensitivity of the State nor could he govern effectively. There are only two assumptions – either he was too naïve to fall into the trap spread by the PDP or he was an accomplice in creating a situation that has resulted in forty graves, several hundred maimed young and old, brought a divided APHC together once again and created a permanent gulf between Jammu and Kashmir. I think both the PDP and Congress have to answer more questions than they can perhaps answer.
 Universally, it is believed that militancy has a certain age- twenty is the maximum, but this should make New Delhi mandarins sit up and take notice that out of the million people that we saw on the roads chanting “Hum Kya Chahte” more than 90% were from the 18-25 age group which means they must have been between 1-7 when the insurgency started and have been brought up seeing death, destruction, violence, physical abuse continuous oppression, scandals and political chicanery. With information super highway under their finger tips and the whole world opening before their eyes, there is both hate and anger about what they see around themselves. I have argued with many of my friends and many of their opinions have merit. For instance one of my friend asserts that the State had surrendered only Defense, foreign Affairs, transport and Communication to the Union and it has failed in all the three. First, they lost 1/3rd of the State in 1948 and could do nothing. Again when more than 40000 Kms of our territory were given away to China, New Delhi did not tell us sorry we could not defend your territory. Secondly, they gave a pledge in the UN that “The people’s wishes would be determined by an impartial plebiscite” that was never honored, and thirdly, that they could not even take measures all these sixty two years that would keep our supply line free from any obstruction. Tauntingly, he asks me, had there been an alternate route would you be worried today that Kashmir was without essential life saving drugs for one month or poor people had to survive only on the greens. I don’t have an answer.
 With information super highway open to all, it is amazing how news has been filtering through minute by minute. The internet is abuzz with discussions on the issue and people seem so well informed about the problem and its background. A guy from US while reacting to my blog, (http//: kashmirleader.blogspot.com) asks some pertinent questions that will perhaps never be answered. I quote him”Delhi has all along treated Kashmir as its colony or else why would they have toppled Sheikh Abdullah’s elected Government in 1953, killing 30,000 people? Why did they frame him and his associates in a false case for 14 years and then withdraw it only to enter into an Accord in 1975 that was broken within 24 hours? Why did Indira Gandhi dismiss Farooq Abdullah’s Government in 1984? Knowingly that Kashmir has been a very sensitive State, why did they appoint that infamous butcher of Turkman Gate as State’s Governor and facilitate the installation of a puppet regime that imposed curfew for months? And when people reacted to those machinations, much against the saner advice, he was again brought as Governor only to target leaders like Mirwaiz Farooq, Abdul Gani Lone, Moulana Masoodi and massacring thousands of innocent Kashmiris in cold blood. Should we not be asking WHO was behind all those negative decisions right through 1953? I again have no answers.
 Another fellow reminds me about that historical oledge by Jawaharlal Nehru in the Lok Sabha - “...Ultimately, I say this with all deference to this Parliament - the decision will be made in the hearts and minds of the men and women of Kashmir; neither in this Parliament, nor in the United Nations nor by anybody else”. The problem with the Indian rulers is that they have refused to accept the reality that Kashmir continues to be on the UN agenda and they are committed to ascertain the wishes of the people. Yes, an “out of the box solution” was possible had they been a little farsighted encouraged Musharraf and zeroed in on one of his various formulae. The way the ‘democratic Pakistan’ is shaping up now I wonder if any ruler will have time to even discuss Kashmir. There is not a single public man in the State belonging to any political hue who does not understand this reality.
 The erosion of autonomy has been a systematic process that was consciously started from August 1953 when Sheikh Abdullah was dismissed and arrested, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed was installed and the trampling process started. When he resisted, he was fired and dumped and another willing incumbent G. M. Sadiq put on the saddle and “start the process of integration”. Some of the documents that have been made public lately suggest that New Delhi never meant what it said and at every level cheated on the people, cheated the leaders and in the process cheated themselves. Nehru’s several pronouncements in the Parliament, Sir B.N. Rao’s declaration in the UN, joint declarations between Nehru-Bogra, Nehro Choudhry, Nehru-Ayub, Shastri-Ayub, Indira Bhutto, Rajiv-Benazir,Musharaf Bajpai or Musharaf Manmohan have all been exercises in futility. The bottom line being - “Just drag it”. Yes, after the 1971 War people felt that Pakistan was disintegrating and the Indira Abdullah Accord gave some hope that New Delhi might relent and adopt a pro-federation policy. But the villains of peace acted swiftly to sabotage even that effort. The rest is history. We seem to have reached a stage where a Kashmiri wants India to hear what the truth is and not what suites her fancies. It is not the first time that people have reacted the way they have. We have come a long way from Advani dumping the Autonomy Report even without a cursory glance. Kashmiris have suddenly started digging up the archives and have too many arguments in their favour now than before. One should not be surprised if a large section insists on the grant of self-determination and on as promised on 24 January 1957 or another UN Resolution stating that any prior action by GOI would not constitute a final disposition of the State. Wasn’t it around that time that Govind Ballabh Pant paid a hurried visit to Srinagar and declared that the State of Jammu and Kashmir was an integral part of India and there could be no question of a plebiscite. This infuriated the Kashmiris to the large extent, and clashes started in Kashmir. It was the time India and China went to war on account of a border dispute in the Ladakh region. At the end of the war China occupied almost 40,000 kms of our land in the Aksai-chin and Demochok region. In December of the same year, another 5180 sq. kms were taken over by China at Shaksgam in the Northern Areas. It’s an irony that the country our Maharaja had surrendered our defense to under the Instrument of Accession did not blink even an eye lid- the territory they were supposed to defend! Another uprising we witnessed in 1965 when Sheikh Sahib was arrested on his return from Mecca. Enroute he had met with the Chinese Prime Minister, Mr Chou En Lai and the Algerian President Mr. Ben Bella. The arrest had angered people violently and the widespread protests erupted in the entire valley. The Plebiscite Front observed a sit-in for Sheikh Sahib’s release and many workers were arrested. New Delhi could not resist the international pressure and it culminated in the Kashmir Accord signed by G.Parthasarathy and Mirza Mohammad Afzal Beg on behalf of Indira Gandhi and Sheikh Sahib respectively. The Accord had unequivocally committed GOI for restoring autonomy. When it comes to New Delhi all the agreements have been made only to break them. 
 The next step India took was to alter the appointment of the Sadar-e-Riyasat, who till then was elected by the legislature. After 1965, the head of the J&K State became the appointee of the President of India; this was the time when the office of the Sadar-e-Riyasat was transformed to that of the Governor. Karan Singh was elected Sadar-e-Riyasat for the first time in 1951 , the reason that was put forth was that Karan Singh at that time was already the incumbent sovereign as his father, the King had left the State in mid-’49.. Although protest were held in Kashmir against Articles 356 and 357 of the Indian Constitution which was extended to the state, by virtue of this act Centre could assume the government of the State and exercise its legislative powers or giving emergency powers to the President in the event of the failure of the Constitutional machinery. This power has been exercised more than once since the application of Article 356—in 1986 and in 1990. This according to observers has been the basis of distrust of people of Kashmir towards Indian government. 
 The erosion continued, and in 1958 the jurisdiction of the Controller and Auditor General was applied in J&K when Articles 149 and 150 and Entry 76 of List 1 of Schedule Seven of the Indian constitution were extended to the State. After that the amalgamation of the State Customs Departments with Central Excise and Customs, the sharing of proceeds of taxes and other levies as laid down in Part Twelve of the Indian Constitution. As for officers of All-India services like the IAS and the IPS, who started getting inducted into J&K in the early sixties, no great benefit accrues to the state with their induction because officers from J&K were being side lined.
 And now finally, Kashmir is tense, the coming few days will make a lot of difference to an average Kashmiri. It can go either ways. Like they say, “A man’s country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle. If you want to win the hearts and minds of the people than autonomy has to be granted, it is not something that we are begging for; it is something that has been stolen.
Daily Greater Kashmir .