INDIAN HYPOCRISY

AND ITS HYPOCRITICAL "ANYTHING SHORT OF AZADI" OFFER

TANVIR SADIQ JUSTIFIES

About a month back, a story was making rounds in the media that the Indian Home Secretary G.K. Pillai had promised "anything short of azadi" to the separatist leaders. Not surprisingly, the Hurriyat leaders quickly rejected that overture reiterating their demand of self-determination for Kashmiris. Conversely, not very long ago, our elected government sent a well thought out, thoroughly studied report to the Central Government which recommends autonomy for Kashmir, the essence of which is very similar to what G.K. Pillai is offering the separatists. I am referring to the Saghir report. The Center has for all practical purposes stacked away that report in cold storage. Why is it that the offer of "anything short of Azadi" is good enough for the Centre to offer the separatist leaders but when Omar talks about the same, it gets bogged down in red tape by the same Central politicians?For anyone keeping track of Centre - State relations in Kashmir, this puzzling attitude of the Central government comes as no surprise. People here have always been suspicious of the tall promises made by the Central government, and those suspicions are warranted for obvious reasons.


Let me not dig out old skeletons from the closet, but it suffices to mention that the Centre doesn’t exactly have a pristine and spotless record when it comes to their dealings with Kashmir. In this day and age, when any sort of information, classified or otherwise, is easily accessible by anyone with access to the internet, it is to the Central Government's own benefit to deal with Kashmir with candor and in the most open and sincere way possible. And that means implementing the recommendations of the Autonomy Report soon, and not to use the this issue as some instrument to persuade the separatists to forget about separatism, because that is not going to happen. The Central Government has certainly figured by now that the separatists are not interested in autonomy. So, when the Centre keeps repeating this shenanigan by offering it to the Hurriyat time and again, it simply exposes the Centre's lack of resolve toward Kashmir.



People risked a lot when they came out to vote in the last election. It's worth recalling that more than 60% of Kashmir's electorate came out to vote then. It wouldn't be far fetched to claim that many were perhaps drawn by Omar’s promise of seeking autonomy for Kashmir. Therefore, if there's anyone the Centre should be talking about "anything short of azadi" to, it should be with the current government led by Omar Abdullah. Making this offer to the separatists is pointless and shows the less than earnest attitude of the Centre in recognizing the grievances of Kashmiris. Separatists are not demanding autonomy for Kashmir, however, the current elected government is. The current government--and all previous NC governments--campaigned on a platform of seeking maximum autonomy for Kashmir; therefore, people could be forgiven to assume that the reason the Centre keeps talking about autonomy with the separatists is just so the Centre gets an excuse to shelve the autonomy issue every time the separatists reject it. But this only makes the Centre seem guileful. What the separatists are demanding and what the NC Government is demanding of the Centre are mutually exclusive.

The Saghir report is not the first such autonomy report presented to the Centre. On June 26, 2000, a similar report called the State Autonomy Committee (SAC) report was submitted to the centre by the NC government of the time led by Dr. Farooq Abdullah. That report was accepted and passed by the J&K State Assembly on April 08, 2000 along with an important amendment moved in the House by my father, Mr. Sadiq Ali, and two other legislators Mr G.M.Bawan and Mr Shafi Bhat. Instead, to nobody's surprise, the BJP government of the time led by Mr Vajpayee, lost no time to ignore and reject that resolution. Interestingly, all the three politicians were sidelined conspicuously.


The separatist sentiment in Kashmir cannot be wished away by the Central government, nor do I see it dying down in the near future. The issues of either seeking independence or demanding autonomy for Kashmir are two entirely different issues. By offering autonomy to the separatists while ignoring the same demands of an elected government, the Centre's intentions are unclear and suspicious.