Vol. XL No. 40 October 02, 2016
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HARYANA: Kashmir Solidarity Meeting Held in Rohtak

V B Abrol

SPEAKING in a voice thick with genuine emotion, Comrade Mohd Yusuf Tarigami, CPI(M) Central Committee member representing Kulgam for the fourth consecutive term in the J&K assembly,  made a passionate appeal to the government of India to urgently initiate unconditional talks with the Kashmiris if the state was to be saved from going beyond the point of no return.

Tarigami was speaking to a packed hall at Jasbir Memorial in Rohtak on September 19 evening on the conditions prevailing in the Valley today and possibilities of retrieving the situation. Listening with rapt attention to the lucid analysis of the Kashmir situation since independence, were mostly young girls and boys from the local MD University and various colleges.

The speaker informed the audience that while almost a million lives were lost, several million had been uprooted and incalculable loss of property had taken place in the rest of the country on the eve of partition, not a single incident of communal violence had taken place in Kashmir. He emotionally asked who was responsible for turning that heaven of sanity into a virtual hell where promising young lives whether of Kashmiris or the armed forces personnel were being snuffed out every day. This according to him was extremely painful. Why had more than five lakh army been posted in a relatively small state like Kashmir where peace was the way of live? What has this mindless policy achieved? While aging parents carry the bodies of their young children to the graveyard in the Valley, in the rest of the country the bodies of young soldiers and officers are brought home in wooden coffins. Surely, this is not the kind of death they were born for! And on a land described as the heaven on earth for its sheer natural beauty! Tarigami appealed that this insanity must be stopped.

He explained in detail that religion and contiguity were the criteria for inclusion in the near country of Pakistan at the time of partition. Kashmir was a Muslim majority state contiguous to what was to be Pakistan. However, it has a Hindu Dogra ruler Hari Singh who wanted merger neither with India nor with Pakistan when the country was being partitioned. But when invaders from Pakistan threatened to overtake Kashmir in 1948, under pressure from the popular leader of Kashmiris, Sheikh Abdullah, Hari Singh signed the instrument of Accession – not merger – to India with certain conditions that formed the basis for Article 370. Within six years of being instrumental in securing Kashmir’s accession to India, the popular Sheikh was ironically declared anti-national and had to spend the next 22 years of his life in jail with a short interlude of freedom in 1964. During those years with their leader away from his people, the conditions of accession were systematically eroded through New Delhi’s dummy chief ministers. Today the people of Kashmir ask why the foundations of accession were systematically damaged and eroded when they had rejected the two-nation theory and refused to accept religion as the basis for relationship between the two nationalities.

If Pakistani flags are flying in the same Kashmir, it is for New Delhi to introspect honestly, said Tarigami. He also appealed to the powers that be to understand and appreciate this aspect. The blame for what is happening in Kashmir today, he argued, lies squarely at the doorstep of the rulers in New Delhi. If they honestly try to get to the roots of the problem, these rulers will realise that the goings on in the Valley are not the doings of a handful of separatists with vested interests. The entire population is seething with anger at its betrayal and has turned rebellious.

Tarigami asserted that New Delhi must appreciate the intensity of anger of the people of Kashmir and assuage their hurt by talking to them without any pre-conditions by being generous. They should not treat Kashmiris as traitors, as unequal, but as their own children. They must try to find out a political solution to the problem by a heart-to-heart dialogue with the Kashmiris. Tarigami said, “I do not understand why this can’t be done? When the prime minister can visit the Pakistani prime minister uninvited for a family function, shares the fest with him and gives him expensive gifts despite the fact that Pakistan instigated terrorism in India and two nearly full-flown wars have been fought between the two countries besides minor and major skirmishes like Kargil, what is it that prevents him from holding a dialogue with the Kashmiris?”

Tarigami advised New Delhi to realise that children born in the Valley since 1990 or those who have grown up after that have seen nothing but gun-toting and trigger-happy army and para-military forces. Do they not deserve to breathe-in and enjoy the air of this beautiful Valley, he asked. Instead, the government follows the policy of blinding or killing young children who have not even entered their teens by firing pellet guns at them. The young Kashmiris, therefore, are thoroughly alienated today. New Delhi must own the responsibility for this alienation and try to apply the healing balm. He regretted that the prime minister has not uttered a single word sharing the pain of Kashmiris. He must realise that what happens in the rest of the country leaves an impact in the Valley. It is in this context that the antics of self-styled cow protectors should have been checked but they have been given a free rein.

According to Tarigami, the PDP-BJP government in the troubled state enjoys no credibility, rather it has further alienated the Kashmiris who feel that they have no one before whom they can place their grievances.

Tarigami said that it was not just the present government in Delhi that was to be blamed for the mass discontent in the Valley. The previous government had appointed a reconciliation commission under the chairmanship of journalist Dileep Padgaonkar. It visited Kashmir a number of times and interacted with various stake holders before handing over its report to the government. The fate of that report, which was not even placed before the parliament let alone discussed shows how non-serious New Delhi has been about the most serious problem facing the country. The same had happened to earlier such reports.

Despite the persistence of this bleak scenario, Tarigami ended his more than an hour long speech on an optimistic note. He said that although there was no dearth of elements who are trying to mislead the Kashmiris, there was also no dearth of those wanting to strengthen friendship with them. He was optimistic that the battle for strengthening relations with the state can still be won.