Editorial India relying on guns in Kashmir Speaking at a session of the Kashmir Council in Muzaffarabad, where he earlier arrived for a one-day visit, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said Thursday that Pakistan would talk to Kashmiri leaders before it enters into dialogue with India. Replying to India accusation of Pakistans agencies’ involvement in extremism in Kashmir, he said, is an utter lie because the country itself is “the biggest victim of terrorism. However, he was satisfied with the international communitys acknowledgement of Indias biased attitude towards its neighbour. He went on to say that it was our fundamental belief that the Kashmir issue should be resolved through dialogue, and the international community must play its role in bringing India to the dialogue table on the issue. Indeed, it was a just stand the Prime Minister has reiterated. Being the stakeholder in the conflict, Islamabad has every right to take the direct victims on board, hence Indian stance sounds illogical and irrational when it objects to Pakistan’s contact with the Kashmiri leaders. More importantly, Pakistan and India cannot leave aside the Kashmiris when the question of their settlement comes to the negotiating table. And if at all, India believes that all is well within the Valley then there is no point to deploy 700,000 troops there. Mass military deployment, in fact, is meant to suppress the feelings of the people living in there. Since the partition of the Subcontinent, India had spent massive resources on using military might to gain control of the region sans success. Having a long history of bloodshed, the hardcore government has not learnt a lesson rather pursuing policy of warmongering, pushing her troops to rely on their guns—a policy New Delhi must revisit as soon as possible, the states, having nuclear connotations, can push the region towards a bigger disaster. India is a bigger state yet she cannot back out of the commitment she had agreed to the UNO. It must respect the UN Resolution for holding plebiscite in the Valley to determine the fate of Kashmiris. Instead of doing that she raised objection to the Kashmiri leaders’ consultative session with the Pakistani High Commissioner in New Delhi. Such consultations with the Kashmiri leadership ahead of important engagements with India have been the standard practice over the years. In fact, she has denied the Pakistan’s right to have access to Kashmiris, dashing the hopes for initiate the stalled process for normalization bilateral ties between the two states. Constantly, the Indian government had adopted the policy of confrontation with Pakistan, that subverting the rapprochement between the two countries. The world leaders should take cognizance of the shift in Indian policy, urging the New Delhi not to create irritants in holding meaningful talks with Islamabad to ease prevailing border tension and ceasefire violations that the two states accuse each other. Secondly, India accuses Pakistan of interference in Kashmir and Islamabad accuses New Delhi of fueling insurgency in Balochistan. Certainly, the displeasure does exit on both sides of the border that can only be reduced if the two governments decide to sit on the negotiating tabling, giving diplomatic channels a chance to iron out irritants undermining the sincerity of the constructive diplomatic efforts. The inflicting terrorism on Pakistan is an old Indian policy that dismembered the country in 1971 but it cannot repeat the same now. Thus she should immediately stop the international border violations rather should take steps to minimize hostility between the two states. Taking it for granted that the armed forces can spill over the blood but cannot establish peace hence the leadership of the two states should lock themselves in peaceful means to reduce the trust-deficit which is dragging the two neighbours to war.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 06:48:43 +0000
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