A Tangled Affair

Gopi Nath Raina Editor Koshur Samachar June 1992

Some recent weeks have witnessed political currents growing in pace and volume over the question S of Kashmir. Yet their content, direction and thrust seem to be leading nowhere except more confusion.

Happily, an article by the CPI top leader Shri Har Kishan Singh Surjeet appearing in the "Hindu of June 6 last opened with a very refreshing recognition and humanistic expression of concern over the inhuman conditions of living to which the migrants from the valley have been consigned.

Shri Surjeet was obviously representing the views of his party as much as of his own. We and, indeed, the common citizens of this country cannot be too grateful for this. At long last one important and influential all-India party has broken its silence on this tragic aspect through its responsible leader and a respected Indian citizen who has often expressed his anguish over the other deteriorating and menacingly challenging conditions facing the nation in Kashmir.

We sincerely hope that all other parties (BJP has of course, been in the forefront all along) national and regional, will follow this lead and will no longer remain mute witnesses to the sordid and heartless unconcern with which the unfortunate refugees have been treated in their own country. In fact, the same studied silence generally of the opinion leaders, the intellectual classes and, most of all, much of the media all these last three tragically eventful years has appeared to objective observers as an inexplicable and ignoble conspiracy.

A day will, no doubt, arrive when this painful story will come to be recorded as history and dispassionately analysed. Then the present senseless silence and the unconcern and open antipathy by government in relation to the victims of the terrorist-secessionist enemies of the country will be denounced and condemned as anti-national acts. And these will surely be counted as factors that have not only been compounding the agony of the uprooted but also the complexity of the web the country's leadership, over the decades, has woven around itself.

The forced exodus of the blameless Kashmiris and its unspeakable aftermath is not only a shameful blot on the Indian government and the people responsible for bringing about this situation. It portends the death of secularism and the tearing to shreds the country's fabric of integration so tenuously held together against the rapidly increasing ferocity of the assaults on it from within and outside India.

Beyond this he's the basic question of how to end the insurgency and devastation and find an Be honourable solution acceptable to all and establish a stable normalcy. This brings forth an accumulating mass of contradictory opinions and views on the one side. On the other are the loud, unrelenting and escalating demands of the insurgents, their cohorts and promoters. One major group of them look at "independence" while another would have nothing short of annexing the State to Pakistan.

The Indian rulers do not give any evidence of having decided on a set goal. Nor have they taken the nation or Parliament into any meaningful way. Most of the time they only react, meekly and defensively, to a situation evolved by the enemy. They have not developed the power or the skill to steal the initiative. Clearly theirs is a response paralysed by the political picture of their without much moral or practical reason. Confusion permeates everything. The result is that each has his pet solution and sticks to it at any cost.

Take for example the idea of going back to the pre-1953 situation being toyed with by some worthies. What is the significance or sanctity of 1953? Is it anything more than an individual, however tall, having been removed from power for his misdeeds by his own party How can that be characterised as a watermark?

B had acted as a monarch. Kashrugs, Muslims and Hindus together, had made many sacrifices between November 1947 and August 1953 Sheikh Abdullah the Prime Minister of the State to be rid of autocracy. The Sheikh had then got the Maharaja dethroned only to become the Sultan himself And he had effectively blocked the surging forces of liberty in India ever to touch him; and India had acquiesced. In effect it was a conspiracy of convenience to let an insular island grow within the democratic mass land of India.

Was it then regressive and reactionary for the State when it was opened after 1953 to the Indian with of justice, equality and democracy for the people at large? By insulating it again in going back to pre-1953, is it a progressive, liberating step in a world where the powerful and impregnable insular systems and individuals have crumbled to dust?

Some perceive the grant of autonomy as the ultimate solution One may grant this as born of good intentions. But it also betrays ignorance in that Kashmir enjoyed de facto autonomy all the time, with all rights and no responsibilities, which itself provided the ground for the present ruination to breed.

Then, again, the Home Minister Shri Chavan harps on the theme of the "political process" and the Prime Minister Shri Rao says he is waiting for the appropriate time to set it in motion. Both pronouncements are nebulous and undefined, creating further confusion. Whatever is to be made of the "political process-fresh elections, or old Assembly being brought to life and then put in suspended animation only to help the members to suck out more juice from an abandoned dead body?

If there are elections, will the lakhs of migrants be enabled to contest and vote, and how and where? There are a million tangled questions that defy any answers.

Government anywhere has the principal charge of protecting the interests of the nation and its people If it fails, it cannot escape the blame and consequences of a betrayal. As the situation prevails today, the government should discard its dithering and act boldly and courageously with the appropriate degree of responsibility. Any delay in moving resolutely can be perilous and spell doom. The best course available to it now is to remit the problem to Parliament for a serious and purposeful discussion in a democratic manner, and free from the trammels of party and electoral interests. It should be a national debate informed by the position, honour, dignity and integrity of the nation. Let us then secure the objective set by the national consensus with all the might at our great country's command.

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Courtesy: Gopi Nath Raina Editor Koshur Samachar and June 1992, Koshur Samachar