00000000 Jaya Prakash Narayan s speech at Jammu and Kashmir State People s Convention.

00000000 Jaya Prakash Narayan s speech at Jammu and Kashmir State People's Convention.

I am thankful to Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah for asking me to inaugurate this important Convention. As you perhaps know, I have come after some hesitation, indeed, after an initially negative decision. Two main considerations finally persuaded me to come. One, my affection and regard for Sheikh Saheb, and, two, the hope that my plain words, spoken from the heart, might on the one hand, help you to reach a practical decision, and on the other, influence Indian public opinion also to take a realistic and constructive view of the situation.

Only once before have I had the pleasure of visiting your State. That was in January 1947, when Mr. Ram Chandra Kak was Prime Minister and Sheikh Saheb was in prison with some of his colleagues. Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad was then working underground in Delhi, so as to keep in touch with the national leaders and help the Kashmir movement from there. It was he who had planned that first visit of ours-then too my wife was with me, and he had accompanied us as far as Rawalpindi, from where we travelled in the company of the late Munshi Ahmed Din and some workers of the National Conference.

That was a very brief visit, as unfortunately the present one is going to be. On that occasion all that I was able to do was to have discussions with some of the workers who were conducting the movement in the absence of their leaders, and to make a public speech in my very inadequate Urdu, it was, I believe, at Mujahid Manzil.

I visit the State again after an interval of 21 years and 9 months-a long period full of fateful events. period, even without visiting the State, I have tried to keep in But during this touch with the changing situation here. I have also tried during all this time to look at the Kashmir problem-as indeed at all other problems-from the point of view of certain basic political principles and values that I hold dear. At this Convention too I shall try to do the same. Perhaps I should add that in the past 21 years, though my mode of political action has undergone change and development, those principles and values have remained for me unaltered. In fact, it was in order to pursue those basic convictions more effectively that I altered my mode of political functioning.