Zaheer Bhatti
IN releasing an officially redrawn map of Pakistan, Pakistan has done justifiably though belatedly what India at the very outset did illegitimately. Pakistan ought to have done it the moment it discovered the Nehru-Mountbatten-Radcliff manoeuvre extracting an instrument of accession from the Hindu ruler of Kashmir against its own declared formula and principle of Muslim majority States to go to Pakistan and allowing accession of the Muslim majority State of Kashmir to India. This is the unfinished Agenda of Partition which Pakistan ought to have pressed with the UN to force implementation by the departing British, or in the absence of an International Court of Justice at that time, taken suo motu action itself to correct the wrong and award Kashmir to Pakistan as a Muslim-majority State; more so as its agrarian lifeline rightly described as its jugular vein flowed out of Kashmir whose control could not be left to an upper riparian enemy country which never reconciled to the creation of Pakistan; as evidenced by its conspiracy to sever its Eastern Wing [now Bangladesh] which it openly brags about.
Pakistan has so far shown Kashmir as a disputed territory which ought to at best have been the UN position pending holding of the plebiscite to decide who the Kashmiris wished to join, when Nehru took the issue to the United Nations. If India which was an illegal occupant of the territory could show Kashmir as part of the Indian Union and get away with it, surely Pakistan was well within its right to integrate the State with Pakistan in the geographic and political map of the country and press its claim over the State by whatever means if the United Nations Security Council failed to implement its own 72-year old decision.
That a number of world bodies, human rights entities, think tanks and political groups were today voicing concern over Indian atrocities and the precarious human rights situation in Kashmir, such efforts and expressions even if out of genuine concern will remain a far cry, as they are looked upon by the suffering Kashmiris and Palestinians as mere cosmetics because they have little or no effect on leadership such as Modi, Trump and Netanyahu with an extremist mindset which knows not what human rights are, nor the plight and predicament of those suffering regardless of colour, cast or creed; be it in Kashmir or Palestine which are the epicentre of atrocities upon mankind.
“UN experts slam alarming rights situation in India-occupied Kashmir”, “US Congressman calls on India to guarantee HRs to Kashmiris,” “World asked to do more on Kashmir” are screaming news headlines besides Resumes now on the increase, like the US Annual Report on Indian abuses in Kashmir, not to talk of the latest Arun Ditti Roy’s voice in the wilderness expressing the antagonism of not just Muslims being invited by the BJP Government, but even of those considered Indian mouthpieces who had been jailed and disillusioned by the Indian mirage.
Despite being critical of several areas of the incumbent Pakistani Government, one has to admit that considering its forthright stance at the UN and its latest approach over the core issue of Kashmir has been far more articulate than any previous regimes which are guilty of criminal neglect, apathy and even compromise getting fooled by the hypocritical Indian confidence building measures such as ‘Aman Ki Asha’ ‘Samjhota Express’ and exchange of delegations, but never sitting across to discuss the core issue of Kashmir; as all of this being a time-buying tactic of the Indian Government; eventually translating its inherent hatred of Muslims and unfolding its Hindu extremist ideology of which it makes no more secret, by first demolishing the centuries old Babri Mosque in Ayodhya and building in its place a Hindu Ram Mandir, and scrapping special status of its occupied part of State of Kashmir which its own Constitution provided pending final resolution of the issue.
Shamshad Ahmad, one of the better known former Foreign Secretaries of Pakistan, while advocating a more pragmatic and aggressive diplomacy over the issue today, unfortunately still harbours the illusion that in bringing the Indians to the negotiating table in the late nineties in Nawaz Sharif’s tenure, his diplomatic initiatives had achieved a breakthrough never registered before or after that time. He claimed to have normalized relations with India without any compromise over Kashmir according to Nawaz Sharif’s vision, but in effect played into Indian hands in allowing them time without ever discussing the brass-tacks of the core issue. Everyone by now knows the fate of the Samjhota Express which accounted for burning alive Pakistani and Indian Muslims aboard it in Indian Gujarat, followed by a series of self-staged false flag operations within India and choreographing blame upon Pakistan designating it as a terror sponsoring country supported blindfolded by its allies in the West, and succeeding in diverting from the main issue bedevilling relations between two nuclear neighbours.
It is not only painful but regrettable that leaders in the Pakistani Opposition are foul-mouthing and loose-talking on the sensitive issue terming any moves by the Government as having sold out on Kashmir without looking themselves in the mirror having themselves provided heaps of material to the enemy and its media to exploit. Pakistani memory is not short over removal of Kashmir signboard of the Kashmir Highway on Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to Pakistan during Benazir’s tenure, Nawaz Sharif’s domestic overtures to Modi and Doval, and both PML(N) and the PPP; the main political parties of the country which are collectively responsible for the predicament in which Kashmiris are landed today; evidenced by appointment of the opportunist Maulana Fazlur Rehman as Chairman of the Kashmir Committee by both during their tenures who moved not a pebble to address the issue during almost a decade in office. They have no moral ground in the matter except admitting their faux pas as they all need to hang their heads in shame.
—The writer is a media professional, member of Pioneering team of PTV and a veteran ex Director Programmes.
