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| Let Mandate 2014 be a referendum on J&K | | |
Early Times Report
JAMMU, Mar 16: Why should a nation of 1300 million people suffer perpetually for one of its constituents that doesn't constitute even one percent of its size, by area or population? In asking that question, one has to bear in mind a shrubbery of questions: Why do nations die in defending literally the square inches of their sovereign domain? Its clear that any country's national ego is as dominating as its sovereignty and national security.
Having said that, India or Pakistan wouldn't budge an inch from their respective stated positions on Jammu and Kashmir. They have not and they will not. Now that the American hegemony stands exposed and nobody on Earth would listen to the Western harangues on democracy, liberty, human rights in the face of their post-9/11 repressions, nothing is going to change in this part of South Asia. War alone would perhaps prove to be decisive but post-1998, both the neighbours have become nuclear and a military clash is obviously no option.
Even when India's position on the world diplomatic front was weak and its economy was not a challenge to Europe and America, it didn't acquiesce into the demands of Plebiscite. Mainly the reason is that no country, howsoever weak, would like to see an outside agency like the UN hold a referendum on its soil. In other words, it is a fact that the UN resolution of 1948 and 1949 have never been implemented in the last 65 years nor would they ever be in future.
No less a person than the UN Secretary General has made it clear that the UN resolution on J&K would be implemented only when there is a consensus between India and Pakistan. Would that consensus ever emerge between the two nuclear neighbours? "Never" is the only answer.
In the last 24 years of the separatist movement in Kashmir, militants and the Pakistan-based separatists have turned all elections, held by Election Commission of India, in Jammu and Kashmir as a "referendum" with their anti-election campaign. To begin with, they held the voter back, arguably on gun point, in all elections since those of the Lok Sabha in April 1996. In the Assembly elections same year, Army, paramilitary forces and Police mobilized the electorate out of their home and facilitated their casting a vote.
While the militants kept threatening, harassing, kidnapping, torturing and killing voters and contesting candidates for their participation in all the subsequent elections till 2002, Police, military and paramilitary forces went strictly by Newton's Third Law of Motion - 'To every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction'. "Anarkali, Shahanshah tumhein zinda nahirehne denge aur ham tumhein marne na dengen" became a metaphorical description of the predicament of the Kashmiri people. The Hurriyat and the militants counted the "boycott" vote as Kashmir's aspiration for its merger with Pakistan, or at least its separation from India. On the other hand, the heavy voter turnout was celebrated as "India's victory in the referendum" by many from Farooq Abdullah to Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Sonia Gandhi.
When finally there was huge response and a remarkable turnout in the Assembly elections of 2008, followed by the Lok Sabha elections of 2009 and the Panchayat elections of 2011, the Hurriyat, the militants and their perpetually supportive intellectual brigade began the refrain of "day to day problem", "administrative problems" and "sadak, bijli, pani". Omar Abdullah added to its "sehat and taleem". However, when the same politician became Chief Minister, rather than addressing the mundane problems - roads, electricity, water, healthcare, education - he began talking of Kashmir's "international political dimension".
This vicious circle will never end. In absence of a scientific mechanism, the separatists will always hail the voters' absence as their "victory" in a referendum. They will include even the ill and those overseas as theirsupporters of "boycott" and votaries of an Independent Kashmir or Islamic Republic. When there will be high turnout, they will either conveniently dismiss it as the result of "coercion by Police and Army" or a peoples'realization of the "day to day problems".
Finally, the scientific mechanism has been provided by the Election Commission of India which, under the orders of the Supreme Court of India, introduced the NOTA (None Of The Above) button in all the Electronic Voting Machines. If the Kashmiri separatists and their political and militant leaders are at all amenable to reason and logic, why should they not accept it as the referendum key and call upon the Kashmiris to press the NOTA key? India should have no hesitation to accept the result. If over 50% of the voters press NOTA button, it should go by the separatists' demand. If more than 50% voters vote for one or the other candidate, it is high time the separatists and their patron across the border should call it a day in Kashmir. |
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