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| No meeting with Pak Premier, no interlocutor for J&K | | Strong messages | | Neha
JAMMU, Sept 24: Two developments of great import took place on Tuesday. Both suggested that New Delhi's policy towards Pakistan and Kashmiri separatists has undergone a substantial change. If on the one hand, the Indian Foreign Office (IFO) said that there were no plans for a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) during the Modi's forthcoming visit to the United States, on the other hand, the Union Home Minister rejected outrightly the idea of appointing any interlocutor for Jammu and Kashmir state.
The Prime Minister will visit the United States from September 26 to 30. There he will have as many as "35 engagements" during this short trip. Modi will follow the "neighbours-first policy" and meet with the Sri Lankan President and Prime Ministers of Bangladesh and Nepal. That Modi will deviate from the "neighbours-first policy" in the case of his Pakistani counterpart is a clear message to Pakistan that if Islamabad wished serious business with India, it has no other option but to stop exporting terror into India and talk sense as far as Jammu and Kashmir was concerned. It was on August 18 this year that the new Government in Delhi made it loud and clear that Jammu and Kashmir was a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan countries and if this issue was to be resolved amicably, Pakistan had to adopt a reasonable approach towards the state, an integral part of India. That day, New Delhi cancelled the scheduled Foreign Secretary-level talks between the two countries and this strong step was taken following the provocative meetings between the Pakistani High Commission and the discredited Hurriyat leaders at Delhi. The talks were scheduled to be held at Islamabad on August 25. The latest decision of the Government of India to ignore Nawaz Sharif should also be viewed in the light of the fact that the Pakistan Premier would reportedly rake up Kashmir issue during his address to the UNGA. Sharif will address the UNGA on September 25 and the Indian Prime Minister a day later. All this should be construed as a major development and call the bluff of Pakistan that talks of peaceful relations between the two countries and export terror to India simultaneously to bleed our nation.
If what the IFO on Tuesday said could be considered a very tough message to Islamabad, what the Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the same day was also a clear message to the Hurriyat leadership in Kashmir. Reflecting on the need or otherwise of appointing interlocutor, he said: "How long can we go on appointing interlocutors? The practices of the past which are non-productive must be discontinued. Therefore, I am not in favour of appointing interlocutors for Jammu and Kashmir. Now the time has come to have a rethink on appointing interlocutors. Having said this, let me clarify that I am not averse to talks. But I am also not in favour of non-productive talks which are carried out by anti-nationals to burnish their own political image in either Jammu and Kashmir or the Northeast". He made these significant comments in an interview to a fortnighly magazine "Governance Now". His unambiguous remark that the Hurriyat leadership was a bunch of anti-nationals should clear the air and suggest that New Delhi no more considered the likes of Geelani, Mirwaiz, Malik and Shah important factors in the state's political situation.
That the approach of the present Union Home Minister was different from that of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and former Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister L K Advani could be seen from the fact that the BJP-led NDA Government (1999-2004) had appointed two interlocutors for the state and they were KC Pant and Arun Jaitley (presently Minister for Finance and Defence). It was also different from that of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who, like his immediate predecessor, had appointed interlocutors for the state.
Manmohan Singh had appointed a group of three interlocutors in October 2010 to look into causes of unrest in the Valley and suggest ways and means which restore peace in the disturbed Valley. The interlocutors were Dilip Padgaonkar, Radha Kumar and MM Ansari. They had given undue importance to the Hurriyat leaders, recommended that Article 370 be made a permanent feature of the Indian Constitution, suggested a constitutional committee should be set up to review all the central laws extended to the state after August 9, 1953 and made several other unsettling recommendations.
The developments which unfolded on Tuesday should be inspiring both for the people of Jammu province and Ladakh region and various religious and ethnic minorities in the state, including the internally-displaced Kashmiri Hindus. For, they were fed up with the Kashmir policy, as also of Pakistan policy of the earlier dispensations in New Delhi. Their grouse against New Delhi was that it all along ignored the nationalist constituency in the state in its desperate bid to appease Pakistan and Kashmiri separatists and votaries of greater autonomy. All in all, it can be said that the new Government has appreciated the actual ground situation in the state and it augurs well for the future of the state and the nation as a whole. |
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