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| Kashmir issue a Muslim issue by any yardstick -- III | | |
RUSTAM
EARLY TIMES EPORT
JAMMU, Apr 1: The Mirwaiz says that his faction is fighting for the Kashmiri cause and the ongoing movement in Kashmir is indigenous. This is not true. He is neither fighting for the so-called cause of Kashmiri Muslims nor is the separatist movement in Kashmir indigenous. Actually, he, like other Kashmiri separatists, particularly the likes of Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Ayesa Andrabi, is fighting for the Pakistani cause. He has nothing to do with the common Kashmiri Muslims, who want a peace to return to Kashmir so that they could carry on their economic, social and political activities freely and serve their society.
That the Mirwaiz has been fighting for the Pakistani cause and speaking the Pakistani language can be seen from what he told media persons on Saturday (March 27). His statements that "his faction is preparing an agenda, which will be discussed with the Government of Pakistan during my visit to Islamabad" and that "New Delhi is blaming Pakistan for whatever happens in Kashmir" cannot have any other meaning. Both these statements indicate his commitment to the theocratic and dictatorial Pakistan, which otherwise is disintegrating very fast, with the people of the frontier areas up in arms against Islamabad and the people of Sindh opposing the Punjabi domination on the Pakistani polity and Army tooth and nail, notwithstanding the fact that President Asif Ali Zardari belongs to Sindh. The manner in which Islamabad is resorting to aerial bombardment in the frontier areas to quell revolt there should help everyone understand the nature of the problem Islamabad has been facing.
The role of the Mirwaiz is intriguing considering the fact that Islamabad has been maltreating the people of Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan and that the people of these illegally occupied areas have been deprived of their fundamental civil and political rights. He cannot be termed as a well-wisher of Kashmiri Muslims. The merger of Kashmir into Pakistan would mean its slavery and worst kind of exploitation.
His role is also intriguing in the sense that he knows it full well that Islamabad is interested in Jammu and Kashmir only because it wants to establish its control over the Indus waters so as to enrich the Pakistani economy and meet the irrigation needs of the people, especially the Pakistani Army in Punjab. Pakistani Generals own vast tracts of agricultural land in Punjab and they are the most powerful factor in Islamabad.
He also knows that the terrorists like Hafiz Saeed of Lashkar-e-Toiba and Syed Salahuddin of Hizbul Mujahideen, who are practically part and parcel of the Pakistani establishment, have, like the Pakistani political and military leadership, repeatedly underlined the need of Pakistani control over the Indus waters.
The very fact that the Mirwaiz consistently accuses New Delhi of blaming Pakistan for "whatever happens in Kashmir" shows the extent to which he is biased in favour of Pakistan. Indeed, he is a Pakistani spokesman.
His third-party-intervention formulation is also untenable. He talked of the third party's role in the Irish conflict. But Jammu and Kashmir is not Ireland. England had annexed Ireland forcibly. India has annexed Jammu and Kashmir. Jammu and Kashmir is the integral part of the Indian civilization and it became part of New Delhi under the same law under which Pakistan came into being. Besides, the Indian Army landed in Kashmir after the state had acceded to India and its objective was to punish, defeat and teach a lesson to the Pakistani intruders, regular or otherwise. To compare Jammu and Kashmir with Ireland would be murder of history and truth. Jammu and Kashmir is not an unfinished agenda of the communal partition of India. It was the British India and not the 560 odd princely states, including Jammu and Kashmir, which divided into India and Pakistan.
The Mirwaiz and others of his ilk would do well to look all these facts in the face and redesign their policy towards Pakistan, which not a friend of Kashmiri Muslims, and India, which has all along given a very special treatment to Kashmiri Muslims overlooking the interests of the non-Muslim minorities in the state, which have all through suffered, and continue to suffer, at the hands of the Kashmiri leadership. The best thing for him to do would be to give up his separatist and sectarian agenda and join the national mainstream, which is democratic, liberal and accommodating. Even otherwise, he has no other option but to recognize the stark realities as they exist in the state and one of the realities is that he has been seeking to achieve the unachievable. (Concluded) |
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