news details |
|
|
| No instant solution: Valley only a small portion of J&K, says Padgaonkar | | | NEHA
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Nov 29: "Just listening to people in Srinagar or Jammu is not enough. Depending on whom we talk and in what part of the state, perceptions are different as all three main regions (Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh) have different problems. The Kashmir Valley is only a small portion of the whole. I agree that militancy and extremism is concentrated in the Valley. But the consensus has to be acceptable and shared by all regions. The complexities of the situation are such that you need to be patient. There are no set of formulas or instant solutions. I can't say what is the prevailing or majority opinion. There are people who have publicly been asking for the state to be merged with Pakistan. Those voices, incidentally, are becoming less loud because obviously they are seeing what's happening in Pakistan. I don't know what trilateral negotiations are. We will abide by the Shimla agreement, which calls for a bilateral discussion between India and Pakistan. I do not want to get mired in semantics. You can call it dispute, problem or imbroglio…"
Whose views are these? Believe it or not, these are the views of interlocutor on J&K Dileep Padgaonkar. He expressed these views during an interview to the correspondent of the Gulf News on November 27. Has Padgaonkar not taken a complete U-turn and expressed views which are inconsistent with the views he had expressed in Kashmir during his first visit to the Valley in the third week of October as an interlocutor? Yes, it is a complete U-turn. In Kashmir, he had termed the Kashmir issue as a dispute; declared that if peace was to return to Kashmir, Pakistan had to be taken on board; suggested trilateral dialogue; asked the Kashmiri students to prepare a roadmap for Kashmir's independence; insisted that "alienation" had gripped the Valley; and expressed the view that the problem in Kashmir was political that warranted a political solution."
What Padgaonkar told the Gulf News correspondent just cannot be construed as a complete U-turn. It was something more than that. He has vindicated those who had been saying from day one that the problem in the Kashmir Valley is fundamentally communal, that J&K is a bilateral issue, that a particular section of the Kashmiri society is involved in separatist and subversive activities and that Jammu and Ladakh are integral parts of the problem. He has vindicated those who had been advocating the need for a holistic approach to the issues facing different people inhabiting different parts of the state and that contradictions in the political perceptions of the people of the valley and those of Jammu and Ladakh are irreconcilable and that not whole of Kashmir province is gripped by secessionist violence. In fact, what Padgaonkar told the Gulf News correspondent was an accurate story of facts.
What is it that has compelled Padgaonkar to take a U-turn and modify his views? Obviously, it was the nationalist response to what he and his other colleagues had shamelessly said in the Kashmir Valley. It is obvious that the reformed interlocutor would now not play with dangerous tools and take into serious consideration the other viewpoints which are based on the ground realities as they exist in different parts of the state. Credit for a change of heart on the part of Padgaonkar clearly goes to the people of Jammu province and Ladakh, who had plainly and candidly told him and his colleagues that they would accept only that solution that is national, rational, secular and democratic and that is acceptable to them. In other words, what Padgaonkar had said is a great setback for Chief Minister Omar Abdullah who had been expressing the view that the appointment of interlocutors like Padgaonkar would go a long way in resolving the so-called Kashmir issue. The broken-hearted Omar Abdullah and others of his ilk must be feeling disillusioned; they must be singing in the strain of the swan; they must be cursing Padgaonkar. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
STOCK UPDATE |
|
|
 |
| BSE
Sensex |
 |
| NSE
Nifty |
|
|
| |
CRICKET UPDATE |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
