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| PDP says Aksai Chin part of China, Google says it’s Indian | | MINCING NO WORDS | |
NEHA
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Feb 13: According to People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Aksai Chin and Karakoram region are part of China. Actually, the party president and Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly on Saturday made a “power-point presentation of its vision on Kashmir” in which she virtually accepted the Chinese sovereignty over Aksai Chin and the Karakoram region “on a map super-imposed on a collage of foreign currency notes.” The PDP has reportedly acknowledged that Beijing has its “stakes and role in Jammu and Kashmir.” It also reportedly wants Kashmir to be connected with Yarkand in China and Karakoram highway, which was constructed by Beijing after Pakistan in 1963 illegally ceded 5,000 sq miles area in the Gilgit-Baltian region, which is legally Indian. The Highway connects Beijing with Peshawar (Pakistan).
It needs to be noted that Beijing is – apart from constructing a 7,000-MW Bunji Hydroelectric Project – is building, in collaboration with Pakistan, a number of similar other projects in the area. Besides, on the anvil is a “railway line along the six-lane Karakoram highway.” Beijing has stationed in this strategic region nearly 7,000 troops. Besides, according to reports, it has constructed several “battle helipads” along the Highway connecting China with Peshawar. According to one source, it has constructed 16 such helipads. Obviously, these pose a challenge to the territorial integrity of India and national security.
It may appear unbelievable but it is a fact that the “search engine Google” has amended its maps of Jammu and Kashmir in order to show the entire State of Jammu and Kashmir, including the areas under the illegal occupation of Pakistan, as part of India. It happened at a time when the PDP sought to create an impression that Aksai Chin and Karakoram region belong to Beijing.
Google Inc made the correction after Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology Sachin Pilot lodged a protest with it, saying that it had committed a grave mistake by showing Pakistan-occupied-Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan region as part of the neighbouring country. His ministry had, according to a report in a leading national daily, written to Google Inc that “maps available through www.google.com/insights showed certain parts of J&K as part of a different country” and that action could be taken against the website under “Sections 69A and 79 of the Information Technology Act” for “wrongful depiction of Indian map.” Earlier, this “wrongful depiction” had evoked a very strong reaction from various quarters in India.
It is strange that while the PDP, which day in and day out talks about this and that part of Jammu and Kashmir, has recognized the Chinese sovereignty over Aksai Chin and Karakoram region, Google has rectified its mistake and showed those areas as part of India. It is obvious that it is the politics of competitive communalism and separatism and the game of one-upmanship is dominating the Kashmir’s political scene. One is challenging the state’s accession and demanding greater autonomy and the other is also doing the same, demanding self-rule and, like the APHC (M), seeking to make China fourth party to Jammu and Kashmir. Earlier, the PDP, like other Kashmir-based separatist outfits, used to talk in terms of trilateral solution to the so-called Kashmir problem and the three parties were India, Pakistan and Kashmiri Muslims.
It would not be out of place to mention here that it was the 1948 ceasefire that was enforced unilaterally by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that had resulted in the division of Jammu and Kashmir, with Pakistan illegally occupying nearly one-third of the Jammu and Kashmir territories, called the so-called Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. In 1970, Pakistan divided these areas into two “administrative zones” – “Azad Jammu and Kashmir” (AJK) and “Northern Areas.” Later on, Islamabad merged the “Northern Area” or Gilgit-Baltistan with Pakistan. Right now this area is governed under the Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and Self-Governance Ordinance, 2009. The people of Gilgit-Baltistan have been struggling for independence since long saying Islamabad has not only been persecuting them (read Shiite Muslims) and depriving them of their basic civil and political rights but has also been systematically changing the demographic profile of the region by settling there “Sunni Muslims from Pakistani Punjab and Frontier areas in order to reduce the Shiite community to a minority.”
Similarly, it is important to note that Pakistan ceded 5,000 sq miles of area in the Gilgit-Baltistan region to China in utter violation of the United Nations resolution of August 13, 1948. New Delhi should have protested, but it didn’t really do that. Gilgit-Baltistan was part of the princely State of Jammu and Kashmir as it existed on August 15, 1947. That its political status is yet to be determined could be seen from Article 6 of the Sino-Pakistan treaty. It says that treaty is renegotiable. This clause is based on the fact that India rightly stakes its claim to these areas. In fact, there is a parliamentary resolution to this effect. Erlier, India had sought the United Nations’ intervention so that the Pakistani intruders were evicted and aggression on Jammu and Kashmir vacated. That the Gilgit-Baltistan, like the POJK, belongs to India could also be seen from the fact that Governor-General of India Lord Mountbatten had in July 1947 terminated the 1935 treaty under which Maharaja Hari Singh had leased Gilgit to the British Indian Government for 60 years. With the termination of the 1935 treaty, Gilgit again came under the direct control of Maharaja Hari Singh.
When will New Delhi intervene and set the record straight? It is appropriate time for New Delhi to silence and isolate those in Kashmir who have been describing the Indian Jammu and Kashmir as a disputed territory and demanding a solution that satisfies China, Pakistan, India and the people of Kashmir, minus the displaced Kashmiri Hindus and Sikhs. In other words, it is right time to implement the February 1994 unanimous Parliamentary resolution and take back from Pakistan all those areas which have been under its illegal occupation since 1947-1948.
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