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| Mirwaiz, Geelani do make a point when they take on interlocutors | | Questionable Methodology | | STARK REALITY
RUSTAM
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, May 20: The Government of India appointed Dileep Padgaonkar, Radha Kumar and M M Ansari as interlocutors for J&K on October 13 last year. Ever since then, sections of people in the trouble-torn state have been questioning their way of working and the methodology they have adopted to find what ails the state. In fact, the interlocutors landed them into a major controversy during their very first visit to Kashmir. The reason: while one of the interlocutors -- apart from describing J&K as a political problem and Pakistan an important factor -- asked students of Kashmir University to prepare a roadmap for Kashmir’s azaadi so that the same could be discussed during their second visit, the other interlocutor aired the view that they would ask the Government of India to amend the Indian Constitution so that the azaadi demand could be accommodated. These statements of the interlocutors created a sort of furore not only in Jammu but also in New Delhi, with many concerned Indians even demanding their recall.
It was hoped that the Indian response to what they had said in Kashmir during their first meeting would make them a little wiser and that they would conduct themselves in a fashion that would make the people believe that they would adopt a holistic and an independent approach to the issues afflicting the state and its different people. It turned out to be a false hope. For, the interlocutors continued to behave in the fashion they behaved during their first visit. They met the chief minister and the governor then and they met them every time they visited the state thereafter, thus creating an impression that they and the constitutional head and the executive head, plus certain other elements in the political establishment, were working in tandem. Besides, each time they visited the state, they aired views which created doubts in the minds of the people about their intentions. So much so that the politically awakened people expressed the view that the interlocutors were treading a path that would ultimately lead to the withdrawal of New Delhi from J&K.
As for the Kashmiri separatists like Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Syed Ali Shah Geelani and others of their ilk, they had refused to meet the interlocutors in October 2010 and they continued to remain indifferent towards them thereafter as well for reasons not really difficult to fathom. They knew it full well that a meeting between them and the interlocutors would mean that they were one among the commons and, hence, they maintained a distance from them to remain relevant. However, they did make a point yesterday, when they termed the interlocutors as the “B-team” of the state government. What prompted them to take such a stand on the interlocutors was the latter’s statement that they and the state government were working in unison in order to ensure peace in the Kashmir Valley.
In other words, the concerned sections of people in the state and the Kashmiri separatists and Pakistani agents are on the same wavelength as far as their attitude towards the interlocutors is concerned, of course, for different reasons: Concerned sections have come to believe that the interlocutors would want New Delhi to restore the pre-1953 political status to the state, thus undoing all that the nation has done thus far to integrate the state politically and constitutionally with New Delhi, and the separatists have come to believe that the interlocutors might not recommend complete independence for the state.
The interlocutors are responsible for this trust deficit between them and the people. It’s time for them to adopt a methodology that increases the people’s trust in them. They must remember that an overwhelming majority of the people in the state is not happy with the state government. They are interlocutors and they must conduct themselves independently of the state government and the state governor. Their only duty is to find what has been ailing the state and present an accurate picture of facts to the Government of India. They simply cannot take sides.
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