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| 8 Roundtable Conference in Jammu on July 12 & 13 | | Interlocutors' Approach Selective | | Neha
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, June 30 : The New Delhi-appointed interlocutors for Jammu and Kashmir are organizing a two-day-long roundtable conference in Jammu on July 12 and 13 to ascertain the views of the selected few on what could be done to meet the aspirations of different people inhabiting different regions of the state. Their rider is that the state has to be maintained as one political unit. This is a selective approach. The interlocutors can't set pre-condition or impose restrictions on the participants. If it's a roundtable conference then the delegates to the conference need to be given full freedom to express their views. The organizers just can't dictate terms and vitiate the whole exercise even before its commencement.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh organized three roundtable conferences between 2006 and 2007, two at his official residence, 7 Race Course, New Delhi, and one in Srinagar. He never set any pre-conditions. He allowed full freedom to the delegates belonging to different political formations and other social groups so that they could say whatever they wanted to say. It is, however, a different matter that the Prime Minister and his team of advisors went by what the NC and the PDP leaders said and ignored the views as expressed by the BJP, the Panun Kashmir, the Ladakhis and so on.
That the Prime Minister and his team of advisors overlooked the views of those representing national constituency in the state as well as the persecuted and ignored minorities like the Dogras, displaced Kashmiri Hindus, the Ladakhis and similar other suffering communities became clear when the Prime Minister issued a statement after the conclusion of the first roundtable conference. His statement, inter-alia, read: "There is the need to evolve a consensus on the issues of greater autonomy and self-rule within the vast flexibilities provided by the Indian Constitution." There was no reference whatever to those who had opposed autonomy and self-rule and demanded the state's full integration into India and empowerment of the neglected regions and neglected and persecuted communities as, for example, the internally-displaced Kashmiri Hindus, refugees from West Pakistan and refugees from Pakistan-occupied-Jammu and Kashmir (POJK).
The result was that while the NC and the PDP expressed satisfaction over the outcome of the exercise, those opposed to them rejected the Prime Minister's suggestion outright. The result was an impasse and the impasse continues with the NC and the PDP insisting on greater autonomy and self-rule and others holding their ground and demanding complete integration into India and real and effective empowerment.
The interlocutors need to be open-minded. They should not only invite those involved in the integrate-the-state-fully-into-India and empower-the-neglected movements but should make it clear that the participants in the proposed roundtable conference would not be prevented from expressing views they believe in. They have already created serious doubts in the minds of the people of Jammu province and the minorities like the Kashmiri Hindus by making such outrageous statements as "Kashmir is a political problem that needs political solution; let the Kashmiri students prepare a roadmap for Azadi; we will urge New Delhi to amend the Indian Constitution to accommodate the Azadi demand; and the state has to remain a one political entity."
But more than that, the interlocutors need to recognize the facts that Jammu and Kashmir came into being by a quirk of history in 1846, that it consists of three disparate regions housing people having different perceptions and that there is no love lost between the Dogras of Jammu and the Kashmiri leadership and between the latter and the Ladakhis. Kashmir, which has become one-community inhabited region, wants a dispensation outside the Indian Constitution or even outside India. Jammu and Ladakh and Kashmiri Hindus are vehemently opposed to what Kashmiri leadership stands for. This contradiction is irreconcilable.
In other words, the interlocutors need to evolve a formula that is not only acceptable to the people of Kashmir but also acceptable to Jammu and Ladakh. This is possible only if the state, which is an unnatural formation like Pakistan, is trifurcated and the Kashmiri Hindus given the right to have a separate homeland within the Kashmir Valley. Any other solution would not click. You just cannot keep this state intact any longer. The sooner the interlocutors realize this the better. Not to realize this and insist on their formulations would be only to create more problems than resolving the existing ones and this is not desirable. |
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