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| Fai’s Arrest: Ansari questions Padgaonkar’s credibility | | | Hari Om | 7/24/2011 10:47:34 PM |
| The United States, which is not a friend of India by any yardstick,
has done the needful, doubtless for its own reasons. The arrest of the
US citizen and Pakistani Kashmiri agent Ghulam Nabi Fai, director of
the American Kashmir Committee (AKC), by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) on July 20, has stunned the Anglo-American-Asian
world.
Fai has been living in the United States since 1990. One of the
charges levelled against him by the FBI is that he was operating from
Washington DC on behalf of the Pakistan Government and influencing
American opinion on the issue of Jammu & Kashmir, without registering
himself with the competent authority as a Pakistani lobbyist.
The charge-sheet levels serious charges against Fai and accuses him of
using Pakistani money for preparing an anti-India ground in the United
States (which should hardly come as a surprise to the American
administrations that have successively bankrolled Islamabad for
decades). Its real merit lies in the fact that it exposes – in black
and white – a deep connection between Fai and several “anti-India”
Indians, including chief interlocutor for Jammu & Kashmir Dileep
Padgaonkar. All these notables of the Indian elite have enjoyed
Pakistani hospitality and given legitimacy to the Pakistan-sponsored
hate and break-India campaign, frequently describing India at the AKC
(read Inter-Service Intelligence)-sponsored seminars as barbarous and
anti-democratic.
The chargesheet and reports which have emanated from Washington DC,
Brussels (Belgium), London and Scotland Yard (UK) vindicate the stand
of concerned Indians that some Indian fifth columnists were offering
their services to Pakistan through ISI and Kashmiri separatists like
Fai, with a view to propagating the Pakistani view that Jammu &
Kashmir was not an integral part of India and was a disputed territory
with Pakistan having a legitimate claim over it.
It would be a distortion of sorts to say that Islamabad and Fai were
able to rope in certain “Indians” for utilizing their services. The
truth is that these anti-India elements had themselves cultivated
Pakistan to enjoy the worldly pleasures of wining and dining and cushy
stays at 5/7 Star hotels abroad. Bartering the national interests was
a lucrative business. Hence, it would be a crime against man and god
to give credit to Islamabad and its dreaded ISI and the likes of Fai,
Farooq Kathwari et al, who have spread their tentacles across Europe,
USA and the Muslim world at the behest of Pakistan and its Indian
Kashmiri subordinates like Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar
Farooq.
It is a different story that the Union Government utterly failed to
discharge its obligations towards the nation by calling the Pakistani
bluff and isolating, exposing and bringing to justice these anti-India
Indian agents of Islamabad. Again, it is another story that Human
Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal refused to comment on the
issue saying “it is a private affair.” Anti-nationalism is a private
affair for a regime that is hell bent upon de-nationalising public
resources for private capitalists and multinational corporations!
All credit to the new Union Home Secretary R.K. Singh who had the
courage to say at Thimpu (Bhutan) that “the arrest of Fai had become
overdue.”
It was only to be expected that the FBI revelations and related
stories filed by reporters from Washington DC, Brussels, and London
would cause a stir in India. The nation stands outraged and feels the
authorities must take stringent action against those associated with
the AKC and similar London, Brussels and Scotland-based outfits. It
will be shameful if the Government of India does not act to retrieve
the situation. A beginning must be made with a crackdown on the
Kashmiri separatists who had been taking advantage of New Delhi’s
leniency to travel abroad to the Fai and other seminars and
bad-mouthing and defaming the Republic.
It is significant that interlocutor M.M. Ansari has spoken out boldly
against chief interlocutor Dileep Padgaonkar’s participation in the
Fai seminars: “If it is true that he has known the activities of some
such activists (Fai) elsewhere and still he has been doing it, I would
say that will be most unfortunate.” Mr Ansari added that, “In Kashmir,
there was an air of suspicion as nobody believed the other person.”
And he pointedly queried: “How can you join a conference without
knowing the credibility of the individuals and the institution?”
Indeed, how can you?
More to the point, Mr Ansari raised questions about whether or not the
Government of India was aware of Mr Padgaonkar’s seminar circuits and
biases prior to his appointment as chief interlocutor on Kashmir. This
is a very valid question, and one that will not go away easily. Hence,
the Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram would do well to address it as
soon as possible.
All this is tantamount to a blistering attack and a vote of
no-confidence in Padgaonkar. In fact, Mr Ansari censured him quite
openly and virtually asked him to put in his papers and say goodbye to
the committee he has been heading since October 13, 2010. Ansari
deserves bouquets and not brickbats for his bold stand.
It is hardly relevant to reflect on the support Padgaonkar immediately
received from colleague Radha Kumar, as there is no fundamental
difference between the two. However, one instance may be mentioned. In
the third week of October last year, Padgaonkar along with Radha sand
Ansari visited Kashmir to interact with people there. During the
course of their stay, they also visited the University of Kashmir.
Interacting with the students there, Padgaonkar asked them to prepare
a “roadmap for Azadi” so that the “same could be discussed with them
during their next visit to Kashmir.” Radha went a step further and
stated that, “they would ask the Government of India to amend the
Indian Constitution to accommodate the Azadi demand.”
All this should help clinch the issue and establish that both
Padgaonkar and Radha are on the same page. She defended Padgaonkar
because she had to express solidarity with a man who has, like others,
become an object of contempt and ridicule. Radha falls in the same
category.
And what was Padgaonkar’s reaction when reporters asked him to comment
on the controversy? He said: “He did travel on Fai’s invitation but
that was a long time back and he did not have faintest of idea about
his affiliation with ISI as Google was not available then.”
Is that an answer? And is that how senior journalists source their
information? Padgaonkar is supposed to be one of the country’s top
“opinion leaders,” a man who once famously bragged in a published
interview that he held the second most important job in the country
(next only to the Prime Minister!). He has been influencing public
opinion for over three decades and has enjoyed the distinction of
reporting from various world capitals, including Paris (France). But
more than that, he has been writing on Jammu & Kashmir for years. Yet
he says he didn’t know anything about Fai or about Fai’s connections
with Islamabad. Indeed, a ridiculous and pathetic defence.
If one goes by this response and explanation, one can say without
hesitation that whatever Padgaonkar wrote on Jammu & Kashmir was
either based on hearsay or that he wrote his essays on the State on
the virtual diktat of anti-India elements in Kashmir. There cannot be
any other conclusion.
Ansari has hit the nail on the head and suggested the way out to
Padgaonkar. But the question is: Will Padgaonkar respect the views of
Ansari and quit and tender an unconditional apology to the nation for
the crime he has committed? We will have to wait and see.
Will the tarnished UPA regime find the courage to give him the push or
the shove and save itself from the embarrassment of accepting a Report
from a man tainted with ISI hospitality to say the very least. For it
is very clear that Padgaonkar, like all other “anti-India” Indians,
has fallen from grace.
In this season of pilgrimage, the word on the street is that this is
the Grace of Baba Amarnath. For the interlocutor’s report is all ready
and waiting. It is said that the Government asked the members to hold
it until the yatra ends, so that Hindu passions are not inflamed. Now
the report is not worth the paper it is written on…The author is former Chair Professor, Maharaja Gulab Singh Chair,
University of Jammu, Jammu, & former member Indian Council of
Historical Research
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