On August 5, five years will be completed after the abrogation of Article 370 of Kashmir. After removing 370, BJP made big claims that terrorism in Kashmir has been eradicated, peace has been established there for the first time in seventy five years and travelers are coming and going to see the beauty of Kashmir in peace. And terrorism has come under control.
Before August 5, 2019, I was getting calls from friends of Kashmir that something is going to happen in Kashmir. Because the number of soldiers is still increasing. Every day hundreds of soldiers see new arrivals. I thought that to liberate Azad Kashmir from the hands of Pakistan, Narendra Modi might be taking a bold step on the lines of Indira Gandhi. Because Narendra Modi will want to strengthen his ‘Hindu Hearted Emperor’ image. But what kind? Azad Kashmir is where it is! On the contrary, by canceling Article 370 of the rest of Kashmir, BJP worsened the Kashmir issue. Because when the population of Kashmir is 99% Muslim and while making Article 370, the permission of the Legislative Assembly of Kashmir has put a condition to amend or cancel this article, BJP has made a big mistake by canceling 370 like demonetisation in a very hasty manner. And on August 5, 2019, while sitting in Delhi and carrying out an act canceled by the BJP, the Legislative Assembly of Kashmir was dissolved five months ago. Therefore, this decision is illegal and BJP has made the mistake of making the Kashmir issue worse.
The people of Kashmir have been agitating in their own way for more than forty years for different demands regarding Kashmir. Some are supporters of Autonomy, some are Azad Kashmir (Free from both countries) and some are supporters of Pakistan. Some are of the opinion of staying in India. Because the people of Azad Kashmir occupied by Pakistan are living in hardship? As these are bystanders and many people are related, they know very well that their relatives are fed up with the situation there and there is a group openly protesting against Pakistan, some of them are demanding its accession to India. More than three hundred hydroelectric projects alone. In PoK, but PoK is in darkness and all electricity is being used by Pakistan. So there have been many protests in PoK against this.
I am telling from my own experience in 2013 that while we were carrying a caravan from land to land to Palestine through Pakistan, in the vicinity of Quaid-e-Azam Jinn Memorial in Karachi, we suddenly met a very beautiful young couple who said “We are from Azad Kashmir and we want to be with you.” I have to talk in private!” So our bus was parked outside the memorial and other colleagues were walking around the premises of the memorial. Taking that opportunity, I told them that our bus is standing outside, let us sit there and talk. So when he came and sat in the bus with me, he said that “we are brothers and sisters, we are wandering from place to place due to the atrocities of Pakistan in PoK. Seeing that you have made such a long journey on the issues of Palestine, we thought that you people wanted Azad Kashmir but that’s it.” If we come and actually observe the situation, I said that it is not easy for us to come to Pakistan or a Pakistani citizen to come to India, so I think we will decide what to do on this issue by talking to our Pakistani friends Founding member Karamat Ali (who was also our host in Karachi who passed away recently) said that “Sureshbhai is turning 66 today as a Pakistani! But because of Pakistan’s Punjabi domination, resentment continues in all provinces except Punjab! Aur Baluchistan, Federal Administered Area (FATA) and PoK ka masala aur bhi sangin hai ! Aaj na kal yah sube azadi leker rahe aisa muje lagta hai!” As our Palestine caravan passed through different countries, I met people like the brothers and sisters I met in Karachi demanding an independent Kurdistan region in the Iran-Turkey border. Also after crossing Pakistan Balochistan in Zayedan region of Iran and joint Balochistan in Iran’s triangle of Pakistan and Afghanistan are being demanded.
BJP has taken a very irresponsible step by canceling Article 370 of Kashmir. Because I have been an active participant in Pakistan India Forum and South Asia Forum and India Palestine Solidarity Forum for more than 30 years, and I have to study all these topics, so India-Pakistan-Kashmir issues will not be solved in such a hasty manner. I am of the opinion that it will be resolved through peaceful talks and I am confident that not all Pakistanis are like Hafiz Saeed or Imran Khan, many say that except for the Pakistani Punjab province, the rest of Pakistan is not treated equally by Islamabad. These are the talking heads. I realized this while talking to friends who are active in India Pakistan People’s Forum living in Lahore Karachi. Karamat Ali is one of them as an example.
Last week a student called me from Srinagar. Because six months ago he called me and said that sir my marriage is fixed and you have to come to the wedding in the month of May, while I was telling my problems, he said in the middle that I will do my wedding at a time that is convenient for you but we must attend the wedding. I told him that you should get married with the convenience of both your families and don’t change the date as I did. We didn’t talk after that and last week when he suddenly called me, did I get married first? When asked, he said, “How can I get married without you?” So I said what happened then? Noticing that he was stuttering for a while, I asked what exactly happened. When he told me, “My future wife’s brother has been arrested by the Kashmir police and has been jailed on charges of sedition, so my marriage has been delayed. What is this?” He said that every police station in Kashmir has an unwritten notice. That they should arrest and imprison at least fifteen youths every month on charges of sedition! I am shocked to hear that since 5th August 2019 BJP has started efforts to fight terrorism in Kashmir and to create the necessary environment for the development of Kashmir by making Kashmir an integral part of India. If this is part of their efforts, then there will never be peace in Kashmir, because there will never be peace in any place when the child of our belly is being carried away in this way and that too if such a large number of youths are being carried away.
In fact, when Narendra Modi visited Kashmir for the first time on March 7, 2024 before the Lok Sabha elections after the 370 was drawn, he held a meeting at the Shere Kashmir Stadium in Srinagar. For that, the current Lt. Governor sir ordered the government employees of Kashmir that every employee should come to Narendra Modi’s meeting with his family members and wearing traditional Kashmiri attire. Otherwise they will be punished. This is what people in government jobs in Kashmir have told me over the phone. And the BJP has claimed that “the people of Kashmir came spontaneously to Narendra Modi’s meeting and there was a huge crowd”.
The population of Kashmir valley is one crore and if every police station is given an unwritten order to arrest at least fifteen youths every month and put them in jail on charges of sedition, then the total number of police stations in Kashmir is fifty (2019 figure). And if at least 15 youths are arrested every month, then the number of 750 in a month in 50 police stations is 750 per month, and if we look at the multiplication of 50 police stations in five years, the same number of youths out of the population of one crore people of Kashmir. How terrible do you feel today?
In 2006, when I went to Kashmir on the joint invitation of Hurriyat Conference and Poon Kashmir, PUCL President Parvez Imroz, a lawyer named Barrister V. M. I had deliberately gone to meet on Tarkunde’s suggestion. He was the president of Kashmir’s Missing Persons Squad, he told me that ten thousand children under the age of three are missing in the state. At that time the population of Kashmir was ninety thousand. Among them, ten thousand youths under the age of thirty, which means more than ten percent of the total population, have disappeared! If indeed after August 5, 2019 every police station of Kashmir at least fifteen youths have been arrested on charges of sedition, how many youths have been picked up till now out of one crore people? So why would the residents of Kashmir feel love for any country that does such an act? And if Kashmir is to be said in the language of union in India, how will it happen to join the middle stream?
Presently the entire area of Poonch – Rajouri, Kupwara is coming to Jammu and terrorist attacks are going on there every day and how many of our soldiers are being martyred? Sitting in Delhi and canceling Pulwama or 370 for our own political convenience, the barbarity of making the people of Kashmir more anti-India should stop immediately, otherwise it will never be possible for the army or the police to change the mindset of the Kashmiri people to resettle the Kashmiri Pandits who have been displaced since the last thirty five years. For that, the Muslim community with more than 90% percent has been there for thousands of years and in 1946-47, when the percentage of the population was the same and in the terms of partition, population and geography were two major factors in the case of Kashmir, even when the people of Kashmir wanted to stay in India.
Riots were happening during partition. But Kashmir was peaceful. Mahatma Gandhi would have noticed this. He had deliberately come to Kashmir immediately from Calcutta. And Kashmir was setting an example in creating peace and goodwill in the riot-hit areas of Bengal-Bihar state.
Also, Barrister Jinnah camped in Srinagar for six weeks to prepare Kashmiri people to join Pakistan. Still Kashmiri people did not listen to him. It is a clear mistake that only Harisinha, the king of Kashmir was a Hindu and decided to stay in India. They were messing around with Barrister Jina at the same time, and we want to remain neutral and independent like Switzerland. While the barrister was saying yes orally, on the other hand, Pakistan Army was secretly entering the Kashmir valley towards the north due to the tribals’ grievances. After realizing this, the Maharaja made provision of Article 370 to join India. And Kashmir was acceded to India. On which Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, Dr. It is signed by Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and Maharaja Hari Singh.
What did BJP achieve by canceling Article 370 on 5th August 2019 when there is all this history? Similarly North Eastern states have joined with Article 371-372. And the fifth and sixth schedule has been made in the tribal areas of the whole country. What is it for? There are people living in India with different castes, sects and morals. Therefore, the people who created all these provisions have created their constitution with a lot of hard work and thought. But the Sangh has been opposing the incident since day one. In the last week of November (1949), in the English mouthpiece of the organization, Dr. After Babasaheb Ambedkar presented the Constitution of India to the nation on November 26, 1949 in the Constituent Assembly after the completion of the work, the Sangh wrote in its mouthpiece the Organiser, saying that “This Constitution is a copycat copy of the events of Western countries. One word is India’s national mission. There is not even a simple mention of what it is, including the laws written by Bharata Manu which is a constitution like the Manusmriti prepared by Rishi Manu even before Lycurgus of Sparta and Solon of Persia, but none of the pundits who made our constitution did it.” That means the Sangh should have made Manusmriti its event, the then Sangh Chief Shri. Madhavrao Sadashivrao Golwalkar has also written the same text in his book titled ‘Bunch of Thought’. Book Sangh Swayamsevak who understand our Gita.
Therefore, after independence, while Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel worked tirelessly to integrate the region with more than 600 royal palaces into the Republic of India, the Sangh was provoking the Hindu kings and urging them to declare Hindu Rashtra! The Sangh was established in 1925 when it got independence twenty two years (1947) yet what are the reasons why the Sangh did not participate in the freedom movement? How has the Sangh Parivar acquired the right to issue certificates of patriotism or treason to others?
No one can conquer Kashmir by force. The people of Kashmir are only afraid of the hereafter and then they do not submit to coercion under any circumstances. You can turn them to your side only by giving them love and affection. Pandit Kalhan of Kashmir wrote this sentence in the first written history of India titled ‘Rajatarangini’ on the very first page. . Keeping this in mind, the most important issue of Kashmir is that if five lakh Kashmiri Pandits are to be rehabilitated back to Kashmir,then it will never be done at gunpoint. It is not possible without love and mutual trust.
So I clearly asked this question to the leaders of Hurriyat Conference in 2006 at Hurriyat HQ Srinagar that for the autonomous Kashmir you are asking for, lakhs of Kashmiri Pandits left Kashmir in 1990s. Do they have a place in this autonomous region or not? Hurriyat Conference President Mirwaiz Umar Farooq told me that “Absolutely, Kashmiri Pandits are an integral part of our Kashmiriyat, and only if we take the initiative to bring them back with dignity to their ancestral homes in autonomous Kashmir, our dreams of Kashmiriyat will be fulfilled.”
It has been 77 years, the people of Kashmir ask me that Doctor Saheb, even after more than seventy five years, you have not been able to win our hearts. Have you ever thought about that? I was left with no answer to this question.
But according to Pandit Kalhan of Kashmir, if we change our policy, maybe we can win the favor of the people of Kashmir, but it will not work in the rest of India by giving secondary treatment to the people of the minority community. They also have to be treated with equal love because India has the largest number of Muslims living in India than any other Muslim country in the world except Indonesia. Gujarat cannot end them with riots like Bhagalpur. So with the second largest population after Hindus, but according to Pandit Kalhan, if we continue to coerce them and stop coercing their food and dress according to their wishes, I think we can make Kashmir an integral part of India only if we love and respect them.
