glitteringstar
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The world's unmet obligation to Kashmiri people by Enayet Rasul Bhuiyan
Kashmir is bleeding again and badly. Every day civilians protesting their subjugation are getting shot at by security forces like birds and dying from the same. It seems that regard for human life has become too scanty to ones who should be considered as disciplined forces operating in that region.
The heavy handed suppression of Kashmiris by might alone is also starting to trouble the conscience of well intentioned members of the Indian intellectual community . Recently, the world famous Indian figure in literature, Arundhati Roy, has hit the headlines suggesting that Kashmiris should be allowed to determine their own destiny.
Indeed, every day passes in that region reminding conscientious people around the world about the unmet expectation or hope extended by the United Nations (UN) or the world body to the people of Kashmir. Kashmir today is seething with discontent like never before. Kashmiris are only giving vent to their pent up feelings for well over half a century of unceasing oppression and frustration while trying to exercise their fundamental rights or human rights and the freedom to determine their destiny.
The Kashmir problem is as old as the existence of India and Pakistan or has been lingering for over sixty years. Many formulas have been suggested for arch enemies, the nuclear armed India and Pakistan, to become friends and, thus, to convert south Asia that holds one quarter of humanity and is one of the world's poorest regions, into a zone of peace.
The recommended solutions range from mutually accepting the present line of control between Indian held Kashmir and Pakistani held one as the final international boundaries between the two countries, signing a no-war pact between India and Pakistan, taking active steps of relations normalization through greater trade, travel, people-to-people contact, etc.
All of these ways have been tried and explored but none worked, so far. The reasons are that the same were non starters as long term solution in the first place. There can be no peace between India and Pakistan as long as the Kashmir problem keeps on burning and what is more significant, a solution is attempted bypassing the aspirations of the majority people of Kashmir.
This is the crux of the problem : disrespect for the real wishes of the people of Kashmir by denying them the right to determine their own destiny which the most powerful organ of the world's highest assembly, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), granted them through a resolution sixty-two years ago. The UNSC resolution in 1948, in all fairness and principles of justice and equity, had declared that the people of Kashmir would determine their own destiny of whether to join either India or Pakistan or remain independent through a plebiscite to be held under impartial international supervision. But Kashmiris never could exercise this right and to this factor all the conflicts and bitterness since then can be traced back.
The perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks two years ago were alleged to be members of Pakistan based Kashmiri militant groups. They were suspected as the ones behind the incidents who sought, through these attacks, to spoil the moves for improved Indo-Pakistan relations that would lead to a slack in Pakistan's determination to back their struggle for self determination. Even if this theory is admitted, it would follow that real normalization of Indo-Pak relations cannot happen as long as the Kashmir problem remains alive. It cannot be expected, as stated above, that Indo-Pakistan relations can practically improve bypassing the Kashmir problem. Sooner rather than later, the issue of Kashmir must return to spoil the normalization process.
With the Kashmir problem effectively addressed, India and Pakistan could divert their vast expenditure on armaments to economic growth and development. But the peace dividends will not be realised with the Kashmir problem remaining intact and only veiled for the moment. Nor the portents of a nuclear showdown in the region with terrible consequences for it and the world quite diminish as long as lasting peace is not established in Kashmir with full justice for its people.
In the eighties, the US was full of praises for Pakistan as it used the latter to supply the Afghan resistance fighting the Soviet Union. With the Soviet forces pushed out of Afghanistan, the importance of Pakistan as a strategic ally decreased for the US and it embarked afresh on its game of treating Pakistan like an unimportant country and concentrated its energies on wooing India even at the high cost of its old ally, Pakistan.
History has turned a full circle. The US has gone back to its old game of treating India as more equal than Pakistan now that it has squeezed out enough from Pakistan for its campaign in Afghanistan. It thinks nothing of so sweepingly bracketing the Kashmiri freedom fighters as terrorists with the Talibans and the Al Queida.
It was up to the Pakistani leaders to make it clear to the US and the world that the Kashmiri freedom fighters and the Talebans are not birds of the same feathers. While the Talebans were universally condemned for their medieval barbarism and the Al Queida for their international terrorism, the Kashmiri freedom fighters by comparison are fighting for a just cause which is their right to self determination.
About half a million Indian forces have been engaged in peace time to deal with the freedom struggle by the Kashmiri people. Kashmir is a disputed area as recognised by the UNSC. In Kashmir, India's only Muslim majority state, the main principle of the partition of the Indian subcontinent between Muslim and Hindu majority areas, stands most unabashedly violated.
If the Kashmiri freedom fighters have taken up arms to fight, as they conceive, the occupation forces and if for this reason they are branded as terrorists and treated thereof , then the French resistance who fought the Germans during the Second World War were also terrorists. Or , the Bangladeshi freedom fighters who fought for the independence or self determination of Bangladesh in 1971, were also terrorists. But they were not and freedom fighters and terrorists must be seen in their true light or correct perspectives respectively.
We have seen in the last century great strides made by imperialist powers in setting free peoples around the world from unfair bondage. Thus, colonial powers gradually gave up their possessions in Asia and Africa. The process had a relationship to subject people becoming conscious of their desire for freedom and to struggle for it and also to some extent the exhaustion of the colonial powers after World War II. But the independence giving process was also caused in greater part by the leaders and people in the colonial countries realzing that it was unfair to keep nations or peoples under their rule against the will of those nations or peoples.
In relatively recent times, the same sort of appreciation of notions of justice and fairplay as well as other strategic considerations led to the former Soviet Union withdrawing its stranglehold from largely Muslim central Asian entities for them to emerge as fully sovereign and independent countries.
Indian leaders need to ponder on these developments while deciding on a course for Kasmir that would be best both for India and the Kashmiri people. The hackneyed Indian stand that Kashmir is an integral and non negotiable part of the Indian union, this view has certainly lost any appeal in the international context.
The world's unmet obligation to Kashmiri people
Kashmir is bleeding again and badly. Every day civilians protesting their subjugation are getting shot at by security forces like birds and dying from the same. It seems that regard for human life has become too scanty to ones who should be considered as disciplined forces operating in that region.
The heavy handed suppression of Kashmiris by might alone is also starting to trouble the conscience of well intentioned members of the Indian intellectual community . Recently, the world famous Indian figure in literature, Arundhati Roy, has hit the headlines suggesting that Kashmiris should be allowed to determine their own destiny.
Indeed, every day passes in that region reminding conscientious people around the world about the unmet expectation or hope extended by the United Nations (UN) or the world body to the people of Kashmir. Kashmir today is seething with discontent like never before. Kashmiris are only giving vent to their pent up feelings for well over half a century of unceasing oppression and frustration while trying to exercise their fundamental rights or human rights and the freedom to determine their destiny.
The Kashmir problem is as old as the existence of India and Pakistan or has been lingering for over sixty years. Many formulas have been suggested for arch enemies, the nuclear armed India and Pakistan, to become friends and, thus, to convert south Asia that holds one quarter of humanity and is one of the world's poorest regions, into a zone of peace.
The recommended solutions range from mutually accepting the present line of control between Indian held Kashmir and Pakistani held one as the final international boundaries between the two countries, signing a no-war pact between India and Pakistan, taking active steps of relations normalization through greater trade, travel, people-to-people contact, etc.
All of these ways have been tried and explored but none worked, so far. The reasons are that the same were non starters as long term solution in the first place. There can be no peace between India and Pakistan as long as the Kashmir problem keeps on burning and what is more significant, a solution is attempted bypassing the aspirations of the majority people of Kashmir.
This is the crux of the problem : disrespect for the real wishes of the people of Kashmir by denying them the right to determine their own destiny which the most powerful organ of the world's highest assembly, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), granted them through a resolution sixty-two years ago. The UNSC resolution in 1948, in all fairness and principles of justice and equity, had declared that the people of Kashmir would determine their own destiny of whether to join either India or Pakistan or remain independent through a plebiscite to be held under impartial international supervision. But Kashmiris never could exercise this right and to this factor all the conflicts and bitterness since then can be traced back.
The perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks two years ago were alleged to be members of Pakistan based Kashmiri militant groups. They were suspected as the ones behind the incidents who sought, through these attacks, to spoil the moves for improved Indo-Pakistan relations that would lead to a slack in Pakistan's determination to back their struggle for self determination. Even if this theory is admitted, it would follow that real normalization of Indo-Pak relations cannot happen as long as the Kashmir problem remains alive. It cannot be expected, as stated above, that Indo-Pakistan relations can practically improve bypassing the Kashmir problem. Sooner rather than later, the issue of Kashmir must return to spoil the normalization process.
With the Kashmir problem effectively addressed, India and Pakistan could divert their vast expenditure on armaments to economic growth and development. But the peace dividends will not be realised with the Kashmir problem remaining intact and only veiled for the moment. Nor the portents of a nuclear showdown in the region with terrible consequences for it and the world quite diminish as long as lasting peace is not established in Kashmir with full justice for its people.
In the eighties, the US was full of praises for Pakistan as it used the latter to supply the Afghan resistance fighting the Soviet Union. With the Soviet forces pushed out of Afghanistan, the importance of Pakistan as a strategic ally decreased for the US and it embarked afresh on its game of treating Pakistan like an unimportant country and concentrated its energies on wooing India even at the high cost of its old ally, Pakistan.
History has turned a full circle. The US has gone back to its old game of treating India as more equal than Pakistan now that it has squeezed out enough from Pakistan for its campaign in Afghanistan. It thinks nothing of so sweepingly bracketing the Kashmiri freedom fighters as terrorists with the Talibans and the Al Queida.
It was up to the Pakistani leaders to make it clear to the US and the world that the Kashmiri freedom fighters and the Talebans are not birds of the same feathers. While the Talebans were universally condemned for their medieval barbarism and the Al Queida for their international terrorism, the Kashmiri freedom fighters by comparison are fighting for a just cause which is their right to self determination.
About half a million Indian forces have been engaged in peace time to deal with the freedom struggle by the Kashmiri people. Kashmir is a disputed area as recognised by the UNSC. In Kashmir, India's only Muslim majority state, the main principle of the partition of the Indian subcontinent between Muslim and Hindu majority areas, stands most unabashedly violated.
If the Kashmiri freedom fighters have taken up arms to fight, as they conceive, the occupation forces and if for this reason they are branded as terrorists and treated thereof , then the French resistance who fought the Germans during the Second World War were also terrorists. Or , the Bangladeshi freedom fighters who fought for the independence or self determination of Bangladesh in 1971, were also terrorists. But they were not and freedom fighters and terrorists must be seen in their true light or correct perspectives respectively.
We have seen in the last century great strides made by imperialist powers in setting free peoples around the world from unfair bondage. Thus, colonial powers gradually gave up their possessions in Asia and Africa. The process had a relationship to subject people becoming conscious of their desire for freedom and to struggle for it and also to some extent the exhaustion of the colonial powers after World War II. But the independence giving process was also caused in greater part by the leaders and people in the colonial countries realzing that it was unfair to keep nations or peoples under their rule against the will of those nations or peoples.
In relatively recent times, the same sort of appreciation of notions of justice and fairplay as well as other strategic considerations led to the former Soviet Union withdrawing its stranglehold from largely Muslim central Asian entities for them to emerge as fully sovereign and independent countries.
Indian leaders need to ponder on these developments while deciding on a course for Kasmir that would be best both for India and the Kashmiri people. The hackneyed Indian stand that Kashmir is an integral and non negotiable part of the Indian union, this view has certainly lost any appeal in the international context.
The world's unmet obligation to Kashmiri people
