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Jawaharlal Nehru: 1952
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"We have fought the good fight about Kashmir on the field of
battle... (and) ...in many a chancellery of the world and in
the United Nations, but, above all, we have fought this fight
in the hearts and minds of men and women of that State of Jammu
and Kashmir. Because, ultimately - I say this with all deference
to this Parliament - the decision will be made in the hearts and
minds of the men and women of Kashmir;neither in this Parliament,
nor in the United Nations nor by anybody else," Jawaharlal Nehru
in the Lok Sabha on August 7, 1952.
- Selected works of Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 19 pp.
295-6.
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The Indian state considers the accession of Kashmir final and considers it as an
integral part of India and continues to deny that there exists a genuine dispute; India is resistant to talks of plebiscite and maintains
that India will not accept LOC as the international border and that the issue of POK
will top the agenda.
It should be noted that India's present claim of completed accession contradicts with 1948 White Paper which recognized Kashmir as a disputed territory and the accession as provisional till plebiscite and also that Kashmiri activists do not consider the elections (which themselves have a
history of having been rigged) as a substitute for a plebiscite. Pakistan considers Kashmir
as a disputed territory and has insisted on implementation of a
plebiscite as per UN resolutions.
Many observers believe that UN resolutions are out-dated, since the
dispute has evolved into tripartite; that other solutions like regional autonomy
and independence should be considered given that various regions in Kashmir have evolved independently since 1947 and that the conflict is restricted to the Kashmir Valley
whose area is less than 16% of the total area of Indian controlled J&K. It is noteworthy that majority people of Jammu and Ladakh want to remain with India.
Any claim that all would be well in Kashmir but for Pakistan's cross-border terrorism
is simplistic and hides the internal trauma in the Valley. Kashmiris are alienated from both countries given brutal repression by India and
violence by pro-Pakistan militants; In a recent poll by Mori , only 9% and 13% of people of Kashmir Valley have preferred to join India and Pakistan respectively. Kashmiri activists resent the gradual erosion
of their autonomy promised under Article 370 and the fact that the promised
self-determination has been denied so far and hence insist on
being included in the talks without preconditions, which both India and Pakistan
resist; The stalemate continues.
The Hurriyat conference(APHC) is an umbrella organization of over 20 political, social and religious groups founded in 1993, which is the political face of the Kashmiri separatist movement with good support in the Valley, as attested by the compliance of the Valley in response to APHC's calls for strikes and protests; The Hurriyat is
committed to self-determination for Kashmiris and fighting Indian rule by peaceful means and has thus far refused to participate in Jammu & Kashmir's elections, although it is deeply divided in whether the ultimate objective is independence or accession to Pakistan.
Yasin Malik (Chairman of the J&K Liberation Front and a pro-independence Hurriyat leader) says in an interview in 2000 that India has offered talks with Kashmiris subject
to condition that Kashmir is a part of India, which he has refused. The hardliners
insist that talks with India must include Pakistan, an option India completely rejects. The Hurriyat claims to represent the whole State, however it has refused to indicate the future status of various regions and communities within the proposed state; The Hurriyat does not have good support outside the Kashmir Valley and parts of Azad Kashmir and hence needs to accomodate regional solutions.
While Pakistan's claim that it is only providing moral and diplomatic support for
an indigenous freedom struggle in Kashmir Valley, similar to India's
support for the freedom struggle in East Pakistan in 1971, may be true to
some extent, it is equally true that Pakistan is arming and training foreign militants besides indigenous militants. The JKLF admitted in a press release in 1990 that ISI had financed the operations of the JKLF and the Hizb. In November 1995, a BBC documentary programme showed evidence of camps in Azad Kashmir and Pakistan, supported by the Jamaat-i-Islami (political wing of the Hizb), where fighters were trained and openly professed their intention of fighting in Kashmir.
- Victoria Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict, New York 2000, p.177,p.141.
While many of India's accusations of Pakistan sponsored cross-border terrorism may be true, there have also been instances when such accusations have proved false; For instance, K. Subrahmanyam, one of India's top defence specialists maintained that 'Operation Topac' was established in Pakistan in April 1988 in order to nurture an indigenous insurgency, which was countered by Pakistan that it was invented by the Indian RAW, as a hypothetical exercise, a fact which Subrahmanyam later acknowledged . Curiously, this hypothetical Operation Topac continues to be quoted by Indian officials including the Indian Embassy. According to the Director-General of the Indian Border Security Force (BSF), E.N. Rammohan , India is up against not only the ISI's financing of, but also the motivation of the cross-border infiltrators.
Human Rights Record
In the meantime, grave human right violations by the Indian security forces, such
as arbitrary arrests, torture, rape and extrajudicial killings, continue to be reported, being extensively documented by human rights organizations. Violence and human right violations by militants continue. Pakistan continues to control Azad Kashmir and Northern Territories in a repressive manner.
As of June 1999, an estimated 400,000 army troops and other federal security forces were deployed in the valley, including those positioned along the Line of Control. Since 1990, over 40,000 people are estimated to have been killed in Kashmir
, about half of them are civilians; According to official handouts (which tend to be conservative in the number of Muslim civilians killed by the security forces and mostly exclude thousands of custodial killings), 2477 civilians had been killed by Indian security forces, 6673 civilians and 1593 security personnel had been killed by the militants, amounting to a total of 19,866 killings as of 1998, including 982 Hindus and Sikhs killed as of 1999. An estimated 36,000 Hindu families
and 20,000 Muslim families (as of 1993) have fled the Valley and many of them still languish in the refugee camps in Jammu and Azad Kashmir, being displayed by India and Pakistan respectively for propaganda. Caught in the crossfire
between militants and Indian security forces, Kashmir continues to bleed.
References:
Human Rights Watch,INDIA'S SECRET ARMY IN KASHMIR , New Delhi 1999, pp.71-2.
Balraj Puri, Kashmir: Towards Insurgency, New Delhi 1993, p.68.
