The Chief Minister of Indian held territory of Jammu and Kashmir Ms Mehbooba Mufti has yet again urged the Hurriyat leadership to accept New Delhi talks offer to help bring peace in the region. Ms Mufti said this while talking to news men in Srinagar on Monday. She said that there was only one way to resolve the Kashmir issue and that was through a process of dialogue. She said its fate could never be decided in a war. She revealed that political efforts were underway to kick-start a political process on Kashmir whose fate would depend on the situation in Kashmir. “It becomes responsibility of everybody, mainstream parties who are already part of this process, and separatists to help bring peace in the state. They (separatists) should think if they want an end to the bloodshed,” said Mehbooba.
The puppet Chief Minister’s remarks came after the Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh during a TV interview offered to talk to everybody in Kashmir. She termed Rajnath’s offer as a golden opportunity and said, “We should take advantage of it. Such an opportunity doesn’t come time and again”.
War is not a solution to Kashmir dispute, this is a reality that no one can deny, but one thing that Ms Mufti is unable to figure out is the New Delhi’s unwillingness to recognise the political nature of the problem. India as a matter of fact is not ready to go beyond its traditional policy to deal the Kashmir issue and its perpetual denial to accept the historic reality has been compounding the situation in Kashmir. So far as the issue of saving the region from further bloodshed is concerned the onus of responsibility lies with the government of India. The pro-freedom leadership has already made it clear that they won’t talk unless New Delhi clears ambiguity over the dialogue offer and speaks in one language. Nonetheless, before asking Hurriyat to respond Rajnath’s dialogue offer, Ms Mufti should revisit the wisdom and take a holistic review of the ground situation in the troubled valley and see whether dialogue or a political process she talks about could be initiated in such a hostile atmosphere where innocent people are getting killed, maimed, mutilated and blinded by the use of excessive forces by Indian occupation forces. It is simply ridiculous to talk about peace in such kind of terrible conditions. The fact is that dialogue and war can’t go together. If New Delhi is really sincere to resolve the lingering dispute, it must announce a ceasefire, withdraw its forces from residential areas, repeal all draconian laws prevalent in the territory, and release all political prisoners as a confidence building measure to create a conducive atmosphere for the talks. And last but not the least New Delhi should ask its military to suspend all its overt and covert operations in the region to put an immediate end to bloodshed in the troubled valley.
