Islamabad, (Parliament Times) : ‘Jinnah was running in a completely different direction as he was unaware of secretive communications between Nehru, Lord Mountbatten, and Maharaja Hari Singh’ during Kashmir’s accession, said Dr. Dushka Hyder Saiyid, a former professor of History at QAU, in a roundtable discussion on ‘narratives on Kashmir’ organized by the Institute of Regional Studies (IRS) in collaboration with Center for International and Strategic Studies (CISS), Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
Dr. Saiyid told the participants that with Nehru’s connivance, Hari Singh signed an instrument of accession to India, adding that, the decision was taken right after a day when Indian troops landed in Srinagar on 26 October 1947. She further said that Mountbatten was very much part of Kashmir’s accession to India as he clandestinely supported Nehru.
Earlier, Dr Asma Shakir Khawaja, Executive Director of CISS, said that the revocation of Article 370, and 35 A, was nothing but a part and parcel of India’s systematic political and demographic engineering in IIOJK that had threatened the very basis of the right of self-determination.
Victoria Schofield, a famous British historian, argued that the very reason behind the lukewarm support of the international community for the Kashmir cause was the changed narrative of freedom fighting in the post-9/11 era in which the Kashmiri struggle was unfortunately equated with terrorism. On human rights, she said that the situation had further deteriorated after the revocation of Article 370, and for that, a serious dialogue between Pakistan and India was needed, she emphasized.
Dr. Christopher Snedden, an Austrian political scientist, was of the view that bringing India and Pakistan to the table was indeed a challenge, equally, building international pressure on India to resolve the Kashmir dispute was also a challenge, he added. Echoing what Schofield said, Dr Snedden stressed the need to work on giving relief to the Kashmir people.
Ambassador Abdul Basit held that India would never reverse its August 2019 decision so Pakistan needed to review its policies accordingly and devise a workable strategy vis-à-vis the Kashmir issue. Amb. Basit was quite hopeful that sanity would prevail and that the new governments both in India, and Pakistan after the elections would make a sensible start through a meaningful engagement. While concluding the session, Ambassador Nadeem Riyaz, president of IRS stressed that Pakistan needed to have a consistent approach towards the Kashmir issue, adding that the ultimate solution lies in the UN resolutions that warranted the right of self-determination to the Kashmiri peo