The former chief minister of occupied Kashmir and senior leader Jammu and Kashmir National Conference Farooq Abdullah has cautioned the Hurriyat leadership against going into formal talks with the government of India unless New Delhi has a concrete proposal for the resolution of the Kashmir issue. Abdullah who does not hesitate in calling spade a spade made these remarks during an exclusive interview to a Srinagar based English news daily wherein he warned the pro-freedom leadership about New Delhi’s nefarious designs to discredit the leadership.
“Don’t fall in the trap,” the former Chief Minister forewarned Hurriyat leaders. “They (New Delhi) didn’t give us autonomy, which was passed by the state assembly and is within the ambit of constitution, what will they offer to you?” he said in an obvious message directed to Hurriyat leadership. “Don’t talk for the sake of talks. I don’t think they (BJP) are ready to give you anything. They are not sincere in their intentions. They want to drag them to table only to discredit them”, said Abdulla. He said if the government of India was serious about holding talks it would have defined the contours of dialogue and specified what they want to talk about. It may be recalled here that Abdullah’s “message” to the Hurriyat leadership comes in the wake of Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s suggestion on a TV show in New Delhi last month that the government of India was ready to hold dialogue with the Hurriyat.
Regardless of Abdullah’s political philosophy one thing is clear that the NC leader has rightly pointed out that New Delhi has betrayed Kashmiris from time to time. Though there is no harm in holding dialogue but given New Delhi’s policies of deceit and deception Hurriyat leadership must pay a heed to what the NC patron in chief had said. In Kashmir, Farooq Abdullah is perhaps the only man who could better understand the India’s Machiavellian traits but there is no denying the fact that India’s policy on Kashmir has been cloaked in ambiguities. On one hand it extends dialogue offer to Kashmiri Hurriyat leaders while on the other it refuses to accept the disputed nature of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. One day it declares Hurriyat as irrelevant and the next day it says Hurriyat is relevant. This kind of see sawing attitude speaks volumes about the BJP’s non-seriousness and lack of proper policy on the subject. And secondly BJP government’s policy of not holding dialogue with Pakistan that happens to be an important party to the dispute is a well thought out plan to create an impression at international level that Kashmir is a matter of internal security problem. But the history is that Kashmir is neither an integral matter nor an integral part of India. It is an internationally recognized political dispute that needs to be resolved peacefully in line with the universally accepted principle of right to self-determination. So far as the alternative dispute resolution methods are concerned tripartite dialogue between Pakistan, India and the Kashmiris is the best way to settle this long running dispute in peaceful manner. History is witness to the fact that bilateral talks, whether it were held between India and Pakistan or New Delhi and Srinagar during the past 70 years (from time to time) they have miserably failed to yield any positive results. So it is high time that India must take a leaf out from history and take into consideration a realistic approach towards the resolution of long pending dispute that has been a source of tension and unrest in the region.