EDITORIAL: Speaking at a rally in his native Gujarat, India’s Hindu extremist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, once again, falsified facts of history to justify his illegal, immoral actions regarding the occupied Jammu and Kashmir when he said “As I am following the footsteps of [India’s first deputy prime minister and home minister] Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel”. He went on to make the preposterous claim: “I have values of the land of Sardar and that was the reason I resolved the problem of Kashmir and paid true tributes to Sardar Patel.” It may be politically profitable for Modi and his party, the BJP, to claim to be inheritors of whatever he represented for them, but as regards the Kashmir issue, it is a different story.
There is enough documented evidence to suggest that Patel, a conservative Congress leader, born and raised in Gujarat, had wanted his prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to let the Muslim majority state of Jammu and Kashmir accede to Pakistan. The latter, a Kashmiri pundit, resisted that idea due to personal affinity with Kashmir. In fact, their disagreement on the issue was so well-known that Patel found it necessary to write a letter to Nehru to say “I am not aware of any difference between you and me on the matters of policy relating to Kashmir. Still it is most unfortunate that persons down below should think that there is gulf between us.
” Modi’s other assertion that “I have values of the land” and that he had “resolved the problem Kashmir” amounts to an open admission that his government’s August 5, 2019 revocation of the disputed territory’s special status was nothing but an attempt at land grab. As recognised by the UN Security Council resolutions that call for resolving the dispute according to the wishes of the Kashmiris, the issue is not about land but a people’s right to self-determination. And the people have amply demonstrated in over two decades-long freedom struggle against Indian rule at the cost of more than one hundred thousand lives that they would not accept anything short of independence. Relentless repressive measures, including mass arrests, torture and custodial killings, use of rape as a tool of war, house demolitions, restrictions on people’s movement and internet services have failed to achieve anything except a humanitarian crisis.
In its reaction to Narendra Modi’s “farcical contention”, the Foreign Office (FO) in Islamabad pointed out that that it was not only false and misleading but also reflected “how oblivious the Indian leadership has become of the ground realities.” Referring to his “delusional statements about having resolved the dispute unilaterally”, the FO said: “the Indian leadership must deliver on their commitments to the Kashmiris and the world, and ensure that the people of Kashmir are accorded their inalienable right to self-determination.
” Surely, none of this, facts on the ground and UN recognised principles, are going to stop India’s ultra-Hindu nationalist leadership from resorting to falsifications and denial of the ground realities. However, some influential members of the international community seem to have decided to pay the issue the attention it deserves. In a first sign of that happening, speaking at a recent joint news conference with her Pakistani counterpart Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock averred that her country, “had a role and a responsibility with regard to the situation in Kashmir”, adding Germany supports “intensively the engagement of the United Nations” to find a peaceful solution of the dispute in the region.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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