KASHMIR and IDPs

By K.N. Pandita

Hurriyat’s meetings with Pakistani High Commissioner in New Delhi or the visiting Pakistani Foreign Ministers or other top dignitaries of that country are nothing new. Ever since New Delhi deviated from its long-stated policy of rejecting any interference in her internal affairs, particularly in the case of Kashmir dispute, it provided ever widening space to separatists of Kashmir to make them relevant to any Indo-Pak dialogue. By adopting grossly ill-advised state response to armed insurgency in Kashmir, New Delhi created a situation for itself that now looks straight into its eyeball. A government which allows separatist groups to meet freely with those who played prime role in providing them logistics, from advice to arms, is like a rudderless ship heading towards some disaster. Indian policy planners ludicrously call it the resilience of their democratic institutions. That is only an alibi for its indecisive and wavering Kashmir policy.  Continue Reading…

… This document was sent to me by a friend in US. Please open it … you will enjoy reading it yourself …

.60365905-Lobbying-Complaint, 45 pdf pages.

By K.N. Pandita

It was the summer of 1992. An African NGO at the UN Human Rights Commission at Geneva had given me accreditation, and I spoke usually on IDP issues at the UN.

I sat sipping coffee in the lounge. A neatly dressed person of rather smallish height, carrying a portmanteau, came to me, introduced himself as Ghulam Nabi Fai, pulled the chair and sat down. I leapt, and fetched him a sizzling coffee, and we both sat down to speak in chaste Kashmiri. We felt, or I felt, relaxed. In response to his inquisitive probing, I said that I was a Kashmiri Pandit and a RAW agent. He chuckled, but had no courage to say he was ISI agent.  Continue Reading…

By K.N. Pandita

Militancy has come down in the valley not uprooted. Sporadic instances of violence will continue for a long time even if Indo-Pak détente succeeds. Jihadis will not give in that easy.

The State establishment is reconciled to the see-saw between peace and occasional scenarios of violence. It has not an option. Thus, theoretically, peace does return to the strife-torn valley.

What more concessions can the state or the central governments make to appease the habitual protesting masses in the valley? Concessions will have to be carved out and made and this will go on for a long period. It should not hurt anybody.  Continue Reading…

By K.N. Pandita

With many politicians and commentators, diabolic avowal and patent cliché is the idiom for speaking about Kashmir issue. Many of them would want to create an impression that earlier politicians were unable to reach the bottom of the jinx, and that only they have the divine gift of a revealed and unassailable formula for Kashmir. One such example refers to the interview recently given by the leader of the opposition to this paper.

Read between the lines, the entire prognosis is built around subjective perception with an air of willing suspension of disbelief about hard facts of so complex an issue as Kashmir. Take the assertion that “Kashmir can become a bridge between India and Pakistan”. What are we actually going to bridge over? Pakistan, as a homeland for the Muslims of India, is just 63 years old. Against this, Kashmir rightly boasts of more than three thousand years of historical, spiritual and cultural continuity, out of which seven hundred and odd years are filled by secularist indulgence.   Continue Reading…

By K.N. Pandita

How amusing that for the first time any minister from the Valley has publicly questioned the feasibility of existing script for Kashmiri language. One would think that doing anything of the sort is short of blasphemy. Minister for Agriculture, Ghulam Hassan Mir was speaking at a function organized in connection with ‘Fazil Day’ by the Cultural Academy in Srinagar. He asserted: “The script of Kashmiri language that is in vogue these days is too much complicated. It has got many symbols and it is difficult to understand it. It needs to be simplified so that the computer literate generation is wooed to accept it. This will make the language easy to understand. The complicated script is one of the reasons for less interest of people in reading and writing the Kashmir language.”  Continue Reading…

By K.N. Pandita

In a short statement after her meeting with the Pakistani counterpart a few days ago, Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao
said that she could feel a perceptional change in Pakistan’s handling of terrorism. This was no ordinary a statement and from no ordinary a diplomat. Known for her astute diplomatic skills, Rao would not, in normal course of things, make such a meaningful statement. There is no gainsaying that in recent years terrorism has taken big toll of innocent lives in Pakistan. But Pakistan never changed its stance or perception about terrorism as an instrument of state policy to wrest Kashmir from Indian control. This holds good for current foreign policy of Pakistan policy- planners, and surely, it will hold good for some more time.  Continue Reading…

(LeT = Lashkar-e-Toiba, a militant Pakistani Islamist organization, see on en.wikipedia).

By K.N. Pandita

After access to more details of Al Qaeda-Taliban-ISI triumvirate axis, as reflected from various sources including Headley-Tahavuur Rana disclosures, security czars in the US have found it unavoidable to bring the powerful Pakistan terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Tayyaba under radar. Though the outfit has been already brought on terrorist list of the US, yet official circles in Washington are convinced that this organization is not relenting in its agenda of striking terror at selected places and countries. “In South Asia, LeT – the organization responsible for the rampage in Mumbai in 2008 that killed over 100 people, including six Americans – constitutes a formidable terrorist threat to Indian, US and other Western interests in South Asia and potentially elsewhere,” said the National Strategy for Counter-Terrorism released by the White House.   Continue Reading…