[Reader-list] CSDS Seminar on “Multi-Party dialogue on Political Future of Jammu & Kashmir”

[Inder Salim]

SOME COMMENTS ON THE SEMINAR

1. Not a single soul in the entire gatheraing dared to touch the
question ; WHY ELECTIONS WERE  RIGGED IN KASHMIR which resulted in the
Armed struggle ( Ironically, the same two parites are ruling right now
) .  It goes to the credit of Yasin Malik to identify himself with
Gandhi in Kashmir where there is not a single soul ready to touch
anthing that is Indian.  Yasin, the Star of the evening, spoke bluntly
about the failture of Indian Civil Society which ' cheated' him and
his party for surrendering guns in exchange of kashmir solution, which
never happned. He declared that he would abandon politics the day
Kashmir issue is resolved.

2. Muzaffar Beig ( PDP ) represented Kashmiri Pandits quite fairly,
and they should learn how to project their case. On their own, without
a competent  Vakil/advocate, they look only noisy young boys, and not
surprising that even newspapers ignored to report their protest.

3. No Indian in the gathering had guts to answer to  Mr. Beig's
question that why Bitte Karatte , who confessed having killed 43 KPs'
is roaming free?

4. Panun Kashmir representative Mr. Manwati forgot to talk about what
Panun Kashmir demands are.

5. Mehbooba Mufi  sucessfully pointed out how Kashmir was cut from the
rest of the world by linking it with it India through Jawahar Tunnel.
Whatever the reasons, Kashmiris deserve to use the roads that were
functional for  thouands of years.  Mehbooba pulled the leg of NC (
Sheikh Mohd Abudullah)  by pointed that they too have commited
mistakes in Jammu during 1953 elections which resulted into Hindu Maha
Sabha hardline.

6. Sanjay Tickoo ( representative of KP non-Migrant lot ) pointed out
that how loads of buses, and metadors were able to cross the LOC
during 89-1990.  authentic sources signal strongly  that India always
knew what is happening in Kashmir but allowed . He, expressed pain on
the suffereings of Kashmiri pandits and Kashmiri muslims in a single
breath, which other RIK representatives ignored.

7. Representatives from Leh and Kargil spoke about the absence of
monolithic notions of existing socities in these regions. But demaned
more power sharing.

8.Ms Elora from Jammu complained about the monoply of Kashmir over the
rest of two regions, and demanded some internal authonomy within the
J&K state for three regions:Jammu, Ladakh and Kashmir.

9. Tahir Khurshid Raina of Rajouri Poonch spoke about his region,
where Partition really was experienced and where people still are
divided across the line, and which remains the most underdeveloped
area in  J&K.  So, in comparision to Jammu region it is a lesser
Dalit.

10. Madhu Kishwar managed it gracefully






On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 3:32 PM, Aditya Raj Kaul
<kauladityaraj at gmail.com> wrote:
> CSDS Seminar on “Multi-Party dialogue on Political Future of Jammu &
> Kashmir”
>
> Link -
> http://kashmiris-in-exile.blogspot.com/2009/11/csds-seminar-on-multi-party-dialogue-on.html
>
> I have a Maths test on Wednesday but I just can’t study. My mind refuses to
> concentrate. Two years ago, when Rashneek bhaiya made me write a speech for
> World Refugee Day, he said that Kashmiri Pandits were viewed as ‘collateral
> damage’ of the Kashmir issue by ‘intellectuals’. I understood what he meant
> but never really faced this harsh reality head on. Yesterday, as I listened
> to leader after leader talk, I understood how  insignificant we actually
> were to the ‘main issue’.
>
> I came to Teen Murti in time only for the post-lunch session. I can only
> give you a brief summary of the first session (garnered from various
> sources). Abdul Ghani Bhat talked the usual about dialogue between India,
> Pakistan and Kashmir for peace and reconciliation. Muzzafar Baig accepted
> that Kashmiri leaders had time and again sold their conscience to India and
> Pakistan to remain in power. On the subject of Kashmiri Pandits, he said
> that all Kashmiri leaders wanted the safe return of KPs to Kashmir. He also
> said that his mother still cried, on remembering their KP friends and
> neighbors. Shafi Uri of NC talked about the NC’s willingness to negotiate
> with PDP and other parties on the autonomy document presented by NC in July
> 2000. Balbir Punj and Tarun Vijay demanded the removal of Article 370.
>
> The post-lunch session started with Madhu Kishwar of CSDS calling everybody
> for a group photo with Yasin Malik; Ramesh Manwati of Panun Kashmir was the
> only person who refused to be part of the photo. Kishwar then announced that
> Ram Jethmalani had to attend a press conference at his residence and so
> would absent himself for some time. Jethmalani started the parting message
> by holding Yasin Malik’s hand (YM had come straight from the Jammu TADA
> court, where his presence was needed in the Rubbaiya Sayeed kidnapping case,
> and was seated beside him) and welcoming his ‘dear friend and honored
> guest’. Importantly, he mentioned that the problem in Kashmir started due to
> the coincidence of two events happening together. First, the Russians left
> Afghanistan and the terrorists in Kabul became ‘unemployed’, and second,
> India started rigging elections in Kashmir. He also said that it was the
> highest virtue of an Indian to love Pakistan, and that the entire discussion
> should be in the spirit of ‘love and affection’. After he left, Ellora Puri
> from Jammu talked of how it had always been ignored that the state was
> actually made of three geographically and culturally distinct regions of
> Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. She proposed a federal system within the state,
> with the three regions having three separate ‘councils’.
>
> After her, Sanjay Tickoo of Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti (representing
> KPs who were still living in Kashmir for these 20 years) spoke. He first
> wanted to discount the notion that KPs fled because the then Governor
> Jagmohan told them to do so, quoting that in 1998, there were 19,000 KPs in
> Kashmir, whereas in 2008, there were only about 3000. This proved that
> conditions in Kashmir were far from being conducive to their return. He also
> demanded a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to be set up by the Indian
> Parliament where the different stake-holders could voice their grievances
> and demands. Ramesh Manwati of Panun Kashmir showed a report published in a
> national daily in which the government had placed “Relief and Rehabilitation
> of Kashmiri Pandits” under the topic of Animal Husbandry. That aside, he
> talked a little about the concept of Panun Kashmir. He also talked about how
> 150 temples that had been desecrated and demolished in 1990 and blamed the
> media, civil society and HR groups for turning a blind eye to the plight of
> KPs. I personally thought that both speakers could not manage to convey
> either the past or the future in the right perspective, but it is pertinent
> to note that Madhu Kishwar interrupted both their speeches about 2-3 times,
> chiding them like recalcitrant children whenever they even mentioned 1990.
> We were expected to forget everything and start afresh. There really wasn’t
> any time for telling reality to the world. We were asked to make “tall
> demands” of the future. I know that rationally we should do that, and to an
> extent, we did do that too. What infuriated me was that only we were
> admonished for speaking about the old truth. Mehbooba Mufti went on and on
> about Kashmir being a “chota Iran” and how Accession to India had isolated
> Kashmir from the rest of Central Asia and West Asia. (The main point of her
> talk was more like propagating PDP’s agenda – she kept asking if India was
> ready to trust Kashmiris and uniting the 'two Kashmirs' - PoK and IK). There
> was a Mr. Tahir Khurshid Raina (Mr. Three-In-One – Rajouri and Poonch
> representative cum PDP member cum Yasin Malik supporter) who talked about
> how war had ravaged Rajouri and Poonch and how all these years they had few
> basic facilities. Yasin Malik went on to give the entire history (read:
> justification) behind his proud taking up of arms (reiterating that it was
> not an unemployment issue at all). But no, Madhu Kishwar did not have the
> guts or the rather the inclination to stop them and ask them to talk about
> the future. Only we were supposed to listen and digest.
>
> I know we haven’t been the only sufferers – far from it. But I believe that
> if you remove KPs from the context of the Kashmir problem – it becomes a
> clear case for YM’s ‘freedom struggle’. I don’t pretend to know much about
> the workings of Kashmiri politics but to an outsider, ignorant of the ethnic
> cleansing in 1989-90, there would be little wrong in YM’s story (which he
> skillfully recited yesterday) of 3rd degree torture from Indian authorities,
> leading to ‘armed struggle’, leading to jail and finally “Gandhian
> enlightenment”. He was ‘forced’ to pick up arms and then by the strength of
> his character and the overwhelming sentiment of ‘azadi’ in Kashmir, he chose
> to become non-violent (despite seeing ‘600’ of his ‘friends and followers’
> dead after coming out from jail). The intellectuals present yesterday knew
> both of our displacement and the ‘armed struggle’ but chose, peacefully, to
> keep them separate. They didn’t, of course, have any explanation for the
> former. It just happened. And now Kashmiri Pandits needed to go back to
> Kashmir to reverse history and show that everything was normal. As simple as
> that. As moral, just and enlightened citizens they needed to support the
> Kashmiris’ right to independence, even if it meant listening to YM saying
> that he had defeated India militarily, mentally, culturally and spiritually.
> When Madhu Kishwar showed some sense by asking YM how practical his notion
> of azadi was, Ram Jethmalani cut her short and said that he found no problem
> whatsoever with YM’s proposal.
>
> When YM was announced as a speaker, I had thought that we would pounce on
> him during or after his speech with questions. Then Sushilji got up to
> protest his presence, as a murderer and a rapist. Once it started, we didn’t
> back off. The astounding part was how everybody in the room thought that we
> were irrational liars. They welcomed and pleaded him to continue while
> admonishing us for not listening to him. He talked about how the problem
> between KPs and KMs was essentially a “power struggle”, not a communal one.
> The educated Pandits got insecure of the increasing power with the poor,
> uneducated Muslims and hence the trouble. He said that he had visited
> refugee camps in Jammu, and commiserated with the old ladies there; he had
> the guts to quote a “sher” from Lal Ded. Better still, he said that in KPs,
> India had found a “weeping boy” for Geneva. Madhu Kishwar and Ram Jethmalani
> said nothing at all on this and instead scolded the PK representative who
> raised an objection. I asked YM to shut up on this topic at least; he didn’t
> have the right to talk about Kashmiri Pandits from his bloody mouth. When
> Sushilji asked for permission to ask a question, Jethmalani said that he
> could ask only if he promised to speak in the spirit of “love and
> affection”. Love and affection to your killers! Of the two questions
> Sushilji asked, only one was permitted – that of how YM could say that all
> KMs had left arms when Let and Hizbul Mujahideen continued to operate. The
> second and more important one, about just how YM could compare himself with
> Gandhi when he and JKLF had killed so many unarmed, innocent women and
> children was promptly and completely ignored. We were largely seen as
> deranged communalists shouting at a hero for no good reason.
>
> When Mehbooba Mufti and Yasin Malik were speaking I really felt like we were
> banging our heads against stone walls who would never listen. It was
> suffocating. They had thrown us out of Kashmir and consequently we were left
> with no say in the ‘current problem’ of Kashmir. We were an ugly face of
> history that nobody wanted to recall, because we just didn’t fit in. Today,
> as I scoured newspapers, both online and paper, to see if anybody had
> reported us, I was shown the raw truth. The news people had got their quotes
> from YM, Abdul Ghani Bhat, Baig, Mehbooba Mufti and Jethmalani. We had given
> pamphlets to people explaining why we were protesting against YM but still
> we were only mentioned in one-liners as disrupters of YM’s speech. Nothing
> else. Regardless of the cries of rehabilitation and relief – succor for the
> past in the future – there was after all nothing in the present. Nobody
> wanted to talk about collateral damage. In the end, Muzaffar Baig, the man
> who ignited the Amarnath agitation by talking of “demographic” changes in
> Kashmir due to settlements for Amarnath pilgrims, showed why he was a
> successful politician. He talked about things I thought only we could
> understand – he talked about Kashmiri Pandits as a unique unit of
> civilization; he talked about how individual successes aside, the loss of
> homeland would always be irreparable.
> The program ended there. Baig had said the right things; Madhu Kishwar
> volunteered to hold a signature campaign for the Truth and Reconciliation
> Commission and also arrange for a private conference between Baig and KPs.
>
> Words…
>
> I only hope that we ‘heckled’ YM enough for the time being.
>
> A piece by a 16 year old displaced Kashmiri girl Radhika Kaul.
>
> regards
> Aditya Raj Kaul
>
>



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