Millions of pages have already been written about the estrangement between Pakistan and India. In the nutshell: the British left the subcontinent in a rush and did not plan the things, as it should have been. The partition plan was devised and based on principles of two-nation theory, which envisaged that there were two nations in the sub-continent, Muslims and Hindus. The partition of subcontinent led to a mass migration (about 10 million people) and more than a million deaths. You can imagine the bad blood and sense of rift that left stains and strains in the relations between the two South Asian neighbours.
But the unresolved issue of Jammu and Kashmir is one of the major bones of contention between the two nations. Being overwhelmingly Muslim majority princely state, it had to become part of Pakistan. However, the Indian government in connivance with the British to deprive Pakistan of Jammu and Kashmir manipulated the award of the Boundary Commission. Thus, the Muslim majority district of Gurdaspure was so divided as to provide road access to Indian armed forces, which invaded Jammu and Kashmir on October 27, 1947 in violation of the 'Partition Plan' and quite contrary to the two-nation theory. The Kashmir issue thus stems from the unfinished agenda of the partition. There have been three wars, in 1947-48, 1965 and 1971, between the two countries, followed by bilateral agreements, the Tashkent Declaration and the Simla Accord, and consequent series of mutual dialogue, but no headway could be made. The conspiracy of Indian illegal occupation of Kashmir was hatched by a clique of vested interests including Dogra Maharaja Hari Singh, his Prime Minister Mahar Chand Mahajan, the National Conference leader Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah, Indian Governor General Lord Mountbatten and the Indian leadership including Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and the then Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. All of the above had their own reasons and interests to illegally align Kashmir with India. An accession document (Instrument of Accession) drafted in New Delhi, was presented to the Maharaja to sign it. It has been highly controversial even in India whether the Maharaja did sign the document or not. The concocted Indian version claims that Dogra Maharaja, Hari Singh, who had fled to Jammu on October 26 evening, conveyed his formal request for accession to Mountbatten. In response, Mountbatten conveyed the conditional acceptance on October 27, 1947, which caused Indian troops' landing in Srinagar.
It has been termed as the blackest event in the 63-year troubled history of Kashmir when Indian army, violating Indian Independence Act and Partition Plan, attacked Jammu and Kashmir in quite disregard of Kashmiris' aspirations. Aimed at illegal occupation of Kashmir, Indian invasion was followed by the massacre of more than 300,000 Kashmiri Muslims alone in October and November by Indian troops, the forces of Dogra Maharaja Hari Singh and Hindu extremists. The entire saga is pathetic. All these bloodsheds were taking place in full view of the Indian army, which had by that time occupied a major part of the state. British daily 'The London Times' wrote on November 10, 1947 in a report from its special correspondent in India that the Maharaja alone, under his own supervision, got assassinated 237,000 Muslims, using military forces in Jammu area. The editor of The Statesman, Ian Stephen, in his book 'Horned Moon', wrote that till the end of autumn 1947, more than 200,000 Muslims were assassinated in Jammu and Kashmir.
After Kashmiris' genocide by Indian troops and Hindu extremists, Indian occupation of Kashmir led to the widespread and violent public uprising particularly in Mirpur and Poonch areas during the concluding months of the year 1947. On January 1, 1948 when Indian forces were on the verge of defeat, India approached the UN Security Council and the World Body declared a cease-fire. India had to regret later when Indian invasion and the Indian occupation of Kashmir were invalidated by the successive UN Security Council resolutions.
After ceasefire, the UN Security Council passed first Resolution on January 17, 1948 that asked the parties involved not to aggravate the situation but to do everything to improve it and then another Resolution on January 20, 1948 recommended the establishment of a mediator body to set the tenure for the permanent settlement of the dispute. Two more UN resolutions of August 13, 1948 and January 5, 1949 accepted both by Pakistan and India approved a ceasefire, demarcation of ceasefire line, demilitarisation of the state and a free and impartial plebiscite to be conducted by the United Nations. On July 18, 1949, Pakistan and India signed the Karachi Agreement establishing a ceasefire line to be supervised by the observers. On March 30, 1951, the UN Security Council vide its yet another resolution decided that UN Military Observer Group on Pakistan and India (UNMOGIP) should continue to supervise the ceasefire in Kashmir. The demarcation of Kashmir thus accruing left India with about 139,000 square kilometres while Azad Jammu and Kashmir (liberated Kashmir) was left with 83,807 square kilometres area. The one phase of the UN resolution was implemented while demilitarisation of the occupied territory and a free and impartial plebiscite under the UN umbrella remains unimplemented to date. The successive UN resolutions approved Kashmiris' right to self-determination through the process of plebiscite, which Indian leadership of its early history too had ratified. However, when India strengthened its grip over Kashmir, it rejected UN resolutions, describing Kashmir as India's integral part. Pakistan, on the other hand, has always strongly supported UN resolutions and called for their implementation for Kashmiris to secure their right to self-determination.
Since the occupation of Kashmir by India, several wars have been fought between Pakistan and India on the issue of Kashmir. In addition to it, several efforts were also undertaken by Pakistan with the help of international community to resolve the Kashmir dispute amicably but all efforts were dashed to ground due to Indian rigidity till January 1989 the time when Kashmiris felt that India had closed all the doors of negotiations and other peaceful means to settle the Kashmir dispute. This was the time when the enraged people of Kashmir, suppressed for 42 years by India, were left with no way but to give vent to their emotions of liberation through the massive uprising continues till the present day. On the other hand, India engaged its over seven hundred thousand troops to indiscriminately kill Kashmiris with full impunity to suppress their legitimate liberation struggle. Kashmiri people are continuously being brutally murdered, in military house raids, crackdowns, siege and search operations, torture cells, fake encounters and peaceful protest demonstrations. During the past 21 years of popular upsurge for securing Kashmiris' birth right of self-determination, not a single day has passed when Kashmiris have not been killed by the Indian troops. The total of Kashmiris brutally killed by Indian troops from January 1989 till May 31, 2011 comes to 93,572 including 6,983 custodial killings. These include men, women, boys, girls and even infants and the aged. Under the auspices of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Dr. Paula R. Newberg wrote: "Since 1989, the number of dead (in Srinagar) has reached tens of thousands, the exact number unknown. Mostly boys and men, they have died for their religious beliefs, their political beliefs or because they were in the way. The circumstances of birth have become the accidents of death".
In 63 years of Indian occupation of their soil, Kashmiris remain robbed of all their basic human rights. They are totally denied right to free movement because of the menacing presence of Indian occupation troops almost at every step in bazaars, lanes, by-lanes and streets. The predominant presence of military bunkers, check posts and blockade of roads and streets coupled with continued frisking makes movements of people hazardous and risky. Indiscriminate arrests are order of the day.
On the other hand, the dispute has also been posing a potential threat to the peace and security of South Asia for the past six decades, despite the fact that the world powers and the international community is well aware that this dispute is the basic cause of persistent tension between Pakistan and India. Since the two countries have become nuclear power states, international anxiety has increased manifold for resolving the Kashmir dispute through the peaceful process of result-oriented talks so that the threat of catastrophe in the region is diluted, peace in south Asia is secured and the struggling people of Kashmir heave a sigh of relief. The Kashmiris with optimism view this worldwide concern and they expect a ray of hope to become visible at the end of the dark tunnel.
But it is also a fact that the situation in Kashmir had made the lives of the people of Pakistan and India miserable, who had always been under consistent danger of a full-fledged war and had been at the receiving end since 1947 because a major chunk of the national kitty is spent on defence expenditures by both sides. Had it not been the Kashmir dispute, Pakistan and India could have been two of the biggest economies of South Asia. Therefore, the existence of such a dispute is in no one's interests generally in the world and especially in Asia, which is the home of world's fastest growing economies such as China, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan. Besides, the Kashmir dispute is the cause of poverty, underdevelopment and illiteracy to the South Asian region, which is one of the world's biggest markets and harbours more than one and a half billion people.
Currently a peace process is underway between the two countries, which was initiated by the then Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in their meeting in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, on the sidelines of the SAARC summit on January 5, 2004. Since then a number of Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) have been worked out and put in place. Yet the core issue of Kashmir has not so far been substantively addressed. The policy of continuing peace process has also been carried out by the sitting Pakistan People's Party government since it came into power in February 2008.
But in the aftermath of Mumbai attack on November 26, 2008, India unilaterally discontinued talks process. Several summit meetings were held which called for resuming the stalled peace process. The summit between President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at Yekaterinburg on June 16, 2009 and between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Yousuf Raza Gilani at Sharm Al Sheikh on July 16, 2009, the foreign secretaries meeting in the Indian capital on February 25, 2010 followed by the two prime minister's successful meeting at Thimpu on April 30, 2010 and foreign secretaries preparatory meeting in Islamabad on June 24, 2010 and at the ensuing home ministers meeting on June 26, both in Islamabad bore testimony to the importance of talks for breaking the deadlock and moving forward towards reconciliation and rapprochement.
In consequence of that India's foreign Secretary Nirupma Rao came over to Pakistan and held talks with her counterpart Salman Bashir in Islamabad. India's foreign minister S M Krishna came to Islamabad in mid July 2010 and had a meeting with Shah Mahmood Qureshi on the agreed agenda. Unfortunately these talks did not produce the desired results. Talks between the two countries in the last decade had been instrumental in resumption of bilateral trade relations besides restoration of bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad and opening of trade between the two cities of the disputed territory. The Line of Control has been opened to facilitate bilateral visits of families from both sides.
These confidence-building measures have gone a long way in easing tension and creation of a favourable atmosphere for moving forward towards the ultimate solution of the core issue of Kashmir. Since November 2008 a number of milestones had been covered as far as resumption of dialogue between the two neighbouring countries was concerned. There have been several summit meetings at various occasions stressing the need for resuming the stalled peace process.
As the record shows there has been fervent desire to sustain the dialogue process to untie the knot of stalemates and aberrations. It should be hoped that the renewed process would help make up the lost time and take up the outstanding issues including the central issue of Kashmir that has spoiled relations between the two neighbours for so long. Meanwhile, Pakistan has reiterated that no dialogue or meeting could improve relations unless the status of the disputed territory of occupied Kashmir comes under discussion.
And the last but not the least meeting between Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and his Indian counterpart Dr Manmohan Singh on March 30, 2011 during the semi-final of the world cup between the two South Asian giants, as reported in wide section of media also gave both the leaders a chance to speak openly on various issues without the pressure of public expectations. The entire region was watching the game with great enthusiasm and they too had little expectations of any kind of major breakthrough, but the fact remains that the two premiers' meeting face to face marked a step forward in a relationship that has been effectively dampened since the Mumbai attacks in 2008.
And it comes to the mind clearly that this is happening because Pakistan on its part is showing flexibility but India, till date, remains stuck to its rigid stand on the issue. Indian traditional inflexibility leads all the matters to an impasse. European Union has been sending its delegations to Jammu and Kashmir to take stock of the situation and the head of one of its delegations John Kushnahan has described Kashmir as the beautiful prison of the world.
Pakistan has time and again pressed that all parties to the dispute should go beyond their traditional stances on the issue and work out modalities for a durable solution in a way that is acceptable to all the three sides to the dispute, Pakistan, India and Kashmiri people.
The objective of resolving Kashmir issue once and for all demands a lot of flexibility and courage and this problem has to be addressed in such a way that relations between Pakistan and India normalise, which will usher in an era of peace, progress and prosperity, not only in the two countries but also in the entire region. Demilitarisation, making LoC irrelevant and self-governance provide key to peace in south Asia.
It has become very clear that the path, which can lead to a lasting resolution of the Kashmir dispute, for permanent peace, progress and prosperity in South Asian region is to change the ground situation of occupied Kashmir. It is the only threshold to the path of resolving the Kashmir dispute and saving over ten million Kashmiri souls from misery, vandalism and the cruel clutches of seven hundred thousand Indian troops
Here, Pakistan needs not to live in isolation by ignoring international community, nor should it abandon universal principles of justice. Whereas at the same time it has to feel the pulse of the suppressed people, living inside the occupied territory. With the growing momentum that kicked off through the meeting of Pakistani and Indian leadership on the sidelines of January 2004, SAARC Summit, the Kashmiris themselves, Pakistan, international community and the voices within India, will have to put an end to New Delhi's reluctance to show flexibility and bring an end to its status-quo position in Jammu and Kashmir.
Talks, not the militarism, are the only resort to resolve rotting international issues in a world, which has gone ahead over a decade in the post-9/11 period. The 'Paradise Lost' can now be saved from agony, if we have the competence to strike a balance between Idealism and pragmatism. Pakistan no doubt is trying its level best to find a just resolution of Kashmir dispute at the earliest by pitching several CBMs for resolving the longstanding dispute, but India's delaying tactics are the main reason, which create hiccups in this process.
(The author is a sub-editor at the Kashmir Media Service)
