- Before India’s freedom, Lord Linlithgow also termed our movement issue of three districts
- If Delhi doesn’t talk now, then guns will start talking’
- I’m ready for pre-1952 position, Chidambaram ready to start from 1947
Senior Congress leader and former diplomat Mani Shankar Aiyar Tuesday said before India’s freedom, Lord Linlithgow termed the Indian freedom movement an issue of only three districts.
Speaking to media person on the sidelines of a discussion programme, ‘J&K – The Road Ahead’ organised by Centre for Peace and Progress (CPP), Aiyar said Lord Linlithgow had referred to the Indian freedom struggle as an issue of three districts, a few years after which India had won its freedom from the British.
“Amit Shah in describing Kashmir an issue of three and a half districts is wrong,” he said.
The BJP chief Shah had on Sunday said the problem in Jammu Kashmir was not widespread but centered around only “three-and-a-half districts”.
Earlier, during the discussion, Aiyar said it was unfortunate that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not even giving audience to the former Minister for External Affairs Yashwant Sinha so that he could brief him about the situation in Kashmir after he held several meetings with Kashmiri leaders and civil society members in his visits to the Valley following the last year’s killing of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen commander, Burhan Muzaffar Wani last year.
Critical of New Delhi’s handling of Kashmir issue, Aiyar said he had visited Pakistan 35 times and found that since the past two elections in the country, no party other than Jamaat had Kashmir in their election manifestoes and all political parties were calling for the opening of channels with New Delhi.
Accepting that Congress had made mistakes in Kashmir handling in the past, he said had Congress, National Conference and Peoples Democratic Party not made mistakes on Kashmir in the past, the situation would not have been so bad in Kashmir.
“Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi are all dead and I can’t apologise on their behalf,” the Congress leader said.
Taking at dig at the rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party government at New Delhi for not engaging in parleys with Hurriyat leadership and Islamabad, he said it was the former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee who had permitted the Hurriyat leaders to talk to Pakistan.
Aiyar was also critical of the Army for commending one of its officers accused of tying a Kashmiri youth to a jeep and using him as a human shield.
Major Leetul Gogoi, who is still under investigation for strapping 26-year-old Farooq Ahmad Dar to the front of an army vehicle as it led a convoy in Kashmir, was awarded the Chief of Army Staff’s Commendation Card “for his for sustained efforts in counter-insurgency operations”.
The Congress leader said peace in Kashmir was possible only through dialogue and warned Government of India that if it promotes violence then people too would indulge in violence.
“If BJP talks to armed rebels in Nagaland, why it can’t talk to stone throwers in Kashmir and if they New Delhi doesn’t talk now, then guns will start talking,” he said.
Commenting on the two visits of Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti to New Delhi, Aiyar said her demands not being fulfilled make it clear that it is not the CM in Kashmir but the PM in New Delhi who was running the government in J&K.
Earlier, while discussing over the issue, CPI (M) State Secretary and its legislator from Kulgam, Muhammad Yusuf Tarigami said New Delhi cannot even reach to Indian mainstream in Kashmir when it should have reached to the Huurriyat and other stakeholders to douse the fire in Kashmir.
Former union minister and senior Congress leader, Saifuddin Soz said the Indian state was showing its clear faults in politics in Kashmir and termed the ongoing situation as a revolt not an unrest.
Ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leader, Nizamuddin Bhat said the Indian state had only given people of Kashmir body bags, scars and the worse of all humiliation.
“One can forget the killings but not the humiliation,” he said.
Engineer Rashid said it was strange to hear so many mainstream politicians including from PDP and Indian civil society activists complain about Indian media channels when they had imposed ban on 34 religious channels.
“Why can’t you ban the Republic TV and Times Now then,” he said.
Terming the statement of the Attorney General of India in the Supreme Court as someone representing a ‘Banana Republic’ or a ‘Khap Panchayat’, he said the Army officer who was rewarded by the Indian state should have been in the jail.
BJP leader, Hina Bhat said there was no question of holding dialogue with militants who were killing people on the streets.
Awami National Conference (ANC) leader, Muzaffar Shah said if New Delhi would want to trifurcate the state, it would crack on their face.
Former Air Vice Marshall, Kapil Kak said if New Delhi would not reach out to Kashmir, youth who are up in arms with stones in their hands would pick up guns against the Indian state.
Former minister Ghulam Hassan Mir said the biggest issue in Kashmir was the trust deficit and blamed the successive governments of only encouraging it.
Former Member of Parliament, Abdul Rashid Kabuli said in Jammu Kashmir, the voice of Muslims was being choked and the situation would only worsen as Kashmiris look at what was happening to Muslims in India.
Congress leader and MLA Bandipore, Usman Majeed said the space of the mainstream in Kashmir had shrunk so much that the mainstream politicians did not know what had hit them.
Hurriyat Conference representative Abdul Majeed Banday called for the resolution of “Kashmir dispute” and said the amalgam stands for dialogue.
Hindustan Times journalist, Vinod Sharma said that there was a huge scope for judicial redressal to correct the juvenile behavior of mainstream Indian media.
He also blamed the Hurriyat politics of being caught in a “time bomb”.
Academician Gull Wani said the constituency of moderates in Kashmir had been lost.
Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front leader, Javed Mir said for Hurriyat leaders like him even for attending a discussion programme like today’s they had to cross borders of arrests, house arrests and barricades.
I D Khajuria said the roadmap for Kashmir resolution was cooperative management of all the regions of Jammu Kashmir.
Former Jammu Kashmir High Court Bar Association President, Nazir Ahmad Ronga said India was no longer a secular Hindu state and had become a Hindu state and called for a sustained dialogue between New Delhi and Islamabad and New Delhi and Srinagar.
