Kashmir
Ras Siddiqui February 4, 1998
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#9 Posted by sarwar on November 29, 2001 9:55:05 pm
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#8 Posted by cutandpaste on January 9, 2001 8:01:40 pm
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 09 2002
Cover story
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0%2C%2C7-2002013426%2C00.html
A state of war
BY TREVOR FISHLOCK
The dispute over Kashmir has brought India and Pakistan to the brink of nuclear war. But why has this beautiful state become the subcontinent`s powder keg?
Poets hymned it as a land of love and languor. In 1627 the dying emperor Jahangir, who shaped its blissful gardens, was asked to name his last desire. “Only Kashmir,” he murmured. “Only Kashmir.”
India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, promised melodramatically that its name was written upon his heart. Today, millions make the same emotive claim.
Passions for Kashmir run hot and bitter, the bayonets almost touch and the urge for war is strong. Two rivals, two ideas, two faiths stand nose to nose in one of the world’s most dangerous places. One mistake or misjudgment and the spark falls on the fuse.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir. The great bulk of their armies are based along the frontier that runs through Punjab and Kashmir. The border is always tense.
In Kashmir there has been an almost permanent grumbling small war of artillery bombardment. Apart from the all-out conflicts, India and Pakistan have two or three times pulled back from the brink, and now the assessments of their military power have to include their nuclear capability. There was a particularly dangerous stand-off in 1990.
It was inevitable that the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13 would bring India and Pakistan once more to the edge of the abyss. It was an echo of the October suicide bomb attack on the Kashmir assembly. The Parliament in Delhi is the heart and emblem of what India stands for. Now India is raging.
Poor Kashmir. It lies in the Himalayan ramparts where the borders of India, Pakistan and China rub together. Reality mocks its beauty. There is no escaping the permeating melancholy of a land that lies under the gun. It is as if malevolent gods, jealous of its loveliness, placed a curse upon it.
The poison entered the garden in 1947 when the war-weary British quit their Indian empire and partitioned it. They had no wish to cut it up: one of their imperial achievements, they said, was to have united India and made it secure. They divided it to meet the demands of Muslim leaders who said that Hindus and Muslims could not live together in one country, that the communities formed two separate nations. Pakistan was therefore created as a homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims.
Britain ruled India with the co-operation of more than 500 Indian princes, a galaxy of maharajahs, rajahs, ranas, raos, khans, mirs, jams, nizams and nawabs, loyal to the British crown, well-oiled with flattery, some fantastically rich and a few of them barmy. In the summer of 1947, these rulers had to choose whether to take their states into India or Pakistan. It was a personal decision, without referendum.
Public opinion hardly came into it. Most princes joined India. Most knew that they would be extinguishing themselves as a ruling class, but it was clear to all but a few that the game was up. On the eve of independence, all the princes had made up their minds except four.
The Maharajah of Kashmir, Sir Hari Singh, was one of the ditherers. He was vain, pompous and addicted to hunting bears and shooting ducks. As a young man he had an unfortunate scrape in London, being found in bed with a woman at the Savoy Hotel and milked for a lot of money by a blackmailer pretending to be the woman’s husband.
At Partition, Kashmir, more fully known as Jammu and Kashmir, was in a key position: a prize because it was a large state and famously beautiful, a honeymooners’ resort of lakes and cool alpine meadows.
Given its place on the map, it could have swung either to India or to Pakistan. Because of its overwhelming Muslim majority, Pakistan’s new leaders expected that it would join their Islamic entity. But the maharajah had to decide — and he was a Hindu. This was not unusual. In princely India, Muslims often ruled Hindus and vice versa. But Hari Singh dithered. He could not believe that the British would really go home. He did not want to join Pakistan because he could not bear the thought of his state being subsumed. He dreamt that Kashmir could somehow be an independent country and he could keep his power.
India and Pakistan became independent in August. Hari Singh was still dithering in October. As he fiddled, the storm broke. Thousands of Pathan warriors from the North-West Frontier, bordering Afghanistan, rushed into Kashmir, vowing to seize it for Pakistan. Although they were a rabble, they might have succeeded. They were close to Srinagar, the capital, when they were delayed by their lust for loot and women. While they pillaged towns and raped girls and nuns, the hapless Hari Singh gathered up his diamonds and Purdey shotguns and fled his palace in a motorcade.
India acted fast and decisively. In a flurry of action the maharajah agreed to join India, and Indian forces flew to save Srinagar. This was the first Kashmir war, not an all-out confrontation but a series of fights and communal conflicts. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of Pakistan, wanted to send the new Pakistan regular Army into action, but did not do so when the absurdity of the situation was pointed out to him: the forces of India and Pakistan shared a commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, while many officers on both sides were British.
Kashmir was left divided along the line where fighting stopped in 1948. A United Nations ceasefire came into force on January 1, 1949. In 1965 Pakistan tried and failed to annexe Kashmir and was defeated in brief and bitter fighting. At one stage Indian forces were almost at the gates of Lahore and could easily have taken it. Pakistan’s leaders believed that Kashmiris would welcome Pakistani troops as liberators. It was a shock that they did not. In 1971 India and Pakistan went to war again, India assisting the secession of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh. Pakistan was left truncated and humiliated.
Yet the story of a vacillating maharajah and the ensuing bloody quarrel over territory is only the half of it.
Kashmir is a tragedy for its divided people and a continuing source of danger in a subcontinent inhabited by a fifth of the world’s population. The tragedy has deep roots. Kashmir is the offspring of bitterly divorced parents. Pakistan aches for it but will never possess it. India will never let it go: it is not negotiable. The trouble is that both sides define themselves by this feud.
Their mutual suspicions date from the 8th-century Muslim conquest of western India and the many hundreds of years of Mogul rule that were brought to an end by the British Raj. For India’s Hindu majority, independence in 1947 was a reclamation of their vast land, the end of centuries of foreign domination. Nehru and others believed passionately that this new India would be a daring concept, an embracing of all its religious, linguistic and regional diversity, a magnificent secular state.
The steely and intractable Jinnah did not believe it. His new country of Pakistan grew out of that scepticism, the belief that Muslims in India would be vulnerable, second-class citizens.
Pakistan was an invented state, a by-product of the great Indian struggle for independence. It evolved in the last few years of British rule among people who wanted to escape religious and political discrimination in the new order. Landowners especially thought they would lose out in India. Democracy barely made the journey to Pakistan.
In a sense Pakistan remains stranded in 1947. Its great debate has centred for half a century on what it is for and what it should be. Jinnah mused that it could be a secular country. But in that case, what was the point of Partition? Some of his successors said that Pakistan was nothing if not Islamic and determined to make it more so, a military theocracy.
Yet Islam proved an unreliable glue. It did not cement Pakistan and East Pakistan. Bangladesh erupted as the assertion of Bengali language and culture. Nor did it cement the disparate parts of Pakistan itself — Punjab, Baluchistan, Sindh and the North- West Frontier — or, indeed, the many shades of Islamic belief. Thus Kashmir is useful, the “unfinished business of Partition”. However much Pakistanis disagree about the nature of their society, they find common cause in Kashmir, the belief that they were robbed in 1947. This is the unifying insult. It is why Pakistan has supported Kashmiri insurgents. India’s treatment of Kashmiris during the long years of internal strife are held as proof that Jinnah was right, that Muslims needed their homeland.
It is true that India could have managed Kashmir more wisely, less roughly. But Pakistan has to live with the fact that there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. India has the second largest Muslim population in the world: evidently Hindus and Muslims do live together in a secular society, Nehru’s idea of India, even if it is not always easy. And Kashmir, the only Indian state with a Muslim majority, is in Indian minds the shining fact of secular India. Its existence throws the question to Pakistan again: what was Partition for? India has a powerful idea of its identity. It is the giant of South Asia, its Armed Forces are huge and it is proud of its democracy, even if this is somewhat battered. Pakistan, on the other hand, does not enjoy such a positive identity. It thinks of itself in terms of its neighbour and endures the negative of being Not India.
It means that even if the impossible were to happen, that Kashmir should somehow become part of Pakistan, the anxieties and insecurities of Pakistan would endure. There would have to be another issue by which Pakistan could seek to establish its identity and purpose.
In the meantime the two nations face each other again — and judging from what we see and hear, there are many on both sides desperate to fight. Centuries of prejudice are poured into the funnel of Kashmir.
People on both sides treasure the slights of history. There is an endless misunderstanding of each other’s beliefs and opinions. Estrangement is total. Trivial matters become huge. Hindu nationalists complain that Muslims cheer for Pakistan during Test matches. In both India and Pakistan, keen teams of monitors comb through guide books and encyclopaedias searching for maps that might contain instances of “cartographic aggression” — inaccuracies that seem to favour one side or the other.
Words are traps, and there is a sense that a comma could cause a crisis. But the opinions of outsiders are not welcome. For this is a feud between cousins, a quarrel in the family. It could hardly be more acrid and perilous.
Cover story
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0%2C%2C7-2002013426%2C00.html
A state of war
BY TREVOR FISHLOCK
The dispute over Kashmir has brought India and Pakistan to the brink of nuclear war. But why has this beautiful state become the subcontinent`s powder keg?
Poets hymned it as a land of love and languor. In 1627 the dying emperor Jahangir, who shaped its blissful gardens, was asked to name his last desire. “Only Kashmir,” he murmured. “Only Kashmir.”
India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, promised melodramatically that its name was written upon his heart. Today, millions make the same emotive claim.
Passions for Kashmir run hot and bitter, the bayonets almost touch and the urge for war is strong. Two rivals, two ideas, two faiths stand nose to nose in one of the world’s most dangerous places. One mistake or misjudgment and the spark falls on the fuse.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir. The great bulk of their armies are based along the frontier that runs through Punjab and Kashmir. The border is always tense.
In Kashmir there has been an almost permanent grumbling small war of artillery bombardment. Apart from the all-out conflicts, India and Pakistan have two or three times pulled back from the brink, and now the assessments of their military power have to include their nuclear capability. There was a particularly dangerous stand-off in 1990.
It was inevitable that the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13 would bring India and Pakistan once more to the edge of the abyss. It was an echo of the October suicide bomb attack on the Kashmir assembly. The Parliament in Delhi is the heart and emblem of what India stands for. Now India is raging.
Poor Kashmir. It lies in the Himalayan ramparts where the borders of India, Pakistan and China rub together. Reality mocks its beauty. There is no escaping the permeating melancholy of a land that lies under the gun. It is as if malevolent gods, jealous of its loveliness, placed a curse upon it.
The poison entered the garden in 1947 when the war-weary British quit their Indian empire and partitioned it. They had no wish to cut it up: one of their imperial achievements, they said, was to have united India and made it secure. They divided it to meet the demands of Muslim leaders who said that Hindus and Muslims could not live together in one country, that the communities formed two separate nations. Pakistan was therefore created as a homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims.
Britain ruled India with the co-operation of more than 500 Indian princes, a galaxy of maharajahs, rajahs, ranas, raos, khans, mirs, jams, nizams and nawabs, loyal to the British crown, well-oiled with flattery, some fantastically rich and a few of them barmy. In the summer of 1947, these rulers had to choose whether to take their states into India or Pakistan. It was a personal decision, without referendum.
Public opinion hardly came into it. Most princes joined India. Most knew that they would be extinguishing themselves as a ruling class, but it was clear to all but a few that the game was up. On the eve of independence, all the princes had made up their minds except four.
The Maharajah of Kashmir, Sir Hari Singh, was one of the ditherers. He was vain, pompous and addicted to hunting bears and shooting ducks. As a young man he had an unfortunate scrape in London, being found in bed with a woman at the Savoy Hotel and milked for a lot of money by a blackmailer pretending to be the woman’s husband.
At Partition, Kashmir, more fully known as Jammu and Kashmir, was in a key position: a prize because it was a large state and famously beautiful, a honeymooners’ resort of lakes and cool alpine meadows.
Given its place on the map, it could have swung either to India or to Pakistan. Because of its overwhelming Muslim majority, Pakistan’s new leaders expected that it would join their Islamic entity. But the maharajah had to decide — and he was a Hindu. This was not unusual. In princely India, Muslims often ruled Hindus and vice versa. But Hari Singh dithered. He could not believe that the British would really go home. He did not want to join Pakistan because he could not bear the thought of his state being subsumed. He dreamt that Kashmir could somehow be an independent country and he could keep his power.
India and Pakistan became independent in August. Hari Singh was still dithering in October. As he fiddled, the storm broke. Thousands of Pathan warriors from the North-West Frontier, bordering Afghanistan, rushed into Kashmir, vowing to seize it for Pakistan. Although they were a rabble, they might have succeeded. They were close to Srinagar, the capital, when they were delayed by their lust for loot and women. While they pillaged towns and raped girls and nuns, the hapless Hari Singh gathered up his diamonds and Purdey shotguns and fled his palace in a motorcade.
India acted fast and decisively. In a flurry of action the maharajah agreed to join India, and Indian forces flew to save Srinagar. This was the first Kashmir war, not an all-out confrontation but a series of fights and communal conflicts. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of Pakistan, wanted to send the new Pakistan regular Army into action, but did not do so when the absurdity of the situation was pointed out to him: the forces of India and Pakistan shared a commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, while many officers on both sides were British.
Kashmir was left divided along the line where fighting stopped in 1948. A United Nations ceasefire came into force on January 1, 1949. In 1965 Pakistan tried and failed to annexe Kashmir and was defeated in brief and bitter fighting. At one stage Indian forces were almost at the gates of Lahore and could easily have taken it. Pakistan’s leaders believed that Kashmiris would welcome Pakistani troops as liberators. It was a shock that they did not. In 1971 India and Pakistan went to war again, India assisting the secession of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh. Pakistan was left truncated and humiliated.
Yet the story of a vacillating maharajah and the ensuing bloody quarrel over territory is only the half of it.
Kashmir is a tragedy for its divided people and a continuing source of danger in a subcontinent inhabited by a fifth of the world’s population. The tragedy has deep roots. Kashmir is the offspring of bitterly divorced parents. Pakistan aches for it but will never possess it. India will never let it go: it is not negotiable. The trouble is that both sides define themselves by this feud.
Their mutual suspicions date from the 8th-century Muslim conquest of western India and the many hundreds of years of Mogul rule that were brought to an end by the British Raj. For India’s Hindu majority, independence in 1947 was a reclamation of their vast land, the end of centuries of foreign domination. Nehru and others believed passionately that this new India would be a daring concept, an embracing of all its religious, linguistic and regional diversity, a magnificent secular state.
The steely and intractable Jinnah did not believe it. His new country of Pakistan grew out of that scepticism, the belief that Muslims in India would be vulnerable, second-class citizens.
Pakistan was an invented state, a by-product of the great Indian struggle for independence. It evolved in the last few years of British rule among people who wanted to escape religious and political discrimination in the new order. Landowners especially thought they would lose out in India. Democracy barely made the journey to Pakistan.
In a sense Pakistan remains stranded in 1947. Its great debate has centred for half a century on what it is for and what it should be. Jinnah mused that it could be a secular country. But in that case, what was the point of Partition? Some of his successors said that Pakistan was nothing if not Islamic and determined to make it more so, a military theocracy.
Yet Islam proved an unreliable glue. It did not cement Pakistan and East Pakistan. Bangladesh erupted as the assertion of Bengali language and culture. Nor did it cement the disparate parts of Pakistan itself — Punjab, Baluchistan, Sindh and the North- West Frontier — or, indeed, the many shades of Islamic belief. Thus Kashmir is useful, the “unfinished business of Partition”. However much Pakistanis disagree about the nature of their society, they find common cause in Kashmir, the belief that they were robbed in 1947. This is the unifying insult. It is why Pakistan has supported Kashmiri insurgents. India’s treatment of Kashmiris during the long years of internal strife are held as proof that Jinnah was right, that Muslims needed their homeland.
It is true that India could have managed Kashmir more wisely, less roughly. But Pakistan has to live with the fact that there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. India has the second largest Muslim population in the world: evidently Hindus and Muslims do live together in a secular society, Nehru’s idea of India, even if it is not always easy. And Kashmir, the only Indian state with a Muslim majority, is in Indian minds the shining fact of secular India. Its existence throws the question to Pakistan again: what was Partition for? India has a powerful idea of its identity. It is the giant of South Asia, its Armed Forces are huge and it is proud of its democracy, even if this is somewhat battered. Pakistan, on the other hand, does not enjoy such a positive identity. It thinks of itself in terms of its neighbour and endures the negative of being Not India.
It means that even if the impossible were to happen, that Kashmir should somehow become part of Pakistan, the anxieties and insecurities of Pakistan would endure. There would have to be another issue by which Pakistan could seek to establish its identity and purpose.
In the meantime the two nations face each other again — and judging from what we see and hear, there are many on both sides desperate to fight. Centuries of prejudice are poured into the funnel of Kashmir.
People on both sides treasure the slights of history. There is an endless misunderstanding of each other’s beliefs and opinions. Estrangement is total. Trivial matters become huge. Hindu nationalists complain that Muslims cheer for Pakistan during Test matches. In both India and Pakistan, keen teams of monitors comb through guide books and encyclopaedias searching for maps that might contain instances of “cartographic aggression” — inaccuracies that seem to favour one side or the other.
Words are traps, and there is a sense that a comma could cause a crisis. But the opinions of outsiders are not welcome. For this is a feud between cousins, a quarrel in the family. It could hardly be more acrid and perilous.
#7 Posted by mohajir on April 6, 2000 11:13:28 pm
Amanullah Khan, chief of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front believes that the divided
Jammu and Kashmir should be reunited (Indian administered and Pakistan administered)
in several peaceful phases and made a fully independent State for, say 15 years, with
a democratic, non-communal and federal system of government. That government should have friendly relations with both India and Pakistan. The international community should give an undertaking that none of the neighbouring states will interfere in the internal affairs of the new state or violate its frontiers. Similarly, the new state of J&K should ensure its neutrality and not allow its soil to be used against any country. After 15 years the UN can ask Kashmiris if they want to remain independent or become a part of India or Pakistan. Every party should then accept the popular decision of a referendum. A UN peace and monitoring force can ensure the fairness of such an exercise.
``In my view, both India and Pakistan have to choose between the status quo and independence to a re-united Jammu and Kashmir. For India, the status quo will mean continued trouble in Kashmir as is happening right now. On the other hand, re-unification of an independent J&K can go a long way in developing friendly relations between India and Pakistan, with Kashmir acting as a bridge. This is the only solution for a peaceful and prosperous future for the region.
Pakistan has already missed a number of chances. In 1948, India`s deputy prime minister, Sardar Patel offered the entire region of J&K to Pakistan. His condition was that Pakistan should abandon its claim on Junagadh and stop supporting the demand of complete independence then being made by the Nizam (the ruler) of Hyderabad State in Central India. Pakistan rejected the offer with the result that it lost almost all the three states. Today, every Pakistani repents missing that chance. Here is yet another chance for Pakistan.
A friendly, independent Jammu Kashmir will be far more beneficial to Pakistan than the status quo. After some time even this chance may not be available to her. By parroting the demand for implementation of UN resolutions, which deny to Kashmiris their right to independence and may never come to pass, Pakistan is bent upon committing another folly. And after Clinton`s visit, Pakistan should do some soul-searching and try to understand the dynamics that are now driving international politics.``
Jammu and Kashmir should be reunited (Indian administered and Pakistan administered)
in several peaceful phases and made a fully independent State for, say 15 years, with
a democratic, non-communal and federal system of government. That government should have friendly relations with both India and Pakistan. The international community should give an undertaking that none of the neighbouring states will interfere in the internal affairs of the new state or violate its frontiers. Similarly, the new state of J&K should ensure its neutrality and not allow its soil to be used against any country. After 15 years the UN can ask Kashmiris if they want to remain independent or become a part of India or Pakistan. Every party should then accept the popular decision of a referendum. A UN peace and monitoring force can ensure the fairness of such an exercise.
``In my view, both India and Pakistan have to choose between the status quo and independence to a re-united Jammu and Kashmir. For India, the status quo will mean continued trouble in Kashmir as is happening right now. On the other hand, re-unification of an independent J&K can go a long way in developing friendly relations between India and Pakistan, with Kashmir acting as a bridge. This is the only solution for a peaceful and prosperous future for the region.
Pakistan has already missed a number of chances. In 1948, India`s deputy prime minister, Sardar Patel offered the entire region of J&K to Pakistan. His condition was that Pakistan should abandon its claim on Junagadh and stop supporting the demand of complete independence then being made by the Nizam (the ruler) of Hyderabad State in Central India. Pakistan rejected the offer with the result that it lost almost all the three states. Today, every Pakistani repents missing that chance. Here is yet another chance for Pakistan.
A friendly, independent Jammu Kashmir will be far more beneficial to Pakistan than the status quo. After some time even this chance may not be available to her. By parroting the demand for implementation of UN resolutions, which deny to Kashmiris their right to independence and may never come to pass, Pakistan is bent upon committing another folly. And after Clinton`s visit, Pakistan should do some soul-searching and try to understand the dynamics that are now driving international politics.``
#6 Posted by mohajir on March 29, 2000 5:44:45 pm
Stephen Cohen on Kashmir
For many years there were few Indian-Americans or Pakistani-Americans in the US,
let alone Kashmiri-Americans, so the political pressures were not there. Second,
the uprising 1989 surprised everyone, including most Pakistanis, transforming the
Kashmir situation. Finally, it was not until India tested nuclear weapons that
the full dangers of Kashmir were widely appreciated. My concern is that domestic
political pressures will polarize the issue further, that the Kashmir uprising
(which was pro-democracy and relatively secular) will be submerged by Jehadists,
and that the nuclear threat will frighten outsiders away, not draw them in.
You will then have the worst of all possible worlds, a torn Kashmir, dominated
by extremists, a disinterested outside world, and the prospect of a nuclear flashpoint.
http://www.brook.edu/comm/chat/cohen000321.htm
-
Former Indian Prime Minister IK Gujral on Kashmir
Mr. Gujral asserts that the Indian-Kashmir must remain with India, and both
the countries (Pakistan and India) should accept the Line of Control as the
permanent border. Why? Because if Kashmir goes, the 150 million Muslims in
India will suffer heavily; there will be a civil war, a truly catastrophic situation.
If we hold plebiscite in Kashmir, then Tamil Nadu and other areas will also
ask for the plebiscite. We cannot allow it.
Mr. Gujral does not accept the special status of the state of Kashmir, which
has been given special rights in the Indian constitution. He says the Kashmir
issue was solved after the 1971 war. An excerpt from his comments:
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Indira Gandhi had agreed that the Control Line (LOC)
will be the permanent border, but Bhutto told Indira that since [he] has
recently taken over and the army is still bruised after [the] defeat in
East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), he [Bhutto] cannot sign the dotted line.
He said he needed another six months when he will come back and sign the
agreement. Indira Gandhi was naïve. She let Bhutto go back. And you know
Bhutto as he was, he changed his mind.
MOHAMMED AYOOB, Professor of International relations at Michigan State University.
He`s written extensively about South Asia. Born in India, he`s now an Australian citizen.
: I think, as far as India is concerned, it has to recognize the fact that
the United States is a global power and has global interests. And I think
it has begun to do so. The talk of unipolarity, while it does continue and
aversion to unipolarity in terms of the public media and so on -- but the
government of India I think clearly recognizes the fact that there is only
one super power in the international system today, and that it has to come
to terms with that reality.
On the part of the United States, there must be a clear recognition of the
fact that India is the regional, managerial power; it is the preeminent and
predominant part in the region, and it is able to provide public goods to
its neighbors, which means that is essential to maintain the stability and
security of the region. The United States must also recognize that it cannot
either mettle on the Kashmiri issue, and also that it should put pressure on
its friends in Pakistan to desist from the dangerous game they have been
playing now, because in the context of a nuclearized subcontinent, infiltration
and aiding and abetting insurgencies, even if you take the moral high ground on
that, is a very, very dangerous affair.
And there is, I would argue, no give on the Indian position on Kashmir, no
matter what, because it would reopen -- any concession on Kashmir would reopen
all the wounds of partition, the trauma of partition. India cannot afford another
division of the country on the basis of religion because it would have a tremendous
negative impact on the future of the 130 million Muslims in the rest of the country
who are citizens of India and equal citizens of India and should be treated as so.
Opening up this Pandora`s Box would pander to the basis instincts of those Hindu
chauvinists who consider all Muslims fifth columnists. So there is no give on the
Indian position on Kashmir. The 120 million Muslims of India cannot be sacrificed
at the altar of so-called rights of the three or four million Kashmiris.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/jan-june00/clinton_3-22.html
Fareed Zakaria on Kashmir:
http://newsweek.com/nw-srv/printed/us/in/a17748-2000mar26.htm
The conflict in Kashmir won`t be solved until there is a marked evolution of attitudes
within India and Pakistan, something unlikely to happen any time soon.
If India`s ruling class had the courage to move boldly and integrate their country
into the world, many old, seemingly intractable problems like Kashmir might even
yield to solutions. After all, it is surely not a coincidence that Ireland came
closer to resolving its troubles after moving forthrightly into the European Union
and experiencing the heady economic growth that came with it.
For many years there were few Indian-Americans or Pakistani-Americans in the US,
let alone Kashmiri-Americans, so the political pressures were not there. Second,
the uprising 1989 surprised everyone, including most Pakistanis, transforming the
Kashmir situation. Finally, it was not until India tested nuclear weapons that
the full dangers of Kashmir were widely appreciated. My concern is that domestic
political pressures will polarize the issue further, that the Kashmir uprising
(which was pro-democracy and relatively secular) will be submerged by Jehadists,
and that the nuclear threat will frighten outsiders away, not draw them in.
You will then have the worst of all possible worlds, a torn Kashmir, dominated
by extremists, a disinterested outside world, and the prospect of a nuclear flashpoint.
http://www.brook.edu/comm/chat/cohen000321.htm
-
Former Indian Prime Minister IK Gujral on Kashmir
Mr. Gujral asserts that the Indian-Kashmir must remain with India, and both
the countries (Pakistan and India) should accept the Line of Control as the
permanent border. Why? Because if Kashmir goes, the 150 million Muslims in
India will suffer heavily; there will be a civil war, a truly catastrophic situation.
If we hold plebiscite in Kashmir, then Tamil Nadu and other areas will also
ask for the plebiscite. We cannot allow it.
Mr. Gujral does not accept the special status of the state of Kashmir, which
has been given special rights in the Indian constitution. He says the Kashmir
issue was solved after the 1971 war. An excerpt from his comments:
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Indira Gandhi had agreed that the Control Line (LOC)
will be the permanent border, but Bhutto told Indira that since [he] has
recently taken over and the army is still bruised after [the] defeat in
East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), he [Bhutto] cannot sign the dotted line.
He said he needed another six months when he will come back and sign the
agreement. Indira Gandhi was naïve. She let Bhutto go back. And you know
Bhutto as he was, he changed his mind.
MOHAMMED AYOOB, Professor of International relations at Michigan State University.
He`s written extensively about South Asia. Born in India, he`s now an Australian citizen.
: I think, as far as India is concerned, it has to recognize the fact that
the United States is a global power and has global interests. And I think
it has begun to do so. The talk of unipolarity, while it does continue and
aversion to unipolarity in terms of the public media and so on -- but the
government of India I think clearly recognizes the fact that there is only
one super power in the international system today, and that it has to come
to terms with that reality.
On the part of the United States, there must be a clear recognition of the
fact that India is the regional, managerial power; it is the preeminent and
predominant part in the region, and it is able to provide public goods to
its neighbors, which means that is essential to maintain the stability and
security of the region. The United States must also recognize that it cannot
either mettle on the Kashmiri issue, and also that it should put pressure on
its friends in Pakistan to desist from the dangerous game they have been
playing now, because in the context of a nuclearized subcontinent, infiltration
and aiding and abetting insurgencies, even if you take the moral high ground on
that, is a very, very dangerous affair.
And there is, I would argue, no give on the Indian position on Kashmir, no
matter what, because it would reopen -- any concession on Kashmir would reopen
all the wounds of partition, the trauma of partition. India cannot afford another
division of the country on the basis of religion because it would have a tremendous
negative impact on the future of the 130 million Muslims in the rest of the country
who are citizens of India and equal citizens of India and should be treated as so.
Opening up this Pandora`s Box would pander to the basis instincts of those Hindu
chauvinists who consider all Muslims fifth columnists. So there is no give on the
Indian position on Kashmir. The 120 million Muslims of India cannot be sacrificed
at the altar of so-called rights of the three or four million Kashmiris.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/jan-june00/clinton_3-22.html
Fareed Zakaria on Kashmir:
http://newsweek.com/nw-srv/printed/us/in/a17748-2000mar26.htm
The conflict in Kashmir won`t be solved until there is a marked evolution of attitudes
within India and Pakistan, something unlikely to happen any time soon.
If India`s ruling class had the courage to move boldly and integrate their country
into the world, many old, seemingly intractable problems like Kashmir might even
yield to solutions. After all, it is surely not a coincidence that Ireland came
closer to resolving its troubles after moving forthrightly into the European Union
and experiencing the heady economic growth that came with it.
#4 Posted by Bhaijaan on November 27, 1998 2:22:18 pm
Hark! Are those the sounds of Sindh seceding?
Were those Bulochis blowing me a Good-bye kiss?
Did those Pushtoons give me a kick in my ass?
I can t believe just 50 years have brought us to this.
O Fair Vale! I would give this and more
to be lightly brushed by a whiff of your soft breeze
or, to see my reflection just once in your placid waters.
Will that forever remain a pipedream?
With three wars, I courted thee,
all of which ended with my ignominy.
Much blood was spilt of mine and my enemy.
There isn t a better proof of my stupidity.
Like a maniac, I cry Kashmir, Kashmir!
She was supposed to be my bride.
Get out of the way, you neurotic, the world says,
Or, we will remove you even from the roadside.
Oh! How near yet so afar!!!!
Were those Bulochis blowing me a Good-bye kiss?
Did those Pushtoons give me a kick in my ass?
I can t believe just 50 years have brought us to this.
O Fair Vale! I would give this and more
to be lightly brushed by a whiff of your soft breeze
or, to see my reflection just once in your placid waters.
Will that forever remain a pipedream?
With three wars, I courted thee,
all of which ended with my ignominy.
Much blood was spilt of mine and my enemy.
There isn t a better proof of my stupidity.
Like a maniac, I cry Kashmir, Kashmir!
She was supposed to be my bride.
Get out of the way, you neurotic, the world says,
Or, we will remove you even from the roadside.
Oh! How near yet so afar!!!!
#3 Posted by Mobasher on February 12, 1998 10:04:45 pm
Kashmere Spangled Banner:
BROKEN DREAMS OF A DREAMER
Oh, say can you Boom, Crash
By the dawn`s early Boom, Crash
What so proudly we Boom, Crash
At the twilight`s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright Boom, Crash
Through the perilous Boom, Crash
O`er the ramparts we Boom, Crash
Were so gallantly streaming? 3 &
1...2...3...
2...2...3...
3...2...3...
4...2...3...
5...2...3...
6...2...3...
7...2...3...
8...2...Oh,
Boom Boom Boom
Boom Boom Boom
Boom Boom Boom
Boom Boooommm; Boom
Boom Boom Boom
Boom Boooommm; Boom
Boom Boom Boom
BoooooooooooM
BROKEN DREAMS OF A DREAMER
Oh, say can you Boom, Crash
By the dawn`s early Boom, Crash
What so proudly we Boom, Crash
At the twilight`s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright Boom, Crash
Through the perilous Boom, Crash
O`er the ramparts we Boom, Crash
Were so gallantly streaming? 3 &
1...2...3...
2...2...3...
3...2...3...
4...2...3...
5...2...3...
6...2...3...
7...2...3...
8...2...Oh,
Boom Boom Boom
Boom Boom Boom
Boom Boom Boom
Boom Boooommm; Boom
Boom Boom Boom
Boom Boooommm; Boom
Boom Boom Boom
BoooooooooooM
#2 Posted by Fozia Qazi on February 10, 1998 11:06:55 am
Re: Ras ...Cries of anguish not mentioned in the backdrop. Of mountain peaks that stand, silent witnesses.
Beautiful! Reminds me of something that Iqbal
wrote in one of his Persian poems:
I said to the Mountain, ``You hear the cries of the
grieving; the jewels amongst your stones are made from the
blood of the sufferers. Won`t you listen to my pleas?``
The Mountain stood quiescent and said nothing.
Re: Synic....Viva La Kashmere!...
Hear Hear!!
Beautiful! Reminds me of something that Iqbal
wrote in one of his Persian poems:
I said to the Mountain, ``You hear the cries of the
grieving; the jewels amongst your stones are made from the
blood of the sufferers. Won`t you listen to my pleas?``
The Mountain stood quiescent and said nothing.
Re: Synic....Viva La Kashmere!...
Hear Hear!!
#1 Posted by BG on February 5, 1998 11:03:36 am
Good poem and a very important issue. I join you in your hopes for the people of Kashmir and of South Asia.
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