- Indian move fails to woo Kashmiris
Three months after the Indian government tasked its former intelligence officer, Dineshwar Sharma, to initiate a dialogue process with the ‘genuine leaders’ of Indian Occupied Kashmir (IoK), the initiative has terribly failed to take over.
In a superficial bid to fool the world with dialogue offer, Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh on October 23, 2017, announced that Intelligence Bureau’s former chief Dineshwar Sharma, had been appointed to lead “a sustained interaction and dialogue” with all stakeholders of IoK (not mentioning the pro-freedom leaders), “to understand legitimate aspirations of people in Jammu and Kashmir”.
The appointment of a former spy who has the blood of hundreds of Kashmiri youth on his hands as an interlocutor was itself a flawed decision. Normally, such characters may help secret talks with their peers in another country, but not to the political and community leaders.
Dineshwar’s appointment was rejected the next day by the Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL) led by All Parties Hurriyat chief Syed Ali Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and independence seeker Yasin Malik who jointly shunned the talks offer by India, as an ‘eye-wash’.
In a joint statement, Geelani, Mirwaiz, and Malik called Sharma’s appointment a “time-buying tactic, adopted under international pressure”. The Hurriyat Conference rebuffed the move claiming that the government refuses to acknowledge Kashmir as a dispute and that the appointment of the new interlocutor, Dineshwar Sharma, was an eye-wash.
“The Centre refuses to accept the ground reality in Kashmir. Sharma’s assertion that he is coming to the valley with the directive from the government to restore peace rather than addressing the dispute limits the scope of any engagement with him and makes it an exercise in futility,” the statement by Hurriyat leadership added.
The Kashmiri leadership felt that Sharma will “undermine” their freedom struggle, which has been nourished by the blood of their people.
The Hurriyat also condemned Sharma’s comment where he had said his main priority was to prevent Kashmir from turning into Syria by de-radicalising its youth.
“To compare the internationally recognised 70-year-old political and humanitarian issue of Kashmir with the sectarian war in Syria is deception and propaganda, as there is no correlation between the two situations,” the Hurriyat statement said.
Though Dineshwar visited Srinagar to hold ‘talks’ with the Kashmiri leaders, the Indian regime did not even bother to facilitate his visit and meetings with any of the popular Kashmiri leaders who were either in jail or under house arrest. While Yasin Malik was out most of the time, Syed Ali Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq remained under house arrest.
This indicated the actual intent of Indian regime, which had launched the initiative to tackle diplomatic pressure from the international community to resolve Kashmir and initiate dialogue.
What Sharma managed, was to meet pro-India politicians who are coalition partners of India’s central government or were a part of the previous coalition government – Jammu Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and former CM Omar Abdullah.
“The government of India created misgivings about the mission of Dineshwar Sharma,” Omar Abdullah told reporters after the meeting. “His status was undermined as far as the Prime Minister’s Office is concerned.” He also took a dig at Sharma’s lack of contact with people on the ground, saying, “Staying at the guest house and waiting for the people to come to him would not work.”
Even Abdullah said they did not discuss the issue of autonomy, the National Conference’s proposed solution to the Kashmir problem, but that it would be raised when the party delegation met Sharma. So for what purpose Sharma met Abdullah is anyone’s guess.
Other than the like-minded pro-India politicians, Sharma managed to meet a low-level pro-freedom leader Abdul Ghani Bhat. The meeting also proved to be a futile exercise as the two did not discuss Kashmir issue and rather what was discussed were local issues like employment for youth, a supply of electricity, construction of roads – all the issues which are mostly dealt by the local administration and the provincial government.
Mohammad Affan, a Srinagar-based journalist, believes that the so-called dialogue process is merely an eye-wash and this is how India is trying to work in democratic façade when actually the situation on the ground is no less than war.
“First and foremost, there is confusion in nomenclature, whether he (Dineshwar) is interlocutor or special representative. Secondly, there is ambiguity about his mandate. By now it is clear that Delhi’s point man met those people who either are already working for Delhi or those who want their daily needs to be addressed”.
Ashiq Hussain Bhat, a Srinagar-based scholar, told this scribe that appointment of the interlocutor was a time-buying effort by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to diffuse pressure from the international community as well as public posturing.
“You know, Indian in general and Kashmir in specific would be holding elections at different levels in next three years. The election season in Kashmir has already started. We are having Panchayat elections this month which would continue. Next year there are elections in various states of India. Then in the year 2020, we would be holding elections for Kashmir’s assembly. So this initiative was aimed at fooling the public that the government was serious about a dialogue with Kashmiris which was not true,” he added.
He said that Dineshwar Sharma’s visit to Srinagar was a total failure as he failed to hold a meeting with any important political or resistance leader.
He said if India really meant business, it should have taken steps to facilitate the job of Mr Sharma including ceasefire in military’s attacks against militants but it didn’t.
“With Operation all-out at its peak and army killing militants as well as youth, do you really believe any dialogue can proceed? The Indian military has been so brutal that they are not sparing women and kids. Only a day back, Indian military martyred a young Kashmiri girl claiming that she was resisting its access to militants,” he said and added that Kashmiris were under attack since the martyrdom of Burhan Muzaffar Wani and there was no letup in Indian atrocities against Kashmiri youth.
Junaid Rather, another Kashmiri journalist, was of the view that the appointment of the interlocutor would have been a good step if anything on the ground would have changed.
“When one looks at it, it seems it is the same old story by the Indian government, where they first kill, injured, detain and do the highest level of repression against Kashmiri youth and then they send interlocutors to talk,” he said.
But Rather believes this time it didn’t make sense. “Joint Resistance Leadership refused to meet the former IB chief. And those who met and claim that they are leaders and have public support are the ones who in reality have no existence on the ground,” he maintained.
Since such artificial measures would never help India resolve Kashmir, it’s about time that Indian regime must take sincere measures of trust-building with Kashmiri people, commence a meaningful dialogue with Pakistan and move ahead of rhetoric over Kashmir. Else, Kashmiri people have already chosen a path of freedom which no one can deny or object.
