NEW YORK: Yusuf Buch, a former Pakistani cabinet minister and diplomat, has said that the sustained resistance of the Kashmiri people to Indian occupation of Kashmir underlined the fact that they never wanted to be a part of India.
“Had there been any popular support in Kashmir for joining India, the dispute over Kashmir would have lasted for a year or so at the most,” he said in a meeting in New York with Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, a Kashmiri activist and secretary-general of the World Kashmir Awareness Forum, said a statement.
Despite India’s brutal tactics to subdue them, Buch said that “Kashmiris hardly showed themselves as submissive to Indian occupation”.
Yusuf Buch, 95, was a special assistant to former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto from 1972-77, with the rank of a federal minister. He also served as Pakistan’s ambassador to Switzerland in 1977. Later, he joined the United Nations as a senior adviser to the secretary-general, a post he held for 14 years.
“The situation in Kashmir has nothing to do with passivity or docility in the Kashmiri character and that myth has been shattered now,” he pointed out. “Some discontent notwithstanding, Kashmir never felt itself to be part of India before 1947 and feels even less so after its forcible seizure by the Indian troops,” Buch added.
He went on to say that the de-annexation process was inevitable in the post-colonial age. The only question is that whether it is accomplished by armed struggle, resulting in a spiral of violence and counter-violence, or through negotiations and/or other means of peaceful settlement.
“The choice always lies with the occupying power,” he added.