Kashmir must remain on correct path

The trifurcation of Jammu & Kashmir into Kashmir, Ladakh and Jammu was a welcome move by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In the past, Rajiv Gandhi used whiz kids such as Satyen Pitroda to launch a communications revolution in India, but the reforms sought by him were scuttled by frequent zigzags in policy. Article 370 was a provision that goes entirely against the spirit of secularism, being based on the Two Nation theory, that Hindus and Muslims are “two” nations. This is absurd. Whether we are Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu or of any other faith or atheist, we are equal citizens of the Republic of India. The former state of Jammu & Kashmir saw a human tragedy when an entire community, the Kashmiri Pandits, were expelled from the state through a campaign of death and loot launched against them by agents of the Pakistan military. It is a matter of some surprise and considerable shame that the UN Human Rights Commission seems to have forgotten about the Kashmiri Pandits despite their wretched plight. The UNHRC, Amnesty International and other organisations do not have any time to examine the manner in which women and children were killed, with several of the former being subjected to assault after the men in the household had been gunned down. They do not seem to have spent any time at all looking into the thousands of homes that belong to Kashmiri Pandits that have been occupied by usurpers. Or that successive governments at both the State and Central levels have done nothing to restore such properties back to their owners. The US has a Commission on Religious Freedom. The eminent members of this panel do not seem to have deigned to investigate their plight, which was caused entirely because they belonged to a faith that had been demonised and vilified in school textbooks in Pakistan, with the USCIRF not caring a whit about such open abuse of religious freedom. The media in India seems to have been caught up with covering some of the wealthy residents of Gupkar in Srinagar who have done very well out of retaining what was the status quo in Jammu & Kashmir before PM Modi became the first national leader to find the courage to remove an anti-secular provision from the Constitution of India. The turmoil caused by separatist fellow-travellers of the Two Nation ideology that is the philosophical bedrock of the Pakistan military (which is kept going by the People’s Republic of China) have become the path to wealth for many. The people of Kashmir are talented and capable of making the Kashmir valley the Silicon Valley of India. The path to that has been cleared by the steps taken since 2019 by Prime Minister Modi, and the error made by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of retreating from the path of reform is not expected to be made from an administrator of his calibre.
After a lull of several months, two Kashmir councillors who happen to have been among the few Hindus left behind in Kashmir were killed by gun-wielding recruits to the terror factories of GHQ Rawalpindi. Two more from the Hindu community who were part of the tiny number of that community still living in Kashmir have been gunned down as well. The news has been ignored, just as the early signs in the 1980s of the impending storm in Kashmir that erupted soon afterwards were. Not just the government but the media has not reacted to such deaths. As for China, which claims to drip with good intentions about India, there has been complete silence from any of the minions of General Secretary Xi about these murders. China was the only country in the world besides Turkey to oppose the elimination of Article 370, even though no change has taken place in the Sino-Indian border as a consequence of the revocation of Article 370. According to the disinformation laboratory of GHQ Rawalpindi, the Pandit community left their home state voluntarily because they were promised by Governor Jagmohan that they would be well cared for, while in the meantime the Governor could carry out repression on the state of which he was the constitutional head. Thus far, the disinformation laboratory has yet to state that Kashmiris of all faiths are living and working happily across India and the world, and they are showing themselves to be productive and welcome residents. Indeed, so far as Kashmiri Pandits are concerned, they have always been the most peaceable and productive of citizens, which is why it came as a shock to them when the rapine, loot and killings began against them in 1989 and continued until almost all of them had to flee from their home state. In Kashmir itself, killings that have recently taken place in Wandhama, Nadimarg, Sangrampora and Telivani were the consequence of incitement caused by those who have placed themselves under the command of the terror gangs of GHQ Rawalpindi. Many of the eminent leaders invited to the June 24 parleys by the Prime Minister seem not to have seen accounts of such killings and the motivation behind them. The effort is to once again to derail the future of the people of Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh. The past in Kashmir has been less than pleasant and ought not to be repeated. Those seeking to revive it through violence need to be met with force, others ignored with the contempt they deserve. Kashmir deserves a better crop of leaders, and the people of the state will surely find them. This is the task of Prime Minister Modi, and the country looks forward to his success in doing so.