July 23, 2019
Kashmir on the boil
By Syed Rifaquat Ali
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's recent talks with the United States president Donald Trump in the Oval Office has caused ripples in the Indian political circle.
Trump told Imran Khan that the Indian Prime Minister Narender Modi had requested him to mediate and settle the Kashmir problem. India instantly refuted Trump's claim and reiterated that India will not accept any third party mediation since it was a bilateral problem.
Now who is telling a lie? Modi or Trump.
Modi has a poker face and hardly gives you his mind. He has lied on many occasions and cornered by the media in the past. Nevertheless, Trump must assert of what Modi told him and speak the truth to clear the raging controversy.
The Kashmir issue has totally crippled the economy of both India and Pakistan. Pakistan's economy is in a shambles and Imran Khan is struggling to pull the country out of the woods.
On the contrary, India boasts of her economic growth, but the fact is that millions of educated youths in India are finding hard to get jobs.
In the context of Kashmir imbroglio, I had raised the matter with the former prime minister of India, the late Morarji Ramchhodji Desai, during the course of my interviews with him in 1970s.
Morarji Desai told me that when the late Maharaja Hari Singh, the great grandson of Gulab Singh, signing the Instrument of Accession on October 26, 1947, wrote to the late Jawaharlal Nehru, the then prime minister of India, the Pathan tribals, who invaded the princely State of Kashmir, had to eat the humble pie.
It was the late Sardar Patel who sent V.P. Menon, a civil servant, to Srinagar, on October 25, 1947, to get Hari Singh nod for Kashmir accession to India.
M.C. Mahajan, Maharaja Hari Singh's prime minister, urged Nehru to provide military help and take the accession else he would go to Lahore and negotiate terms with Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
Nehru wrote back to Maharaja Hari Singh, accepting the accession, but in the note he wrote as Footnote, when things return to normal, we will have plebiscite in Kashmir.
So India is committed to referendum in Kashmir, but the political leaders in India have turned a blind eye to Nehru's commitment and hence the impasse.
The other day, India's defense minister, Rajnath Singh, while inaugurating the Ujh Bridge in Kathua on July 20, told the media: problem of Kashmir will get solved. No power in the world can stop it.
If somebody does not want a solution through talks, then we know very well how a solution can be found.
This is indirect threat to Pakistan that if talks fail, India will use military force in Kashmir.
It seems India and Pakistan are heading towards an unprecedented catastrophe, forgetting that millions of lives will be lost because of political leaders insanity, if war erupts.
Syed Rifaquat Ali is Sydney-based journalist
The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
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