Betraying Kashmiris' just cause

The agonising suffering of the people of Kashmir, who have, for the past 60 years, been struggling to gain freedom from India, is a sad and tragic commentary on the state of international conscience. The studied neglect of their plight particularly by powerful states whose clout has global reach comes into sharper focus when they talk of the sanctity of human rights and their resolve to see that the people everywhere realise their democratic aspirations, but turn a deaf ear to the distress signals that have never stopped coming from the occupied state during the past 60 years.

India treacherously occupied a major part of the Jammu and Kashmir State in 1948 and refuses to honour its commitment made to Kashmiris as well as the world community at the United Nation Security Council to let the people decide their own fate. It is a great pity that Pandit Nehru, a strong critic of imperialism who toiled hard to gain freedom for India, turned an imperialist at the fag end of his life when he saw that Kashmiris, given the choice between India and Pakistan, would overwhelmingly opt for Pakistan. He adopted all kinds of stratagems to thwart attempts by UN Plebiscite Administrators, special envoys who came to the sub-continent one after the other and tried to pave the way for holding a plebiscite to elicit the wishes of Kashmiris.

Finally, Nehru pulled out a trump card of an excuse in Pakistan's joining US-sponsored defence pacts and maintained that 'the situation has changed' and, as a result, New Delhi could not abide by the promises he had personally "solemnly" made to the people of the state and at the UNSC. The idea that the so-called change in the situation could deprive Kashmiris of their birthright of deciding their own future was so outlandishly ridiculous that it defied even the best of political minds.