BJP to change stand on J&K?

By Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI, DEC. 25. There are early signs that the Bharatiya Janata Party is ready to give up its tough stand on Kashmir and adopt the reasonable stance that when India sits down for talks with Pakistan, it can perhaps talk about converting the Line of Control (LoC) into a Line of Actual Control to eventually move towards making it the international border.

In the past, the posture of the BJP has been that not an inch of land could be given away, that, in fact, Pakistan should first vacate the territory it occupied in Kashmir in 1948, that all political parties in India are ``bound by'' the parliamentary resolution adopted unanimously when Mr. P.V. Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister stating the whole of Jammu and Kashmir (including POK) as an integral and inseparable part of India.

However, recently, it was first the Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister, Mr. Farooq Abdullah, who openly talked about a possible resolution in Kashmir by accepting the LoC as an international border. On Sunday, it was the RSS spokesperson, Mr. M.G. Vaidya, who suggested that this could become the basis of talks with Pakistan. And today, when the BJP vice-president, Mr. Jana Krishnamurthi, was asked for his comments, he was non- committal. (In the past, the BJP would have rejected such a suggestion as anti-national).

``We have not yet reached the stage of talks as violent incidents are still taking place, and talks can be held only when all violence stops. At that time we will think of a resolution for the Kashmir issue, any talk at this juncture is premature,'' Mr Krishnamurthi said. He added that when the two countries sit down for talks, they will have to be comprehensive, but before that he visualised a long and uneasy process towards peace.

The RSS view as articulated by Mr. Vaidya is a complete somersault from the view held by it earlier which was based on its pet theory of ``akhand Bharat'' or a pre-partition India. But it seems that the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, has managed the RSS well, at least on the Kashmir issue.

Another BJP leader, Mr. J.P. Mathur, admitted that time does not stand still, and views of parties also change. ``In politics nothing is static,'' he responded indirectly when asked for his comment on the RSS view suggesting conversion of the LoC into an international border with Pakistan.

Some party leaders also admit that the security environment is much worse than it used to be as the ISI had established a huge network across the country. They were commenting on the Red Fort incident which caught security forces napping and the attacks on Army and BSF garrisons in Kashmir suggesting that the terrorists had become emboldened and had changed their tactics to directly target Indian security forces.

But even as the BJP is playing the moderate role, some of its sister organisations are not. After the Shiv Sena chief, Mr. Bal Thackeray's statement suggesting disenfranchisement of Muslims, the VHP leader, Mr. Ashok Singhal, was also reported to have approved this, much to the embarrassment of the BJP which insists that this was ``inconceivable.''

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