The Hindu : Time to accelerate peace process

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Mar 27, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Time to accelerate peace process

By Kuldip Nayar

To dismiss the killings of the Pandits at Nadimarg in Kashmir as another terrorist act is to underestimate the situation. It has already assumed grave ramifications. The elimination of a few thousand Pandits remaining in Kashmir is the key to the scenario now being played out in that troubled State. There are some who want an ethnic cleansing to make the Valley purely Muslim. It is more than a coincidence that whenever the `Kashmiriyat' begins to assert itself certain forces intervene with their AK-47s to communalise the environs.

The continuation of the Mufti Mohammed Sayeed's Government is not to the liking of such elements. They do not want it to succeed. Whether its "healing touch" is real or whether it is just a dream that the Mufti is chasing with great hopes cannot be judged in a few months' time. The Mufti Government does not look like having a free hand. It has already been hamstrung by a Central review committee which decides on the release of detenus, whose number runs into hundreds. The Mufti is already having a hard time in justifying the release of some. The manner in which the BJP spokesman has pilloried the Mufti Government indicates how casual and superficial the BJP can get to gain political advantage.

When the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, visited the State immediately after the incident, some of the affected members of the families of the victims blamed the State administration for the massacre. They demanded that they be allowed to migrate from the Valley. Asked whether the soft policy of the Mufti Government had contributed to the situation, Mr. Advani said there was no point in blaming "this person or that" for the Nadimarg killings.

Corrective measures must be taken wherever necessary. Mr Advani said that terrorist acts in Jammu and Kashmir were essentially "because of our neighbour". Every single terrorist act in the State and elsewhere in the country had Pakistan's hand in it.

The only heartening side of the situation is how all forces in the State, including the Hurriyat, have come together to condemn the killings. People are sick and tired of violence. They want peace. There is a groundswell of opinion in favour of a settlement. This is, in fact, the time when New Delhi should be accelerating the process of talks with the Kashmiri leaders. Like a typical bureaucrat, interlocutor N.N. Vohra is too slow to focus the attention of the people in Jammu and Kashmir on the solution. But the Government seems to be playing its cards close to its chest. Even the outline of what the Centre has in mind is yet to become clear.

There is no doubt that the terrorists who struck in Kashmir were afraid of a settlement which would make them redundant. But what they do not understand is that their terrorist acts are convincing even the cynical that the violence is only preventing the State from refurbishing its identity.

It is strange that Pakistan should dwell more on the assassination of Abdul Majid Dar, former operational commander of Hizb-ul Mujahideen, than the killing of the Pandits. What it does not realise is that an agreement between New Delhi and Srinagar will hasten a dialogue with Islamabad for "a durable solution" as the Shimla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration have envisaged.

The Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, should also realise that those who killed the 24 Pandits, including 11 women and two children, were not freedom-fighters. By all accounts, the terrorists have connection with the militant organisations in Pakistan and continue to have sustenance from them.

This is the time when the intelligentsia in Pakistan should speak up. They may not like India's stand on Kashmir. But they cannot possibly be the supporters of what the military junta, including the ISI, has been doing in encouraging the Jaish-e-Mohammad and other religious zealots in their selective killings.

What is at stake in Kashmir is not merely a piece of territory but the ideology of secularism. The stake in the subcontinent is even bigger. It is survival of democracy itself which needs peace and normalcy.

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