Daily Times

Now after India has revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, the Kashmir Banega Pakistan slogan is back with a vengeance on Pakistan media

It was Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan who first popularised the slogan ‘Kashmir Banega Pakistan'(Kashmir will become Pakistan) soon after Benazir Bhutto took over as Pakistan’s prime minister in 1988. A Zia-ul-Haq protégé and Azad Kashmir (or the-Pakistan-side-of-Kashmir) prime minister from 1985 to 1990, Khan made the discovery about Kashmir’s future with Pakistan only after the military reluctantly decided to allow Benazir to form government after she had won the 1988 elections. From her very first day in the office, zealous generals led by General Aslam Baig, put pressure on her government to render it dysfunctional, and Khan’s ‘Kashmir will become Pakistan’ slogan was one of the tactics used to undermine her government.

Consequent to this slogan, thousands of Jamaat-e-Islami operatives and the people of their ilk decided to cross the Line of Control that divides Kashmir between Pakistan and India. Needless to say, it put an immense pressure on the Benazir government. The argument from the anti-Benazir powers (and they were a legion!), fronted by an equally anti-Benazir media, was: if she stops these people from crossing into the Indian side of Kashmir, she is an enemy of the Kashmir cause. Worse, if India shoots people trying to cross the Line, she will somehow be held responsible for not being able to save the lives ‘Muslim freedom fighters’.

It was Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan who first popularised the slogan ‘Kashmir Banega Pakistan’ soon after Benazir Bhutto took over as Pakistan’s prime minister in 1988

Benazir was able to restrain the Jamaat-led mob, and soon the Kashmir Banega Pakistan slogan disappeared from the national discourse. It was not raised for decades, which saw Benazir’s Pakistan People’s Party returning to power twice, Nawaz Sharif becoming prime minister three times, and General Pervez Musharraf imposing a decade-long martial law in Pakistan. The major reason for not raising the slogan was that it tended to complicate the UN resolution on a plebiscite on Kashmir and Pakistan’s own stand demanding the resolution of the Kashmir issue based on the will of the Kashmiris on both sides, not because a lame duck ‘prime minister’ said so. Thus, the slogan pedalled by a military-appointed Azad Kashmir prime minister who had his own home in Rawalpindi did not cut it politically or even ethically.

But now after India has revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, the Kashmir Banega Pakistan slogan is back with a vengeance on Pakistan media. In my view, there is only one explanation for this trend: the Pakistan government is subtly preparing Pakistanis to accept that the Indian decision to incorporate Kashmir into the Indian union is a reality. It is also preparing the people to get ready to accept Azad Kashmir as a province of Pakistan just like the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan. If this is the case, it inevitably leads to the conclusion that the Indian decision to revoke Kashmir’s special status has Pakistan’s tacit consent. Whether such consent is the result of arm-twisting, realpolitik or national interest is anyone’s guess. When Imran Khan was meeting Donald Trump, and addressing a gathering of Pakistanis in the United States, General QamarBajwa was meeting American officials in the State Department.

The writer is the author of the novel The Infidels of Mecca, and he tweets at @HussainiZaidi