Daily Times

Thinking about Kashmir, most of our people have not yet recovered from the shock of sudden and un-abashed act of the Indian government to usurp all rights of Kashmiris on the night between 4th and 5thAugust 2019.Though it was part of the fascist agenda of BJP-RSS government but nobody had expected it to come too soon. In the past too, Modi had earned sufficient notoriety as a man who had the temerity to tread into territories where even angels fear to tread. Keeping that in view, we should have done our homework as to how we have to meet an eventuality when he scraps the provisions guaranteeing autonomous status to the Kashmiris.

In my earlier two articles, I had explained at length the genesis of the Kashmir dispute, and India’s unilateral change of the autonomous status of Kashmir in contravention of her declared stand and international commitments made so consistently over the last 70 years of its history.

Now the reality as it stands today, we have to carefully plan our future strategy in this drastically changed scenario. This brazenfaced action of the Modi regime has created a complex situation where peaceful solution of Kashmir dispute through dialogue has nearly become meaningless. This arbitrary move has deprived the Kashmiris of their age-old autonomy and independence to decide their political future, and at the same time also unleashed a wave of brutal force of oppression and violations of human rights against Kashmiris who were already groaning under severe sense of injustice and foul play. Their complete lock-down under curfew has entered the fourth week, resulting in acute scarcity of food and provisions making their lives even more miserable. These atrocities have united the hardliners of Hurrayet and jama’at Islami with the moderates like Mehbooba Mufti and Omer Abdulla, and now all of them appear to be on the same page. The entire people of Kashmir have exploded against the Indian action and it appears that freedom movement in Kashmir will resist this oppression with greater force. Entry in Kashmir has been completely banned for opposition leaders, and the latest development is that the Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has been arrested at the Srinagar airport and prevented from entering the Valley.

Our paramount goal should be to produce more goods, increase our foreign trade and cultivate our relations with other nations on a sound economic footing; only then can we earn their appreciation and support for our cause

The option of war even in such gravity must be avoided at every cost to avert nuclear conflagration between the two countries which is not only mutually destructive for both the countries but can be potentially dangerous for the entire world peace. India has already closed doors for all kinds of peaceful dialogues, which was the only option left for peace in the region. In such a situation, we are left with the only option to put sufficient moral pressure on the world to force India to stop genocide in Held Kashmir in the first instance and let the kashmiris to decide their own political future.

The present ground reality is that the Indian unilateral action has with one stroke rendered the U.N resolutions as well as the Simla Agreement meaningless. After Kashmir’s merger into the Indian Union, even the status of the line of Control separating the two parts of Kashmir, has been converted into a permanent international boundary, which India will use to its advantage at any international forum.

Prime Minister of Pakistan has immediately decided to send a Parliamentary delegation to various countries to elicit their support on this issue, but such a delegation can at best influence their counterparts in other countries and not their leaders, or decision makers. It would have been better if the Prime Minister had himself decided to visit various heads of states to apprise them of the Indian atrocities in the Held Kashmir and to get their political support on this issue.

We must not forget that the mutual relations of countries in the present day world depend solely on their own economic interests rather than their cultural or religious affinities. Even our Prime Minister’s recent tours to these countries were chiefly motivated under economic considerations. Some of our people have criticized the U.A.E for conferment of their greatest civil award on Narender Modi, and similar friendly gestures shown to India by Saudi Arabia and some other Arab nations. It would be remarkable to note that India’s trade with Saudi Arabia in the last year was in the vicinity of 27.48 billion dollars, while Pakistan’s volume of trade with Saudi Arab was barely 1.87 billion dollars, which means that India’s trade with Saudi Arab was 14 times more than that of Pakistan. Similarly the volume of trade of India with the U.A.E exceeded 60 billion dollars in 2018, while Pakistan’s size of trade with U.A.E was barely 7 billion dollars, i.e less than 8 times that of India. There are 2.8 millions Indians working in U.A.E while there are only 0.6 million Pakistanis working in U.A.E. Besides, India has already signed trade agreements with U.A.E to the tune of 100 billion dollars during the next 5 years. The volume of Pakistan’s trade with Bahrain is 365 million dollars and only 0.12 million Pakistanis are working there; while India’s trade with Bahrain exceeds 1 billion dollars, and the Indians working there are 3 times more than the Pakistanis. These figures only go to show that it is the economic ties which are the strongest factor to bind the nations together, and all other factors have secondary or tertiary importance. Given that India is a bigger country than Pakistan, and its growth rate is more than 6% and is still rising each year, while Pakistan’s economy is stagnant at 3% for several years in the past and is still dwindling.

Thus our paramount goal should be to produce more goods, increase our foreign trade and cultivate our relations with other nations on a sound economic footing; only then can we earn their appreciation and support for our cause.

Another option open to us is to invoke the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice to stop severe human rights violations in Kashmir. In 2006, a Human Rights Council under the aegis of ICJ has been established to stop such violations. But under the U.N Charter, the enforcement of its recommendations isagain subject to the Veto power of the Security Council, where India is also its member. The past record of the U.N agencies does not show any silver lining where such violations were effectively checked. Thus it would be vain to think that effective remedy can be provided to the Kashmiris by taking recourse to the ICJ. Beside the many economic advantages India has over us, the fact remains that the fascist regime in India due to its wanton persecution of its minorities will certainly bring down its soft image as a liberal multi-ethnic nation based on justice and equality. The dark patch of ‘Hindutwa’ on its face which Modi bandies about with his avowed goal of elimination of minorities to make it a state exclusively for Hindus will soon expose him to the world. The ideal of fascism is greatly abhorred everywhere. Thus Pakistan should expend all its energies to improve its economy on war footing and expose Indian designs at the diplomatic and political level under a well-devised and sound planning. We must demonstrate to the world that we are a peace loving nation, and are against terrorism in any shape and form. We should scrupulously avoid practices which damaged our image in the past.

The writer is a former member of the Provincial Civil Service, and an author of Moments in Silence