Daily Times

India and Pakistan have not been able to reach an agreement about whether the Speaker of the Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) Assembly should be invited to the next Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference (CPC), which was meant to be held on September 30 in Islamabad. India had even threatened to boycott the event if Pakistan did not yield to this demand. As is usually the case when there is a scuffle between Indian and Pakistani state representatives, neither side was willing to compromise and eventually Pakistan refused to host the conference. Speaking to the press, National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq has said, “The Commonwealth knows that Kashmir is a disputed territory and now it is impossible for the Commonwealth Conference to be held in Pakistan.” The implication of this statement is that as the fate of IHK has not been decided by a plebiscite as per United Nations Security Council Resolution 47, the region is not officially a part of India and therefore the Assembly and government there are not legitimate. Although this resolution was adopted in 1948, less than a year after the partition of the Indian subcontinent, it has still not been successfully implemented due to various objections that the countries have had with each other’s policies for the plebiscite. The veracity of any plebiscite would also be questioned because elections in IHK are notorious for being held under the shadow of the gun. Sadiq added that Pakistan would raise the issue of Kashmir at every “forum of the Commonwealth”. However, the international community has grown wary of the manner in which India and Pakistan approach their conflicts and it is unlikely that we will receive any external mediation to resolve the Kashmir dispute. In November 2010, the UN removed IHK from its list of disputed territories, which makes it even more unlikely that any foreign body will intervene, as Pakistan hopes, to help the two neighbours resolve their differences.
As the leaders of both countries remain unable to keep the dialogue open, functional Indo-Pak relations seem unattainable in the near future. Last year was marked by some of the most extreme crossfire across the Line of Control (LoC) and casualties at the LoC continue to rise. The dialogue of the premiers of the perpetually quarrelling neighbours on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Ufa, Russia, brought some hope that official talks between the countries could resume. Yet, that exchange has proved to be inconsequential in light of the seemingly irreconcilable differences that India and Pakistan continue to have. The disagreement over the CPC, which led to the conference being cancelled altogether, shows just how challenging it has become for both sides to come to any sort of agreement to maintain even the flimsiest of working relationships. As usual, India’s perspective of the CPC squabble is radically different from Pakistan’s. Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan believes that Pakistan’s “unilateral decision to not to extend invitation to Jammu and Kashmir CPA branch” was a “violation of the provisions of the CPA constitution”. Ever since the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) Narendra Modi took office as prime minister, India has become far more intransigent when it comes to Pakistan. Modi ran for office on a very strong Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) platform and is perhaps compelled to keep his supporters happy by taking strong stances when it comes to Pakistan. As the CPC drama was being played out, India arrested several Kahmiri leaders, whom the state perceives to be anti-India separatists. They were released soon after because India most likely understood the folly of that decision. Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesman Qazi Khalilullah has said that the Kashmiri leaders are “important stakeholders” in the issue, which they indeed are because the Kashmiris have suffered the most in this long-standing dispute. India must realise that this dispute needs to end if both countries are to prosper and that it has to be resolved trilaterally. Despite their differences, both countries must remain willing to talk, regardless of any problems that arise, especially as National Security Adviser Sartaj Aziz is set to visit India to meet his counterpart. *