It has been some time that conscientious voices in India have been becoming rather strident, questioning the logic of their country’s stand that Kashmir is its integral part. The latest one is the statement of the Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan on Wednesday that it has yet to be decided whether Kashmir is a part of India or not. That the right wing extremist party BJB was quick to call for a treason case against him shows how much vulnerable the Indian political circles are to the criticism from someone from amidst their own ranks.
India has now crossed all limits in suppressing the Kashmiris. And it is only natural for the decades-long bloodshed to provoke sensitive people into taking a stand against this tyranny. For New Delhi, voices like Congress Minister Sham Lal Sharma who bluntly called for ‘Azadi’ for Kashmiris or even Omer Abdullah’s statement that Kashmir never merged with India and was an international dispute are nothing less than heresy. But of course the biggest worry for the Indian establishment is Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy who has effectively busted the myth of atoot ang. The Indian government is seriously worried about her writings and speeches that make it to the Western mainstream media which rarely paints a true picture of the dreadful chaos in the valley. In a move that should expose the Indian intolerant mindset, she was booked under sedition charges for her utterances on Kashmir. That stern view is taken of anyone who dares to wash India’s dirty linen in public is shameful, to say the least. Such voices must push the Congress government into honouring Nehru’s commitments made to the UN to ensure a plebiscite in Kashmir. The clouds of a nuclear war have been hovering over South Asia for quite some time now. Though it is clear that they now pose an existential threat to one of the biggest population masses in the world, nothing is being done to address this core issue between India and Pakistan. Thenation
