Kashmir Problem Revisited

 “Remember, it did not start with the gas chambers. It started with politicians dividing people ‘with us versus them’. It stared with hate speech and when people stopped caring and turned a blind eye.”

Domingo Garcia

The recent decision on Kashmir has been approved by a vast majority of Indians. A majority celebrated the decision. This is sad, not because I believe that harsh steps should not be taken to solve the Kadhmir problem, but because of the manner in which Constitutional provisions were circumvented, and this did not attract the attention and focus of the people and the media, and neither did it attract the attention of  the judiciary. 

People stopped caring, first in J&K, when the Pandits were forced to flee the Kashmir valley as a result of being targeted by JKLF and Islamist insurgents during late 1989 and early 1990. Muslim mobs, at that time, killed Kashmiri Pandits and also plundered or destroyed the properties and temples of Hindus. The people had changed, Kashmir had stopped caring. ‘Kashmiriyat’, a philosophy that had survived for centuries has died and had been buried. Sadly, even  the powers that be, at the Centre, did not care. 

Now, the shoe is on the other foot, the people of India have stopped caring about what is happening in Kashmir, whether it is right and what is wrong. Our Prime Minister admits internationally that it is a bilateral matter between India and Pakistan but within the country claims it is an internal manner of India. No one is worried at the apparent contradiction. They are happy with the action and not the ethics of the act. The media refuses to be critical and the judiciary refuses to interfere or act urgently.

Neither were the residents of the valley right in permitting ethnic cleansing in Kashmir, nor is the Government of India right in failing to maintain its high ethical standards.