GIVING UP KASHMIR???????

By Ali Sukhanver

A very honourable Pakistani diplomat Hussain Haqqani said speaking at the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House in London that Pakistan must give up its ideological obsession over the Kashmir issue. He further said that Pakistan no longer enjoys the support of the international community.

He stressed that Pakistan needs to have the kind of approach China has over Taiwan. It doesn’t need to give up its claim but it needs to move on other issues first. Haqqani’s statement proved astonishingly heart-breaking and agonizingly painful to the people of Pakistan who have ever been considering Kashmir a sacred guarantee to their existence. It is something very striking that a person who once had been representing the whole of Pakistani nation is now churning out the words which reflect a typical Indian type of philosophy. Certainly Mr. Haqqani would not have given such a baseless example and this childlike statement if he were aware of China’s reaction to Modi’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh in the last week of the last February. Mr. Modi visited Arunachal Pradesh to inaugurate a new railroad line. Arunachal Pradesh is a state in eastern India that borders Tibet to the north. A large portion of this state is claimed by China, and the two countries had been in a state of severe war over the area in 1962. It is said that India and China could never be friends unless until the issue of Arunachal Pradesh is settled. When the news of Modi’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh reached the Chinese authorities, it really raged them a lot. At once India’s ambassador in Beijing was summoned to the Chinese Foreign Office and a note of protest was handed over to him. In other words this protest was a sophisticated reminder, not only to India but also to whole of the world that territorial disputes could not be taken light. While advising Pakistan to adopt the kind of approach China is adopting over Taiwan, Mr. Haqqani must not have over-looked the example of China’s reaction to Modi’s visit to the disputed area of Arunachal Pradesh; the valley of Indian Occupied Kashmir is also a disputed area same as Arunachal Pradesh. But as far as Mr. Modi is concerned, it makes him no difference how China views at his visit to the disputed area of Arunachal Pradesh. He simply damn cares the Chinese protest because he is a man of his own will and of his own resolve. He never hides his love or his hatred. Everyone is aware of his temperament as an extremist Hindu; he simply hates the Muslims and wants to shun them out of India. And the most dominating aspect of his personality is that he never tries to conceal his temperament against the Muslims. 

Just look back at the Gujrat Massacre of 2002. Mr. Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujrat that time. Here is an extract from a report prepared by the Human Rights Watch after the Gujrat Massacre of Muslims, ‘Between February 28 and March 2, thousands of attackers descended on Muslim neighborhoods, clad in saffron scarves and khaki shorts, the signature uniform of Hindu nationalist groups, and armed with swords, sophisticated explosives, and gas cylinders. They were guided by voter lists and printouts of addresses of Muslim-owned properties-information obtained from the local municipality.’ Smita Narula, a senior South Asian researcher on various minorities living in India says, ‘What happened in Gujarat was not a spontaneous uprising; it was a carefully orchestrated attack against Muslims. The attacks were planned in advance and organized with extensive participation of the police and state government officials.’
According to official figures, the riots resulted in the deaths of 790 Muslims whereas more than 223 were reported missing but independent sources do not agree with the officially released figures. They claim that up to 2,000 Muslims lost their lives during the riots. There were countless incidents of rape and widespread looting and destruction of Muslim property. So many innocent children were burned alive. And this all was done under the ‘kind’ command and supervision of Mr. Narendra Modi, the honourable Chief Minister of Gujrat that time. Even the Indian journalists are of the opinion that Modi was the person who initiated the violence against the Muslims and then innocently closed his eyes to this brutality; unfortunately Mr.Haqqani seems representing the same Narendra Modi.