A Webinar was held on 11th November, 2021 on the topic “India On a Slippery Slope” under the auspices of Karachi Council on Foreign Relations (KCFR), hosted by its Chairman Mr. Ikram Sehgal. The Panelists included the former President of Azad Jammu & Kashmir Mr. Sardar Masood Khan, Ambassador Abdullah Hussain Haroon, Ambassador Abdul Basit, Brig Tariq Khalil (Retd) and Dr. Huma Baqai. The webinar was moderated by Mr. Salim Zamindar.
Commodore Sadeed Malik
Bismillah Ar Rahman Ar Rahim: Iam Commodore Sadeed Malik, the Chief Executive and Secretary General of KCFR. We start the proceedings with an Ayah from the Holy Quran, Surah Ikhlas. Learned panelists, ladies and gentlemen, as most participants are members, we may like to start the webinar straight away without any lengthy introduction of KCFR. Today’s programme will be moderated by Mr. Salim Zamindar who is a graduate in Economics from Boston University in USA and a Master of Business Administration from Jordan University. He is a certified Company Director from Institute of Directors in UK, and is also the head and corporate director of several publicly listed and private limited companies. He is also the past president of Rotary Club and member Board of Governors KCFR. May I now request Mr. Salim Zamindar to welcome the panelists and moderate the panel.
Mr. Salim Zamindar
Mr. Salim Zamindar
Thank you Commodore Sadeed Malik. It is indeed a great pleasure and honour for me to moderate this webinar on behalf of the Chairman and Board of Governors of KCFR. I would like to extend wholehearted welcome to the panelist and will soon be requesting Dr. Huma Baqai to introduce today’s topics. Dr. Huma Baqai requires no introduction, she is an Associate Professor Institute of Business Affairs (IBA) Karachi, Member Committee on Foreign Affairs appointed by the Prime Minister. She is a scholar, reviewer, co-author of few books i.e. Pakistan-Afghanistan Relations – Pitfalls and the Way Forward and Making Sense of Post Covid-19 politics. She has authored more than 29 research articles published in renowned journals around the world and she is also the Vice Chairman of KCFR.
Dr. Huma Baqai, may I request you to introduce the topic today, please.
Dr. Huma Baqai
Thank you Mr. Salim Zamindar. The topic that I want to introduce today is “India on a Slippery Slope”. There is a lot of discussion about what has happened to India as a State under the Modi government and perhaps what we would like to do is demystify it and my responsibility perhaps is to set the tone for the same. I came across research recently which I will share with all of you. The foundation of contemporary Hindu nationalism was laid by an atheist, he was not a hardcore Hindutva person so to say. Of course, it reached new heights under Nirender Modi’s BJP and the country’s 200 million Muslim minority is facing the worst kind of discrimination and persecution witnessed anywhere in the world perhaps. Gaza was called the largest prison in the world but now more and more people are saying that Occupied Kashmir is now the largest open prison on the face of the world where there are all kinds of blackouts, etc which are a violation of not only human rights but also humanitarian rights take place. There is not a single war crime that is not being committed in Occupied Kashmir and the ruling party has become increasingly authoritarian under the facade of democracy. India is the largest democracy on the face of the earth and the western countries cultivate it on that ground; but it is interesting that what is happening to that democracy, is it on a slippery slope? And that is the topic of our webinar today i.e. India on a Slippery Slope. The development at least in the academic, human rights and the global circles have raised concerns, of course the political communities and the leadership of the western world does not move beyond lip service, however 53 American Universities, including Harvard, Stanton, Princeton and Columbia co-sponsored a 3-day conference in which they wanted to dismantle Hindutva and this happened in September 2021. India is the world’s largest democracy but several experts are convinced that the democracy in India, the secularism in India, the Constitution in India is under severe threat. The first person who invented the word ‘Hindutva’ which loosely translates into Hindu-ness, was a colonial revolutionary who coined this word way back in 1923. The view emphasized that the nation of India, even if not Hindu, fully embraced the religion, languages and geography of Mother India but gradually as it progressed from several religions it became one religion and that is Hindutva. He was an atheist with little interest in religion and was imprisoned for life in a plot to assassinate the British Assistant Secretary of State Curzon Wyllie. Christopher Jaffrelot, noted French scholar, calls his work on Hindu nationalism “the first charter of Hindu nationalism”, his objective was to unite India against Muslims and Christians who were considered to be “outside invaders” and of course he took inspiration from German Nazism, Italian fascism and Japanese authoritarians. He saw Muslims anywhere, especially in positions of power, be it in the institutions or elsewhere, as potential traitors. And of course, this progressed into what we see as the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) today, which was banned twice in India – once in 1948 when a former member of RSS assassinated Mahatma Gandhi and much later in 1992 after the demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya which triggered riots all over India and 1000 people were butchered, not killed, but butchered, almost all of them were Muslims. Secularism is a part of the Indian Constitution but the truth is that in the 2019 re-elections of BJP it is demonstrated India is undergoing a fundamental change and embracing Hindu identity in ways that can be called “the slippery slope”. The Rama Temple construction is to be ready before the next Parliamentary elections, the construction of a Hindi temple on grounds that housed a Muslim mosque for which the RSS was banned is what we are talking about, gentlemen. That is what we want to discuss today. Legal, political and other institutions have been run over by RSS. No vice chancellor can be appointed in India unless he proves his loyalty to RSS ideology which is both toxic and dangerous. Media houses are under threat and all of this is dangerous for global peace and regional peace; in fact, it holds it hostage but it is even more dangerous, perhaps, for India itself. I am sure there are saner elements in India who see what is happening and should come out and speak about it and pull it back, stop it from happening because we realize the international community, for various reasons, is not proactive about it. There are concerns raised and there is an academic debate about it but all that has happened is, what I call, lip service without any teeth. In fact, it has only emboldened India and encouraged it to do more of the same. I am going to revert to Urdu because this is my favourite sentence, “India ko bedi India dalay ga” because Arundhati Roy puts it even more beautifully, “It is not Kashmiris that need freedom from India, it is India that needs freedom from the Kashmiris”.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have a very august panel to listen to and I am very grateful to all those who have joined us. The whole idea is that we deliberate upon what is happening in India and how dangerous it is for the region, for the world, but more importantly for India itself. Thank you, with that I will request the moderator to take over. Thank you.
Mr. Salim Zamindar
Thank you Dr. Huma Baqai, that was fantastic. May I now request Brig Tariq Ali (Retd) for his elaboration over the topic. Brig Tariq was awarded Sitara-e-Jurat in 1965, Pride of Performance and Sitara-e-Imtiaz as well. He has held various government, defence and private sector positions that include Sindh Engineering, Gandhara Nisan, Pakistan Machine Tools Factory (PMTF), Travel and Tours, founder professor of Army Public Jhelum and founder Secretary General of Pakistan-Russia Business Forum. Brig Tariq Ali, the floor is all yours, please.
Brig Tariq Ali (Retd)
Bismillah Ar Rahman Ar Rahim. Thank you, Mr. Salim. Thank you Chairman KCFR Mr. Ikram Sehgal and distinguished panelists, I feel honoured to elaborate on a very important subject with which I have been involved for the last around fifty years, one way or another. As a young officer fighting in Kashmir, then as a Commander of the whole Artillery 10 Corps from Barala to Siachen and beyond. I have also been watching closely the Indian psyche when we were Prisoners of War (POW) for two and a half years in India and then of course I am a student of Strategy. I have also been writing on this very subject for the last many years, I have always maintained that Bharat (or you can call it India) is an artificial entity. If you go back in history there never has been the whole continent under one group, there are claims that Chandargupt Maurya ruled the subcontinent but this has not been proved by history and the only time the subcontinent came under a sort of semi rule, one being under Mughal Aurangzeb and the other being the British, but even under the British there were 576 autonomous States within the British Empire. Certain fundamentals are required for the integrity of a country and in 1947 those fundamentals were in place, they were based on two things i.e. one was Secularism and the second was tolerance of others. With the passage of time India lost these two fundamentals. I have been talking on television channels about the RSS which is in fact the engine of Hinduism and they have now penetrated deep into the Indian polity in every sphere; their affiliates in business, in engineering, in education, in the judiciary, in the executive, in foreign affairs and in politics have gone down to the grassroots and that has created an element of total intolerance within the Indian society. The result is known to all of you. These fundamentals have shaken the bondage which was created by the founding fathers of Bharat (or India) with the result that the fault lines have now emerged ethnically, religiously, economically and more so, politically. My assessment is that the beginning of the end has started and unless the Indian leadership comes back and rid themselves from the shackles of RSS which I feel will not be possible in the short term and also it might not be possible at all. Concerning the various independence movements going through India, there are over 200 districts alone in Jharkhand which are not under the control of the federal government. I have personally visited the Assam area where the Seven Sister States are in no way connected to India and are at war, indeed some of them have declared their independence. In addition, the Sikhs, you know are demanding creation of Khalistan and the latest referendum held in England can be taken as only a signal and I am sure it is going to spread to the other countries hosting Sikh communities and its effects will come into India itself. Then coming to Kashmir, I personally feel that Kashmir is one element which will drag India downward because although there was a school of thought within Indian scholars that they could bear the cost of status-quo keeping intact in India but now with the Chinese conflict emerging and India going into QUAD with rising polarisation within India, I think the cost is not going to be bearable and for India, to my mind, the beginning of the end has started. But please remember that elephants do not die in a day, they take time and similarly we must not underestimate our adversary and we must continue to be vigilant for any onslaught that may be imposed on us because when such countries are in trouble, the only way out to escape from the feelings of the masses is to create warlike situations. Thank you.
Mr. Salim Zamindar
May I now request Ambassador Abdul Basit sahib, former High Commissioner of Pakistan to New Delhi, India. He has also been Pakistan Ambassador to Germany, and served in Pakistan’s mission at New York, Sanaa, Geneva and London. The floor is all yours Ambassador Abdul Basit sahib.
Ambassador Abdul Basit
Thank you very much Mr. Zamindar and greetings to all and the panelists for inviting me to this webinar. India on a slippery slope – I recall a very well known Indian politician, Dr. Shashi Tharoor who once said that “whatever you may say about India the opposite is also true”. I am not so sure that his observation facilitates with ground reality but it is absolutely correct that India is on a slippery slope because if you look around India and what is happening there these days, especially during the last seven years since Prime Minister Modi has taken over. You see more and more chasms between the State itself and the society and we also see growing inter-society tensions and resultantly India seems to be in chaos in the fault lines which have always existed in India now appear to be more pronounced and more visible and that should be a matter of concern to the people of India at large. The problem in my view, as was mentioned by the previous speakers, is that Hindutva which was always present since 1923, now those forces who are the rotaries of Hindutva are resorting more and more to Hindutva’s ideological moorings, divisive and violent moorings as a matter of fact. Hence India has been put on a slippery slope. Dr. Baqai mentioned about India being the largest democracy in the world and I think over the years India has been turned away from democracy to majoritarian rule and this has been done very skillfully by the BPP’s RSS group because by mastering the way the elections are held BJP has totally marginalized minorities and in practice have disenfranchised them to a large extent. There are about 180 million Muslims but the elites who rule do not hear their voices and whosoever raises his/her voice is told to go to Pakistan. Because of this vast election machinery of RSS, they have become totally fixated to Hindutva and have turned into Hindu Rashtra as their original objective had been. Now India claims to be a secular country as well yet we all know that the word ‘secular’ was incorporated into the Indian Constitution only in the 1970s. Be that as it may I was just going through excerpts of a book by Salman Khurshid who also served as the Foreign Minister of India, “Sunrise over Ayodhya – Nationhood in our Times” in which he even equates Hindutva with IS and Boko Haram so there are a few voices in India who are talking, speaking about this danger and Dr. Baqai was absolutely right when she said that it is not only the party itself, in fact it is the whole of India, the corporate of India, the media of India, they have been made hostage to this philosophy, this ideology. We all know who was responsible for the demolition of the Babri Mosque in 1992, who was behind the Gujrat massacre in 2002 and recent legislation of the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019 and the newly introduced National Registration of Citizens in 2020, all these indicate how much hatred the BJP, RSS is carrying vis-a-vis minorities in India and making their lives miserable in many, many respects. So, Hindutva no doubt is a huge challenge for the people of India I would say and the issue at hand is how to do it because more than 60% of the Indian population, in my view, does not subscribe to Hindutva, perhaps ever more than that but the manner in which the BJP/RSS with its 6 million members have mastered how to fight elections. So all minorities in India have become irrelevant unless the other political parties rally together, including minorities, I do not see how India can lift itself out of the present morass. India will continue to be very, very difficult because there is a huge gap between what India says and what India does. Someone here mentioned about Jammu & Kashmir. We all know how India scripted to occupation of Occupied Jammu & Kashmir of its fascist tactics on 5th August 2019 was not only against Article III of its Constitution but also it was in total defiance of the Supreme Court’s judgement of 4th April 2018 which ruled that the Special Status of Article 370 is now permanent and can neither be amended nor repealed. So this BJP mindset is defying all civility and its own Constitution, so it must be worrying not only for the people of India but also for the region as a whole because what happened on the 6th of February 2019 when India breached the airspace of Pakistan and tried to attack and throw bombs on Balakot, that itself is a very dangerous thing especially in a nuclear environment. So this new regime or mindset at the helm is causing problems not only internally but to the external world as well and I am really concerned for how long will this will continue, whether or not India disintegrates is a different discussion but definitely it is creating more and more problems for India itself, for the region in particular and for the world because India in its hubris and arrogance is not realizing how dangerous its path of Hindutva is because it is not only weakening the social and political fabric of India which was not only there in the first instance but it has become more pronounced. So India indeed is on a slippery slope but where will it end, nobody knows and how will things pan out eventually but Hindutva is a dangerous philosophy, it is retrogressive and keeping in view what the minorities say, we have seen concepts like Ghar Wapsi, Love Jihad and the mob lynching of Muslims and Christians on the issue of beef and cows, these are dangerous tendencies and unfortunately these are being abetted by the State itself as there are individuals going these things, there are some organisations doing these things, all this can be brought under control but the State itself is party to such horrendous thinking and actions then obviously all of us need to get worried because India is a bigger country in the region and it has a tendency to not only create problems for itself but bully its small neighbours as can be seen in what is happening to Bhutan, to the Maldives and Nepal. Thank God that Pakistan has a deterrence and not be bullied by India but India will not let go of any opportunity to weaken and undermine Pakistan and has been doing so for decades now. So this Hindutva ideology has added to the complexities of not only the bilateral equation in my view but also the regional and global equation. What India is trying to is balance between the QUAD and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation on the one hand and is trying to bring a Cold War to our region, so I think the BJP is a dangerous phenomenon and it is for the people of India to get rid of it. We sitting in Pakistan can only deliberate on such issues but eventually it will come down to the people of India to get rid of this dangerous mindset because it is hurting India and is creating more fissures between rural India and urban India as we have seen how farmers especially in the Hindi belt are out protesting but nobody appears to hear their problems and issues. There are also many internal divisions, the previous speaker mentioned about the problems related to the seven sister states but these problems are not restricted to these seven sister states and this virus is spreading all over India because of the Hindutva mindset and that is very dangerous. To conclude my thoughts, I would say that Hindutva is destroying India’s once robust civil society and I am not sure how a state can function maturely and efficiently without a vibrant civil society. The biggest danger is that Indian civil society is dissipating very fast hence we do not see, in the mainstream India at least, a hue and cry vis-a-vis Kashmir, what is happening in Occupied Jammu & Kashmir we all know how things are but we find that Indian civil society more or less reticence about that. So do we live in danger if civil society becomes a victim of indifference and I do not how a state can be prosperous as a whole. This is my major worry and let us hope that nobody wants India to disintegrate because we do understand the severe repercussions and nobody wants minorities in India, especially Muslims to continue suffering and things like that. Pakistan is absolutely right when it raises it voice in terms of the 1952 Liaquat-Nehru Agreement, so Pakistan as a big country in the region, we are worried but do not wish ill for India because that has never been our policy and it is India that needs to do some self-reflection, some introspection in order to remove all the tensions not only the internal tensions but also the tensions within the region and remove all those barriers that continue to impede regional cooperation and connectivity because India for all practical purposes has become the biggest impediment to regional cooperation in my view. So the people of India need to get rid of the Hindutva ideology and the sooner the better. Thank you very much.
Mr Salim Zamindar
May I now request Ambassador Abdullah Haroon, a politician and businessman who has served as Foreign Minister of Pakistan in the Caretaker government, he previously served as the Speaker of Sindh Assembly and Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United Nations. He has been a Board member of various educational institutes, sports associations and charity organisations. Ambassador Abdullah Haroon Sahib, you have the floor, Sir.
Ambassador Abdullah Haroon
A very good afternoon to all, especially you Salim, nice seeing you here. Am a little confused which I am not normally, I found Basit as usual very erudite and very fact revealing as I did the Brig and Huma Baqai. My confusion arises from the point that are on the point i.e. India on a Slippery Slope. I think we might have exorcised all our demons and exposed that India is moving forward on a very fast gear, reminds me of Mr. Bhutto in 1970 when Pierre Trudeau was visiting Pakistan after the elections and the great old man of Pakistan’s policy said there that “do you know Mr. Trudeau that precipitous forces are in play in India” and Trudeau said that “No I have not seen it anywhere” to which he said that we who know the subcontinent know better. These forces will take India apart not in a very long time. Now that was 50 years plus ago. Why I bring this up is that we have said this in various ways and we are yet to see this slippery slope, surely there are differences, disagreements, weaponry is being used and conflict but this is not only in India itself but reflects on the countries neighbour to India. But what I want to bring out here and how is whom observing the slippery slope, they have rewarded India with the Vice Presidency of the USA, they have rewarded India with the Chancellorship of Great Britain or the UK. When you look at the various examples of these rewards it reminds me of how quickly we were dropped and they were ushered into the nuclear world perspective. We are also observing how they are forgiven anything practically while we are banished through everything practically so much so that if they do not see the ethical mistake in making India Chairman of the cat of nine tails that we used in Pakistan’s bag, fascism. Well then, they are capable of recognizing anything and I am not sure they are worried about slippery slopes, they are never been worried about Israel, they have never been worried. After the conflict with the Chinese in northern Kashmir, was it not surprising how fast America came in, rather flew into New Delhi and the people to decide issues between China and India, we were members of NATO and SEATO but never got that sort of reception anywhere, in fact so much so that when Pakistan was fighting India, we had a whole lot of weaponry and the Egyptians who had sent that were asked to hope the ship until the conflict was over. Who suffered? Pakistan. Why I brought up this point is that anything goes if you are with the west in their travails when you are called. Not only that they have made pledges in the Sea of China and the seas around the areas of possible conflict, so they have not been stopped at anything and they haven’t been encouraged from stopping from anything. So do we really feel they are on a slippery slope whereas we are paying all the prices, for all that we have done to help the situation in Afghanistan and have been told quite bluntly that “we don’t trust you. We don’t think you have been faithful or loyal or open with us. In fact a lot of our grievances are based on what you did”. So I am not so sure we should this aspect of a slippery slope quite so seriously because the world is not taking it seriously, yes, as Basit rightly pointed out, as did Huma and others, there have been push backs in academic against these things, Arundhati Roy herself has been magnificent on the subject but is the world doing anything about it and I have a very simple answer to that, in Kashmir it is obvious democracy has been completely taken away from the people of Kashmir, their rights granted under the Constitution have been totally violated and they have gone through every hardship possible. Is the world doing anything about that? Have we been able to restore the election process in Kashmir? The answer is No. Is India in any financial grievance or trouble which cannot be solved by western economic help? No. They are within those boundaries of security where they can get away with anything, don’t forget all the billionaires of India, about six to eight at last count, have gone to countries and taken over vast tracks of local industry where they are penultimate in terms of what they need to do, as a little example at the COP summit in Glasgow the British Prime Minister a week ago or two, had a long meeting with the PM of Australia giving him all the assurances on allowing him freedom for benefits that the UK would face. Why I bring this up is that I don’t think we have an ethical world. I think for the last few years we have seen eradication which does not mean we have to stop doing what we are doing, we should carry on doing what we have to do but we need to be a little more focused and we need to be able to take these matters to forums, I mean why can’t we make sure that the Security Council calls a debate on Kashmir on a single point vis-a-vis holding its Election. We have had 70 years of which has never worked. Really speaking on the topic of slippery slopes I am a bit confused, you could help me with that confusion but I will say that they don’t seem to be in any trouble that aggravates them and as far as Hindutva is concerned, it is exempted I mean what they have done with Christians in India, especially South India, if we had done anything close to that in Pakistan (we shouldn’t even think of, it is absurd) we would have had to pay a price for it. So dual standards, dual recognitions and a world that no longer really cares other than what is a gigantic agreement to stay at the top. See how fast the third world vote in the Security Council tended to slip away on the issue of submarines, see how fast the American President apologized to the President of France and tried to reassure him of some sort of participation in further military requirements. I think that it absolutely makes sure that we are in the business of war when coming into an era where war will be all important, alliances will be all important, democracy doesn’t stand a visible chance, what’s happening in Kashmir, what’s happening in Palestine and what’s happening in so many places – do we look democratic? Sadly, No. Sadly the Muslim world has borne the brunt of it as is Sudan at this very moment. I have taken up my 8 or 10 minutes, thank you for listening to me. It is too short a time to elucidate any further, thank you for allowing me to participate.
Mr. Salim Zamindar
Thank you Abdullah Hussain Haroon sahib for your deliberation on this topic. Sardar Masood Khan will not be able to join us because of his urgent preoccupation, so we will now shift to the Questions & Answers session. We have a few questions from the members for the panelists. The first question is: The Kashmir issue has dragged on for more than 70 years despite UN Resolutions. What can be done to force India to comply with the UN Resolutions to bring an end to Indian occupation? Can I request Dr. Huma Baqai to respond first after which the other panelists can also respond.
Dr. Huma Baqai
You see, the two countries that are most sanctioned by the United Nations are India and Israel, the two biggest violators of UN Resolutions are also India and Israel. I do not think that the international community is going to come to the rescue of the Kashmiris, I think it is India that should come to their rescue and that is the point I have been emphasizing and re-emphasizing. Haroon Hussain sahib is right on spot when he says what he says, if you look at how things are, India is rewarded for bad behaviour. But what is happening in India is toxic for India, what they are doing to the Kashmiris is not just confined to Kashmir, there was a movement for Khalistan which was orchestrated in the UK and this is going on all over India against their own people like the Dalits. So if you ask me what is going to happen to the Kashmir people, will the international community intervene to resolve it? NO. But I think it is a compulsion from within India which should propel the sane in India to find a solution which is acceptable to all. And yes, the peace of this region is hostage to the Kashmir issue and it must resolved not because it is a bilateral issue between Pakistan and India but because it is a Human Rights issue, it is about humanity itself and because if the world has a conscience, which I think it doesn’t, it should respond to the situation. So my take on that is I do not have an answer to that but I wish to God I see it happen in my lifetime.
Ambassador Abdullah Hussain Haroon
Many of these answers because he has been through a horrible period as High Commissioner and also as Chief Negotiator in India. The problem basically is, do the Indians care? They will do what they are able to do, so long as they keep thinking they can get away with anything, they will carry on in the same fashion and they know that their aspect of democracy, or even as Basit pointed out, that in the 70s it was secularism that came upon their Constitutional agenda but the problem is that India has put up a bare face being what it is not and the world has accepted it face value and not even dug even a fingernail to find out how much of it is true. Arundhati Roy cannot be clearer or more succinct than she has been and some others have also spoken out on these issues but there is no will in the world for anything. The Committee on Kashmir in the United Nations which constitutes African countries, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, are of no use, so where are you going to move towards here? Could be in my mind certain things that could be possible but it will need to be discussed threadbare before they can be laid open, there would be ways to get it done but so far we have not been able to show anything. We really never seen ourselves as shining examples in the judicial world internationally, perhaps we ought to watch that a little closer than we have in the past.
Mr. Salim Zamindar
We will now take another question which is: “History is replete with freedom struggles in every continent in every century and now it is on Kashmir. None of the usurpers let go of these struggles without an armed struggle and support from like-minded nations as was indicated in a seminar by the former President of Azad Kashmir unless there is an armed intervention and general uprising of local people. There is no possibility of the Kashmiris to get freedom therefore it is proposed that an intervention by the general public be allowed to help the local indigenous efforts or we should forget about Kashmir,” That is the question and I would like to request Brig Tariq sahib to respond.
Brig Tariq Ali (Retd)
A very important question. Let me explain Sun Tzu who said that sometime when you are weaker and the enemy is strong you have to fight, that is what is happening in Kashmir during the last 70 years. There have been some phases, for example, during Operation Gibraltar we did not find much support and I remember very clearly my comrades who went in but after passage of time after revocation of Article 370 and 35A withdrawal and declaring Kashmir a part of Indian territory, it has been a sea change in the struggle by the Kashmiris. I may be wrong but as a soldier and as a student the Intifada in Kashmir, to my mind, turned into an armed struggle. Now this will continue to grow for three basic reasons – first: I partially agree with the questioner that freedom does not come without an armed struggle, although there are instances but these are very few and the struggle has to continue. Second, the changing strategic environment in Kashmir, in the region and in the international arena, the Chinese and India conflict has given a new dimension to the spirit of struggle within Kashmir. I was going through certain dispatches by certain Indians who managed to write something despite the strict censorship that Kashmiris started looking toward China, I do not know but this is a very important phenomenon which we must monitor very minutely and we must be aware of its implications. The second point is that along with the Kashmiris there are similar movements in Jharkhand, Assam, etc, which are giving momentum to the struggle and thirdly, I think they are bound by the various UN restrictions, sanctions and the stigma of supporting them, whether we like it or not the Kashmiri struggle is going to intensify and drag us inside. Logistics are most important for such struggles to sustain and for that I am very sure that logistics line will develop, how, I don’t know. But they will develop and it not be from Pakistan, maybe from elsewhere, maybe from within India and the struggle is going to intensify and Pakistan as the most important concerned party must keep watch on how our behaviour is going to be. Thank you.
Mr. Salim Zamindar
Thank you Brig sahib. I would like to ask Ambassador Abdul Basit, would you like to add to what Brig Sahib had to say?
Ambassador Abdul Basit
No, there is nothing wrong or illegal about armed struggles and that is very much in tune if the struggle is against foreign occupation. There is an international law which allows armed struggle against foreign occupation and also makes incumbent upon foreign community to assist and support that armed struggle and then there are many UN Resolutions including the one that was adopted, I think, on 14 December, 1974, Resolution 3314. So as far as international law is concerned armed struggles are legitimate but when it comes to Kashmir I am not sure because unfortunately, and let us be realistic, first, Pakistan has not been able to give its best diplomatically to the Kashmir dispute. We have been inconsistent when it comes to Kashmir and have not been very clear how to address this lingering problem and that has, kind of affected the Kashmir dispute. One thing that gives me some hope is that, despite the fact that the international community has kind of given short shrift to the Kashmir dispute, India at some stage will realize that it will continue to be very difficult for it to realize its regional and global aspirations without resolving its disputes with its neighbours and it will very difficult for India to be on the nuclear suppliers group or even its bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. For India to realize its aspirations it will be imperative for India at some stage to move towards resolving these disputes and that is the only hope left for me, otherwise Ambassador Haroon is absolutely spot on when he said that the international community is indifferent because of their own vested interests, commercial, strategic and now they look upon China as their biggest rival. These are the issues and hard realities of international relations, we all know about that but as far as Kashmiris are concerned they have been giving massive sacrifices and having lived in India I have come to the conclusion that no matter what India does in Occupied Jammu & Kashmir it cannot win the hearts and the minds of people, in the Valley in particular and that will continue to be a huge problem for India in the years to come. So it will be better for India itself to resolve this problem, I am not saying strictly in accordance with UN Security Council Resolutions because in the past too we have been trying to seek out of the box solutions and obviously these cannot be discussed in public but if there is a will and I think that India will find, at some stage, that it is a liability at some stage and if push comes to shove India might be willing to resolve the problem bilaterally but I do not see how the international community will bring pressure upon India, this appears to be idealistic at this point. Thank you.
Dr. Huma Baqai
I totally agree and everybody has a right to an opinion but my thrust here is that it is extremely attractive to talk about an armed intervention, it’s almost seductive but it is impossible to sustain and I also think that it is going to harm the Hurriyet more than help. I will allow India to revert to the whole concept of cross-border terrorism and so on and so forth. The fact that Hurriyet has stayed alive in indigenously is the biggest challenge to Indian occupation and I can’t more with Ambassador Basit and we should be working on the diplomatic front and the intellectual front, those are the fronts that will give sustainability to the struggle and the support. Armed intervention is just seductive not sustainable.
Mr. Salim Zamindar
Thank you Dr. Huma Baqai. I would like to thank all our panelists, Huma Baqai, Brigadier Sahib, Ambassador Basit and Ambassador Haroon for their deliberation and insight into a very, very topical question of today’s time. With that I would now like to hand over the Chief Executive Officer of KCFR, Commodore Sadeed Malik sahib for the closing announcement. Over to your Sadeed Sahib.
Commodore Sadeed Malik
Thank you very much Mr. Salim Zamindar. Our learned panel members with vision and exposure have very well analysed today’s topic. I feel this needs to be seen as what would be a patriotic Indian’s feelings and how would they react on the action taken by the Modi government which will ultimately decide as far as today’s topic is concerned. Though the Congress had had a similar stance towards the Muslims in India, on LoC with Pakistan, on LAC with China but ever since the arrival of the Modi government, especially after the majority the Indian Rajya Sabha (Upper House of Parliament), this government has started passing laws that were never ostensibly even imagined by the previous governments, including Congress. Although POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Acts) was passed by the earlier government but it has been implemented ruthlessly, especially in Kashmir, examples of recent application there has shaken up faith in a secular India to the extent that people appointed by the Indian government like Chief Minister of Kashmir Farooq Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti, inter alia other leaders from other States, including from Bengal and other states have also spoken out against the Modi government. Continuous increase in the defence budget of India has reduced the image of India from when it was called ‘India Shining’. Amendments to the India Constitution for removing the special status of Kashmir as highlighted by our worthy panelists, has shaken up the faith of the majority of like-minded persons in India and this has rightly been pointed out by our panelists that if the present fascist, autocratic democracy continues slipping then the affected minorities, including the Sikhs and Muslims will raise the level of protests where some sort of internal bloodshed could happen and that would lead to the affected communities who would demand a referendum which has already taken place in the UK by the Sikh community. Thank you to all the panelists and participants. This webinar is hereby concluded.
Thank you very much.
