The Legitimate Separatists
Even after tough positions on both the sides, the deadlock seems to have broken. Last week the Jammu and Kashmir governor Satya Pal Malik said that Huriyat is ready for talks. Malik said that ones who turned back Ram Vilas Paswan from their door, they are now ready for talks. The stone pelting after namaz is almost over; we do not like it when a youngster dies. But when a bullet is fired, bullets will be fired in retaliation.
That is the reality and this change in stance by them is a welcome sign. Even alongside his statement, the moderate separatist leader Mirwaiz Umer Farooq also expressed the same intentions and said that his party doesn’t hold any pre conditions for the dialogue with New Delhi.
However, amid these statements, the senior BJP leader Avinash Khanna, an incharge of Kashmir affairs said that talks with separatists are only possible within the ambit of Indian constitution. While the expression of separatists to enter into a dialogue with New Delhi is considered to be a thaw in ongoing hostilities, however on the other side the majority of separatists are languishing in jails. Mirwaiz has also been placed under house arrest while Syed Ali Geelani, a staunch pro Pakistan separatist is continuously under house arrest. Geelani was last week barred to attend the book fare at Kashmir University after curbs were laid outside his house by authorities.
The talks between the separatists and New Delhi are to be held at a time when India already dispelled all rumours of engaging with Pakistan. Prime minister’s office and ministry of external affairs rejected the news reports in a section of media that India has agreed to engage with Pakistan at political or at diplomatic level. Modi has been maintaining a tough position over the neighbouring country accusing it of harbouring terrorists against India. The position however, further toughened after an attack on CRPF convoy at Lethpora on February 14. Modi has often asked Pakistan to stop offering safe sanctuaries to the terrorists against India for any sincere dialogue on all issues pending between the two countries.
Given to India’s tough posture towards Pakistan, the separatists willingness in engaging with New Delhi seems a watershed shift in latter’s Kashmir policy. In a last three decades of political turmoil, this seems a diplomatic win for India of shifting the long hatched political narrative of involving Pakistan in talks. India at most of the times refused to have dialogue with separatists after latter insisted to involve Pakistan.
Separatists always maintained that any dialogue with India shall be a tripartite. New Delhi has always seen the issue as internal and refused to engage with Pakistan especially after Modi led BJP took over in New Delhi. Today, if Mirwaiz Umer Farooq has no condition and is ready to engage with India, without changing his position India has secured a diplomatic win against Pakistan and succeeded in sidelining the country on Kashmir issue.
This would also prove Modi right in exerting the muscle power against the separatists in Kashmir which eventually seems to have paved way for a dialogue that too the way India wished. However, the lull in the violence in Kashmir must not be taken a permanent feature by India. New Delhi’s sincerity could be well gauged in arresting the prevailing trend in its favor and exploring the options for the permanent settlement of the issue.
