This article is written by Arun Jaitley. Link
to the original article is here.
The Prime Minister’s
interaction with the media on 3rd January,2014, gave rise to several
controversies. His announcement that he was unavailable for leadership after
the General Elections, his endorsement of Rahul Gandhi, his criticism of Narendra
Modi, his admission of failure in tackling corruption and inflation were
amongst the issues which caught popular attention. We on behalf of
the BJP reacted on some of the issues.
The Kashmir comment in
the Press Conference got missed out amidst these controversies. A
media person asked the Prime Minister a question on his
Pakistan initiatives. The Prime Minister revealed for the first
time that secret envoys from India and Pakistan had almost arrived at a meeting
to resolve the conflict on Kashmir. When a break through appeared ‘in
sight ‘, General Pervez Musharraf had to make way for other leaders
and the agreement got blocked. A few years ago when President
Musharraf was living in exile in London he had given a similar indication
.
What was this possible
resolution on Kashmir ? The people of India are entitled to know an
answer to this question.
The stated position of
India has been very clear. Jammu & Kashmir is an integral part of
India. In 1994 the Indian Parliament had passed a unanimous resolution
asserting that POK was an integral part of India’s territory.
India firmly believes that no third party intervention in Kashmir
is permissible. Pakistan has an unfinished agenda on Kashmir. It
has not reconciled to Kashmir being integral to India’s sovereignty. It has
used warfare and terrorism to achieve this end. India firmly believes
that the age and era of re-drawing boundaries is over. India’s
negotiating space on territory in the context of Kashmir resolution is
negligible.
I have always believed
that the Nehruvian vision of giving a separate status to Jammu & Kashmir
was a flawed one. The journey of the past 67 years has been
from separate status towards separatism. The Congress stands for
separate status, the National Conference advocates pre-1953 status, the PDP
talks of self-rule, the separatists talk of ‘Azadi’. Each one of
these is intended to dilute India’s sovereignty. Their intention is
to weaken the constitutional and political link between Jammu & Kashmir and
the rest of the country. It is in this context that one needs to know
the details of what this ‘almost arrived at’ agreed resolution between Dr.
Manmohan Singh’s government and Pakistan was. Pakistan had been
advocating an interim resolution on Kashmir which comprised of
several unacceptable measures. These included maintenance of
territorial status quo, demilitarization in Kashmir, dilution of the Line
of Control for allowing free movement of people and goods, a tripartite
joint mechanism to take decisions about Jammu & Kashmir for a
specified period pending which a final solution would be found.
Some Pakistani observers and Kashmiri groups also spoke about the
currency of the two countries to be a valid tender in Jammu &
Kashmir. I do not know if any or all of these were a subject matter
of the ‘almost arrived at’ resolution to the Kashmir problem. I
hope the truth is otherwise. I further hope that I do not have to wait
for the memoirs of the Prime Minister to know the truth.
Track Two diplomacy is
not an unknown phenomenon. It is an accepted instrument world over.
But Track Two diplomacy cannot be at complete variance with the stated
national position. At best it can be marginally ahead of the national
thinking. If the above stated points that the Pakistanis have been
frequently mentioning i.e a dilution of the LOC and a tripartite
arrangement were part of this ‘breakthrough’ , it would be a defacto acceptance
of Jammu & Kashmir being a disputed territory. It is with great
difficulty that Indian diplomacy has achieved a non-internationalization of the
Kashmir issue and an internationalization of cross-border terrorism.
By even suggesting such a resolution, we could squander all gains.
De-militarisation of the valley without dismantling the terror
infrastructure by Pakistan would be disastrous. I hope the Government was
not working in this direction.
Since the Prime Minister
for the first time informed the nation that a resolution on Kashmir was
almost agreed to, it is eminently desirable that he takes the nation into
confidence of what the specifics he had in mind about the failed
solution. Even for history to make assessment of Prime Minister’s
tenure, these details would be of immense help.
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