“In 2000 National Conference played a dirty trick,” says Radha Kumar,, “by presenting autonomy report which scuttled the talks with Hurriyat Conference.” According to the interlocutor New Delhi was nearer the negotiations (she confessed that she was part of that) but NC played ‘dirty trick’. She didn’t mention Hizbul Mujahideen with whom India was keen to carry out negotiations! And who in the same year had announced unilateral ceasefire. This she said while interacting with the students of Political Science at Kashmir University on June 15. She didn’t adduce how a small regional party which has been over the years dictated by New Delhi can play such a ‘dirty trick’.  Here she echoed the words of her colleague Navnita Chadha Behera who wrote 5 years ago that: “State Autonomy Committee’s recommendation that State be restructured in to eight provinces along a communal fault line also gave the impression that Farooq was playing politics” (Demystifying Kashmir). But NC at that time wanted Hurriyat not to fall prey to parleys of deceit and become the poor copy of the former. Hurriyat was quick to see the point and refused the bait offer.  
      The seriousness of any dialogue can be gauged by the honesty and sincerity of the purpose of the players involved in the process. Radha Kumar throughout the interaction kept blaming the fringe players. Before appointing interlocutors New Delhi was aware that pro freedom organisations would not cooperate with them in the process of negotiations given the bitter past experiences. New Delhi constituted many parties and even commissioned some journalists to write in local papers. The idea was to put the blame of civilian killings on the local government and digress who is actually ruling the Kashmir.  It was the policy adopted by Lord Clive in Bengal province in 18th century where the local government had responsibility without power and East India Company had power without responsibility. The pro resistance leaders expectedly fell into the trap and talked to other groups while rebuking interlocutors.      
         Interacting with students it was clear that she talks from a position of dominance. She presented a brief ‘history’ of dialogues between India and Pakistan, between India and Kashmir. No need to say that the version of her ‘history’ was lopsided. She kept hammering the point that it was the State which always reached out to Kashmiris not vice versa. She negated the perception that militants entered with the negotiations only to be discredited. And before that the first Prime Minister of Kashmir Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah was also humiliated while entering talks with New Delhi. ‘India has no history of referendums’ Radha Kumar made a statement. Everyone’s opinion, she held, would be taken into consideration but there is no possibility of referendum. That way you are correct because New Delhi pays scant respect to the aspirations of people. That is why it can give billion dollar aid to Afghanistan and African countries but doesn’t care about its 400 million below the poverty line people.  
     On June 8, 2011 Ms Radha Kumar in her note on social networking site Facebook patronisingly wrote: “The 2003-08 period, in particular, was one in which Jammu and Kashmir appeared to be emerging from conflict and poised for peace-building. Militancy declined sharply, the back channel between India and Pakistan yielded a broad framework for settlement, and the Hurriyat (M) engaged in talks with the Government of India.”  Then adding, “But efforts to move the peace process forward foundered, and there have been three summers of violence from 2008-10, leading to the deaths of roughly 120 young men, girls and children in 2010. These tragic deaths have made the search for a resolution urgent.”
See the perfunctory tone in her language when she writes “three summers of violence” “deaths of roughly” for all the persons didn’t die but were murdered. And poor people don’t use violence. They don’t have weapons to carry out violence. Violence comes from powerful on helpless. In a deceptively beautiful language she blamed the Kashmiri society for not reining in the police for civilian killings. She extolled the students that by not getting recruited in police the police force remains the same! The laws are not made by the society. The weapons are not given by the society. The order to kill with impunity is not given by the society. Yet the society is at fault while the law enforcers are innocent!   
         When queried about demilitarisation she pointed the finger toward Pakistan and said they have to cooperate. Strange it is. The number of soldiers stationed in Kashmir is equal to the whole army Pakistani State possess. In 1980s when there was no mass mobilisation in Kashmir and Pakistan was engaged in fighting the proxy war of USA in Afghanistan India laid her hands on Siachen glaciers. Buoyed by that success in 1986 the then Indian Army Chief General K Sundarji prepared a plan known as Operation Brasstacks. Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, gave his nod to the operation which was intended to “decapitate Pakistan’s nuclear program and force a Kashmir settlement”. (Arming without Aiming: India’s Military Modernization by Stephen P. Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta).  “For Brasstacks, the Indian Army put together, write the authors further in their book, “the biggest land army maneuver by any country since World War II. As 400,000 troops in strike formations gathered in the Rajasthan Desert on India’s Western border across from the Pakistani province of Sindh, together with logistics trains and reserve call-up, the Pakistan leadership feared another Indian effort to break up their country.” The operation was called off only after Pakistan threatened to use nuclear weapons.
        The interlocutor repeatedly pointed out that ‘peace process’ means give and take from both the parties. In the 90’s and early 2000’s the New Delhi negotiated only to wear down the resistance leaders and organisations. Throughout the past 64 years the State engaged Kashmiris into dialogue when it felt the threat of map redrawing and the dialogue helps it to defer that. What does ‘peace process’ mean anyway. To delay, to obfuscate the reality, to discredited pro resistance leaders and then throw them among hunters. Interlocutors must not forget Kashmiris have already given so much—90,000 lives, honour and property. We will, like tyrants, not ask you to give us heads of those who killed, dishonoured us but we would tell you to give us justice as per your law. But Radha Kumar dismissed the notion of justice as well when she said that justice in India is long term process. That inevitably meant to Kashmiris to take compensation of US$ 2212 for every life lost and forget justices. Give and take is equal to status quo because we give and you take and you take and we give. It is New Delhi that has yet to give anything to Kashmiris. Kashmiris have given enough, now is the time to take.  

Lastupdate on : Tue, 21 Jun 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Tue, 21 Jun 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Wed, 22 Jun 2011 00:00:00 IST