Kashmir and a Storm in the Tea Cup

Kashmir and a Storm in the Tea Cup

Syed Ali Mujtaba

On Monday, July 22, 2019, United States President Donald Trump has droped a bombshell claiming that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked him to mediate on the Kashmir issue when they met in Osaka, Japan, on the sidelines of the of the G-20 Summit on June 29, 2019.

US President while talking to the press with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan said; "I was with Prime Minister Modi two weeks ago and we talked about this subject (Kashmir). And he actually said, 'would you like to be a mediator or arbitrator?' I said, 'where?' (Modi said) 'Kashmir'," Trump said. "If I can help, I would love to be a mediator. If I can do anything to help, let me know," Trump said, adding he is ready to help, only if the two countries ask for it.

There was a quick reaction to it from External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar in Parliament. The Minister categorically denied Trump’s claim saying Mr. Modi did not made any such request to Mr.
Trump to “mediate or arbitrate” on the Kashmir issue. He said India remains committed to discussing all issues bilaterally with Pakistan.

Then the U.S. State Department issued a clarification that Kashmir remains a “bilateral issue,” and the U.S. “stands ready to assist” India-Pakistan for any such talk. It did not deny the US President’s comment, leaving each of us guessing who was correct,the U.S. State Department or our External Affairs Minister. 

To a dim wilted, the onus of denial or acceptance remains on the Indian Prime Minister. As he is the party to the conversation being talked about but he remains non vocal on it. This puts him in dock for trading the AOOT ANNG OF INDIA (inseparable limb of India) in private, while he has been saying in public that Kashmir is no negotiable.

Witnessing a storm in the tea cup it’s time to recollect the role of USA and other external powers in mediating to resolve the Kashmir question. The archives have it that after the fall of Hyderabad on 13th September 1948, a US Consulate dispatch from New Delhi has said, ‘now the principal of the will of the people of Kashmir has to be made applicable. This one liner prophecy of an US officer perhaps the junior most in the hierarchy of US administration has become the corner stone of US foreign policy on Kashmir since then.  

 The early attempt at mediation on Kashmir was done by the UN where India took its complaint against Pakistan’s forced occupation of parts of Kashmir (PoK) ton January 1, 1948. A United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) was set up which proposed mediating the Kashmir dispute along a three-point action plan. This plan of action never took off on the ground till date.

However, the UNCIP was successful in mediating a ceasefire in 1949, and negotiating the geographical location of the cease-fire line that would be monitored by the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP). This arrangement remains intact on ground even as of today.

Thereafter individual U.N. representatives continued to visit both sides but failed to resolve the Kashmir dispute. Sir Owen Dixon, an Australian jurist was the first United Nations Representative for India and Pakistan (UNRIP) appointed to mediate the Kashmir dispute. He was followed by an American diplomat Frank Graham.

During India-China war of 1962, the US had provided India with planes and military hardware worth about $60 million with the condition that India should agree to be mediated in talks with Pakistan over Kashmir. The U.S. made it clear that any further military assistance was contingent on India’s cooperation on Kashmir talks.

In fact, a team of 24 American negotiators landed in India on November 21, 1962. It was led by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Averell Harriman. The US team worked along with U.S. Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith and British High Commissioner Paul Gore to bring India and Pakistan to the negotiating table.

There were six rounds of talks between India’s Foreign Minister Swaran Singh and Pakistan Foreign Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Eventually, the talks ended in 1963 without any results. Since then the time has traveled its distance and globally Kashmir is recognized as a dispute, though India has some qualms about it.

The then Soviet Premier Kosygin tried to broker a peace agreement between India and Pakistan in Tashkent over Kashmir in 1965.Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and Pakistani President Ayub Khan attended the peace talks. But nothing tangible emerged out of such talks due to sudden death of PM Shastri in Tashkent.  

Then the dateline shifts to Shimla Agreement of 1972. In this agreement India and Pakistan “resolved to settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations or by any other peaceful means mutually agreed upon between them”.

Since then Shimla agreement forms the basis of bilateral talks between the two countries, where India harps on the first part of the agreement “resolved to settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations, Pakistan lays emphasis on; “by any other peaceful means mutually agreed upon between them”.

The next dateline is 1993, when the U.S. President Bill Clinton decided to solve the Kashmir dispute and wished to mediate between India and Pakistan. In this connection, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robin Raphel during a press briefing questioned the validity of Kashmir’s ‘Instrument of Accession’ on 26 October 1947. India protested to the remarks of the US official and succeeded to keep the Kashmir issue on the back burner.

Then the next dateline is February 1999 Lahore declaration when Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif and Indian PM Atal Behari Vajpayee outlined a four-step formula to resolve all the disputes through bilateral means. But then Kargil happened later in the same year and peace talks were stalled. Later,  terror attack took place on Indian Parliament December 13, 2001. Following, India launched operation Parakram when Indian Pakistani troops was locked in eyeball to eyeball position from 13 December 2001 – 10 June 2002.  

Subsequently,  Indian and Pakistani under Lahore agreement of 1999 held peace negotiations from 2003 to 2008. According sources, the two countries came very close to resolve the Kashmir dispute. But progress Kashmir could not make headway as terrorism came in the way of implementing the peace process and bilateralism was sacrificed on the altar of terrorism since then.

In between several global leaders including South African President Nelson Mandela, UN Chief António Guterres, and the Norwegian Prime Minister, Erna Solberg has offered to negotiate between India and Pakistan. But New Delhi gave them a courteous reply that its duty bound to resolve all outstanding issue with Pakistan through bilateralism.

The overall victims of such situation are the people of Kashmir who have become main sufferers as there is no urgency in any such peace process.

Now when US president Donald Trump dropped a bombshell during his joint press conference with Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, India’s response was to invoke the Shimla Agreement of 1972 and the Lahore Declaration of 1999 as the basis to resolve all issues between India and Pakistan bilaterally.

The question is why India needed US President’s intervention to croak the pet lines of bilateralism. If that was on deep freeze due terrorism, why did not our External Affairs Minister put the condition on the US President to ask Pakistan to stop terrorism for starting the dialogues of peace? Related to it is the question why did not our beloved PM have the courage to deny Mr. Trump’s claims that he not asked him to “mediate or arbitrate” on Kashmir. The other question is why it took 25 years for a US President to once again publicly announce it concerns for Kashmir.

The story so far is, India has opposed any third-party mediation on Kashmir. This is because India’s defence over Kashmir is quite weak. This is due to Pakistan‘s claim that Kashmir is the unfinished agenda of Partition of India, and Kashmiri’s claim the will of the people has to be made supreme.

 India do not see any significant gain from a third-party mediation and feels that in such mediation, the third party will give muscle to the weaker parties and may serve its adversaries interests.  In such case, India at best may may like the third parties to diffuse tensions at the Line of Control or at the International Border and not beyond that.

So then all boils down to bilateral negotiation. India finds bilateralism to suit its interests because as a regional power it has superiority in conventional and non-conventional military means. In such case bilateral talks can serve its purpose for name sake having no conclusion coming from any such talks.

In the end, the summery is unless parties concerned are not willing to concede their fossilized stand on Kashmir no peace can be hammered out through bilateralism or multilateralism. In such case,the Kashmir problem will remain where it was 1948. With no solution going to be agreed upon in the near future with the parties concerned, Kashmir problem will remain an unresolved conflict for some more time to come. 
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Syed Ali Mujtaba is a journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at syedalimujtaba2007@gmail.com

Hindu Child Cries for Muslim Mother –A Tale of Communal Harmony in India

Hindu Child Cries for Muslim Mother –A Tale of Communal Harmony in India

Syed Ali Mujtaba

A Facebook post by Sreedharan that “my Umma (mother) has honored the summons of Allah, please pray for her soul…if there is heaven, my Umma will surely find a place there,” has caught many eyeballs. It appeared it was a cry of a Hindu child for her Muslim mother. There was definitely curiosity raised through the FB post.  

In deeper introspection, it turned out to be a tale of human love cutting across religion and other parochialism that could be an eye opener to those who are forcing the Muslims to chant Jai Sri Ram and killing them for being an Indian Muslim.  

The 46-year-old Sreedharan’s facebook post is an amazing account of how interfaith bonds survive in India even in these trouble times when Hindus minds were rigged in just concluded General Election of 2019.

A pious Muslim couple Subaida Thennad and Abdul Azeez Haji had three children of their own and they fostered three more, Sreedharan and his two elder sisters Ramani and Leela. The Muslim couple adopted these Hindu kids when their widow mother, Chakki passed away due to sudden illness. Having no one to look after these three Hindu children, Subaida took them under her wings, with Sreedharan being hardly one, and others being less than five years of age.  

The three Hindu children were raised by Subaida in her house as practicing Hindus along with her own three practicing Muslim children. In the mornings, when the three Muslim children went to the madrasa, the three Hindu kids were sent temple to learn about their religion.

All the six children lived in the same house under one roof, in the care of the loving Muslim parents.  They all ate together, played together and slept together and woke up together without an feelings of religious divide between them.

“Our foster parents brought us up like their own children and educated us. They got my sisters married off. Though we were taken in at an impressionable age, they never tried to convert us to their religion, said Sreedharan, who works in Oman in the FB post adding, his foster mother to him was like her own mother (Umma).

News of her mother’s death shattered Sreedharan who cried on his personal loss, holding bottles of perfume that he had bought for his beloved mother in Oman. He chose not to rush home in Kerala as he lacked courage to see her dead body. And instead wept and prayed for the departed soul.

]The death of Subaida Thennad would have gone unnoticed outside her home in Kalikavu village in Nilambur taluk of Malappuram district in Kerala. It is her foster son, Sreedharan, who had put up a Facebook post that tickled many funnels hearing such tale of communal harmony, where recently one Tabrez Ansari was done to death by a Hindu mob for reasons Ansari being an Indian Muslim.

Another Story 

Another story of Communal harmony has come from Belarikhan village under the Gosaiganj Assembly constituency in Ayodhya district of Uttar Pradesh. Here in a rare gesture some Hindus have donated 1.25 bighas of land to Muslims for using it as their burial ground.

As per records, the land belonged to the Hindus but some Muslims have buried their dead since it was by the side of a graveyard. The land had been a bone of contention between the two communities and there were disputes and tension over this issue for years between them. 

However some nine Hindu gentlemen who were shareholders of the land, signed a registered deed for 1.25 bighas of land in favour of the Qabristan Committee, Gosainganj on to bury their hatchet once and for all.

Khabbu Tiwari, the local BJP MLA who took the initiative said; “It's a gift from the Hindu community through a proper deed and stamp duty, as the tradition of Hindu-Muslim brotherhood in Ayodhya has a long history. This is a small token of love from Hindus to Muslims and I hope this amity will continue," he added.

In these days of Hindu religious fundamentalism where some radical Hindus are trying to lynch Muslim through mob attacks, such tales of goodness must be highlighted. These are rare instances of interfaith gestures of communal harmony in the country and reflect how India society is interwoven from below.

These stories will definitely give a tight slap to those relentlessly working overtime to increase the religious divide between the Hindus and Muslims in the country. 

It’s also a lesson or two those who are indulging in the conspiracy of silence by not opening up their mouths against those perpetrating hate crimes against Muslims in India.

German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) has rightly said; first they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

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Syed Ali Mujtaba is a journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at syedalimujtaba2007@gmail.com