Kashmir Where Needs An Int’l Mediation

Kashmiris today are paying price of their leaders’ myopia in yesteryear. Pandit Jawahar Lal Kaul (assumed surname Nehru) befooled Sheikh Abdullah to stab Pakistan in the back. Renowned journalist Barkha Dutt recalls (This Unquiet Land, p. 154) `In a 1948 speech to the United Nations, Sheikh Abdullah, the most formidable political leader the state of Jammu and Kashmir had ever seen, made a blistering defence of the accession to India.
Sher-e-Kashmir (Lion of Kashmir) roared, :I had thought all along that the world had got rid of Hitlers…but what is happening in my poor country I am convinced that they have transmigrated their souls into Pakistan…I refuse to accept Pakistan as a party in the affairs of Jammu and Kashmir’.
India’s Supreme Court hearing petitions on Article 370 did not even consider Kashmir petitions worth being referred to a larger Bench. Hope, if any, lies in the United Nations’ Security Council. But, India is chary of international mediation on Kashmir.
History tells India herself rushed to the United Nations for mediation on Kashmir. Then, in 1962, battered by Chinese troops at North Eastern Frontier Agency (Arunachal Pradesh), she rushed to `President John F Kennedy of the arch capitalist United States for “two squadrons of B-47 bombers” and “twelve squadrons of supersonic fighters manned by American crews’ (Herald, Pakistan, March 1, 2019). Unable to remove Pakistani fighters at Kargil Heights, including Tiger Hill, India again approached United States with a muffled request for help during Kargil crisis.
Barkha Dutt reminisces `The former Indian National Security Advisor Brajesh Misra during an interview to the NDTV revealed that a letter given to President Clinton by PM Vajpayee had hinted that India was contemplating crossing the LoC as well as using the nuclear weapons if Pakistan did not pull out the fighters from Kargil’ (quoted in Foreign Policy, July 31, 2016).
Since, March 2, 2020, Beijing’s Permanent representative, Zhang Jun is UNSC’s president. Indian Express dated March 2, 2020 reported `New Delhi has “intensified” its engagement with the UNSC members in the past few days, with diplomats at the Permanent Mission to the UN in New York meeting their counterparts to gauge the intention of the UNSC members’. International community should support the Kashmiri in Indian prison if Kashmir or communal issues in India are raked up.
(Amjed Jaaved writes from Rawalpindi)
Amjed Jaaved