World doesn’t understand the language of stone pelting: Dr Gilani

‘J&K CM is constitutionally bound to facilitate cross-LoC visit of interlocutors’

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Dec 28: London-based Kashmiri human rights activist and constitutional expert, Dr Syed Nazir Gilani, today advised Kashmiri separatist leaders to shun their rigidity and negotiate on the Kashmir problem with the Indian Parliamentarians. He said that the civilized world had not, and would never, under the language of stone pelting that, according to him, had exclusively become the mark of identification of Muslims from Kashmir to Palestine.

Addressing a news conference in the midst of his exhaustive visit to his home state after several years, Secretary General of Jammu & Kashmir Council for Human Rights (JKCHR), Dr Gilani, asserted that violent and anarchic expression of a “genuine cause” had done a disservice to the people of the state. According to him, it was strange and surprising that the Valley’s separatist leaders had been regularly interacting with officials of the Government of India but they had invariably decided not to meet the Indian Parliamentarians and other representatives of this country’s people.

Any rigidity, according to Gilani, would just perpetuate the status qua that was ‘selectively detrimental to the cause and interests of the people of Jammu and Kashmir’. “India is not going to lose anything. New Delhi would conveniently convince the world that it had made a sincere initiative to reach out to the constituency of dissent in Kashmir but the separatist leaders were not amenable to reason, logic and reconciliation”, he added.

Gilani argued that the Indian forces were in J&K according to a mandate given to them in follow up to the “provisional” Instrument of Accession for the purpose of protecting life, honour and property of each citizen while assisting the state Police. He refused to endorse that the Indian troops in J&K were “occupational forces” but asserted that every state subject, living in any territory of the state from Kathua to Kupwara and Gilgit, had the right and responsibility of questioning the size, location and behaviour of the soldiers. He said it was being highlighted from a many quarters that only Muslims were indulging in the anarchic form of stone pelting. “Isn’t it a fact that no Hindu and no Sikh is involved in stone pelting?”, Gilani asked.

Gilani declined to accept that J&K was an integral part of India and emphasized that every single state subject would have a vote in determining the status of this state. He said it was unfortunate that the Valley’s separatist leaders had never presented a non-paper (document of roadmap) and forced the Indian political and intellectual leadership to discuss it across the table.

Dr Gilani said that Chief Minister Omar Abdullah was “constitutionally bound” to facilitate the visit of the Indian interlocutors to all areas of ‘Azad Jammu & Kashmir, Gilgit and Baltistan’.

“Our understanding of the habitat and the people of the state is at variance to the understanding of many others and we have a considered view that bulk of the understanding of the Kashmir case is unreliable and far remote from the jurisprudence of Kashmir case”, he said. “The political opinions that exist in all the three administrations of Jammu & Kashmir, the Government of J&K, the Government of AJK and the Government of Gilgit and Baltistan, have failed  in honouring the trust that these Governments owe to the State Subjects living within the territories defined in article 4 of the J&K Constitution”, Gilani added.

“Hurriyat leadership and other political parties that have spearheaded the agenda….to seek the right of self-determination, need to revisit the wisdom of their 20 year politics and consider seriously their understanding of the Kashmir case”, Gilani asserted.

Founded in 1984, Gilani’s JKCHR is a London and Srinagar-based non-profit organisation that has the distinction of being J&K’s only NGO in special consultative status with the UNO’s Economic and Social Forum. A resident of Naranthal village in Baramulla district, Gilani had crossed the LoC in early 1970s. He later worked as Deputy Direction of Information in ‘Government of Azad Jammu & Kashmir’ before becoming a victim of Gen Zia-ul-Haq’s military regime that forced him to leave Pakistan and live in exile in the UK.

END