Recognise Kashmir as political problem: NC

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, July 26

Two days after Rajnath Singh’s visit to the Valley, main opposition party National Conference today published in local newspapers the memorandum given to the Home Minister on July 24, reiterating its call for recognition of Kashmir as a political problem and warning about the dangerous consequences of ignoring the disaffection of the youth

What is missing, however, is that the National Conference stops short of an all-acceptable solution.

This 1920-word memorandum is full of prose, unlike the tweets of its leader Omar Abdullah which are crisp and full of meaning. That apart, the memorandum has recognised Pakistan and Hurriyat as the mentionable stakeholders with whom the Centre should hold talks.

The National Conference, the premier political party of Kashmir with almost an eight-decade-old history, did not identify the political problem. Is it the widening gap between Centre and Srinagar or is it the call for independence or is it sharing the “dream of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to see Kashmir becoming Pakistan” or is it the revival of the slogan of the Plebiscite Front days for allowing Kashmiris to choose country of their future — India or Pakistan?

With a leader of Omar Abdullah’s calibre who takes 10 seconds to understand what others toil for ages to grasp. This memorandum, at best, is an imperfect editorial on the current situation.

The political party, which had towering leader Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah as its founder, was expected to spell out the path ahead in terms which would have gelled with Omar’s clarity of thoughts.

There is no dispute with the fact that Kashmir should be accepted as a political problem, but in what perspective, it is not clear. Talking to Pakistan and the Hurriyat may offer hope to the common Kashmiris for a while but these experiments in the absence of a concrete follow-up action have rendered the whole exercise in the past redundant. The memorandum doesn’t make it clear where this party, having supporters of all age groups across the Valley, stands on its own role.

If the idea was to indict the PDP-BJP government for mishandling the situation and having differing voices on the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani, it has been successful in doing so. But the alternative way of handling the situation has not been spelled out. The way forward is not visible in the memorandum.