Shahsi Tharoor, Indian parliamentarian and champion of democracy, mentions about Indian advice to Pakistan for peace in Kashmir (Sunday Times, Sri Lanka February 26, 2012) and earlier AndharaNews.net reported former Indian Union Minister voicing concern and apprehensions about Pakistan raising Kashmir issue ‘again’ in the United Nations General Assembly. Indo-Pak present policy on Kashmir is also projected as a shift on their principle stand on the most ‘intractable conflict’ of Kashmir.

Mr Tharoor, “historically speaking”, mentions “Kashmir’s Hindu Maharaja Hari Singh of Muslim-majority State dithering over which of the two to join and flirting with the idea of an independent Kashmir”. He has been very careful not to mention the mirror situation of Junagadh and Hyderabad ruled by Muslim Nawab and Nizam respectively. India chose to walk over, through a simple police action, into the States of Muslim rulers and occupied Kashmir, ruled by a Hindu, with an army action. The battalions of Indian army Air-lifted to Kashmir on October 26, 1947 did not have to do much as the job was already done and dusted by forces of Maharaja Patiala Yadavindra Singh. The Patiala Gunners had already become a part of Indian Union. An indomitable piece of political architecture displayed by India’s Iron Man Vallabhbhai Patel eventually proved to be the pivotal point in Kashmir occupation.

Shashi Tharoor claims Nehru’s confidence of winning a plebiscite as promised by various UN Security Council Resolutions, mainly having popular leader of Kashmir Sheikh Abdullah on his side but maintains silence to explain why after Indian occupation of Kashmir and Indian military in firm control, this ‘trump card’, Sheikh Abdullah” was imprisoned by Nehru for more than eighteen years in various jails of India.

The parliamentarian tried to project Kashmir as a bilateral issue, a dispute presumably over some uninhabited piece of territory and more than thirteen million people do not figure out anywhere. The role of ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi and that enigmatic personality Lord Louise Mountbatten extending a helping hand to give finishing touches to connive playing with the fate of millions of hapless simpletons of the paradise on earth.

It is imperative to freshen the memory of the astute politician of the atrocities committed on people of Kashmir by one million strong army armed with most sophisticated weapons of mass destruction. The statistics of high-handedness using brute force for the last twenty three years is recorded as follows:

Killings 93,708
Custodial killings 6,988
Civilians arrested 119,632
Properties destroyed 105,935
Women widowed 22,762
Children orphaned 107,434
Women gang-raped 10,017

The Indian official figure quotes the number of dead since 1989 as over sixty thousand. The figure excludes the number disappeared or many more who were expended in torture chambers using methods unknown in the modern history of political vengeance and vendetta. Before the armed uprising in 1989; people right from the fateful day of October 26, 1947 used all peaceful methods and fought the occupational forces with bricks and stones with resultant deaths in thousands filling various graveyards of Kashmir.

Kashmir turned into a largest concentration camp of the world resulted into complete loss of wild life extinct species like snow leopard, black bear, leopard, Ibex, national animal Hangul and the general live stock. Rich forests have seen continuous denudation, felling of trees and finally timber stolen worth billions.

Pakistan under the present circumstances, it seems, cannot afford a volatile situation on two different fronts, internal political turmoil and or terrorism infested social structure directly or indirectly steered around by a number of international intelligence agencies. India is trying to use Pakistan’s misery to its advantage and conveniently extending a hand of friendship to acquire under duress the “most favoured nation status” and hoping to put Kashmir on the back burner. Kashmir, on the contrary, believes that it does not need Pakistan to achieve the goal of independence as the global village has now realised that enough blood has been spilled and the time demands that woes of Kashmir need attention.