SPEAK OUT: Kashmir dispute: A neglected Issue

I believe that the best way to resolve the Kashmir conflict which directly affects the peace and stability of India and Pakistan is through listening to Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation of India who said on July 29, 1947, in Delhi, “The real sovereign of the state are the people.

The ruler is a servant of the people. If he is not so then he is not the ruler. This is my firm belief, and that is why I became a rebel against the British – because the British claimed to be the rulers of India, and I refused to recognize them as such. In Kashmir too the power belongs to the public. Let them do as they want.”

The refusal by India to sit down at the negotiating table with Pakistan or those representing the aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir indicates that India is not even close to addressing the realities of Kashmir and the will of the people. This must change.

Peace in the region will benefit not only those who are directly impacted by this conflict, but India as well, whose economy is seriously drained by the maintenance of such a massive amount of troops in Kashmir, and the diversion it creates from other challenges it faces in raising the living standards of its population. Sounder minds must prevail. More rational methods of dealing with differences must be sought.

Repeating the same mistakes while expecting different results has long ago been found to be the path of failure. Seventy-three years should demonstrate the need for a change in policy – a policy that accepts the need for coming together in a process that accepts the right of the people of Jammu and Kashmir to determine their own destiny.

The US has urged both India and Pakistan to settle the Kashmir conflict and come to the negotiating table, but it knows much better that bilateral talks have always failed. Third-party engagement or facilitation is needed since it yielded results in persuading India and Pakistan to reach a cease-fire agreement on Feb. 25, 2021, after a lapse of 18 years.

President Biden shook the conscience of the world powers when he spoke about the situation in Bosnia at the US Senate on Dec. 13, 1995, in these words, “A decade and a half ago, war tore this country apart and left at least 100,000 dead… and millions homeless. The genocide at Srebrenica brought home the unspeakable savagery of that war to the world. It was a call to conscience. My country – for too long on the sidelines – could no longer stand by.”

Biden should know that in Kashmir too, more than 100,000 people have died, and on August 15, 2019, ‘Genocide Watch’ issued a “Genocide Alert” for Kashmir.

Perhaps, now is the time that Biden should listen to President John F. Kennedy’ speech to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 25, 1961, “That continuing tide of self-determination, which runs so strong, has our sympathy and our support…My Nation was once a colony, and we know what colonialism means; the exploitation and subjugation of the weak by the powerful, of the many by the few, of the governed who have given no consent to be governed, whatever their continent, their class, or their color.”

Without the US support, the likelihood of the Kashmir conflict dissolving into open warfare again, as it has in the past, with a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives seem unavoidable. Intervention is of paramount importance for the sake of international peace and security in the region of South Asia and beyond.