False allegations

The Modi government has locked horns with Islamabad over an eight-minute phone call Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi made to All Parties Hurriyat Conference leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq to inform him about a conference and an exhibition to be held at the House of Commons in London on February 4-5 to highlight the Kashmir issue and grave human rights violations in Indian occupied Kashmir. The next day, Pakistan's High Commissioner to India's was summoned to the External Affairs Ministry and given a reprimand by Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhle. He was told New Delhi viewed Qureshi's conversation with the Mirwaiz as interference in its internal affairs, an attempt to undermine India's unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and violation of diplomatic norms. The Foreign Office in Islamabad, of course, rejected these allegations, reaffirming Pakistan support for the Kashmiri people's right to self-determination.
No amount of denials by India can change the fact that Kashmir is a disputed territory. There are UN Security Council resolutions calling for a plebiscite so the Kashmiri people could decide whether they wanted to join Pakistan or stay with India, thereby recognizing that Pakistan is a party to the dispute. Then there is the Lahore Declaration of February 1999 signed by the late Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee - who belonged to the present ruling party, the BJP - and his Pakistani counterpart, under which, among other things, they agreed to "intensify their effort to resolve all issues, including the issue of Jammu and Kashmir" through a composite and integrated dialogue. The agreement led to a tripartite dialogue process among the three parties to the conflict: Kashmiri people, India and Pakistan. As part of that process Pakistani diplomats met with Kashmiri leaders - until Narendra Modi rode to power in New Delhi - hence Qureshi did not breach any norms of diplomacy in having a conversation with the Mirwaiz. Any interaction between Pakistan and the people living in occupied Kashmir cannot be termed an interference in India's internal affairs or a violation of New Delhi's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Prime Minister Modi has reacted the way he has because he has made a career out of Pakistan bashing which sells well in his country. Indian elections are due in a few months time - before May - in which his prospects are dim.
Gokhle also dubbed the ongoing Kashmiri freedom struggle as terrorism, saying Pakistan "officially abets and encourages individuals associated with terrorism." This country did give them material assistance in the past, but the present uprising is a purely indigenous movement as acknowledged by concerned citizens within India itself. In its first-ever report on Kashmir issued last year, the UN Human Rights Office while highlighting a situation it described as one of chronic impunity for rights violations committed by security forces, underscored an urgent need to address past and ongoing human rights violations and abuses, and deliver justice for all people who, it said, for seven decades have suffered a conflict that has claimed or ruined numerous lives. The report had urged the UN Human Rights Council to establish a commission of inquiry for an independent international investigation into rights violations and abuses. Although India has managed to resist, on the basis of its political clout, an international investigation its allegations of terrorism stand thoroughly exposed by the UN human rights body, which has found it to be the perpetrator of worst atrocities against unarmed Kashmiri's struggling for freedom.