Earlier, in Islamabad the 16 major political parties passed a joint declaration on Kashmir urging the UN, International human rights organization and the world community to recognize their responsibility and persuade India to cease its violations of human rights in Held-valley and assured their Kashmir brethren for political, moral, and diplomatic support for their just struggle. It is logical to urge the Clinton administration to resolve the Kashmir dispute as per UN. Resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people during your forthcoming visit to United States. Although, you would like the ‘Kashmir issue’ only to come into a still sharper focus of the world public opinion still we earnestly expect you to raise your voice in our support, 100.

We share the desire of the people of Pakistan and agreed with them that “the people of Kashmir are fighting a war against a foreign usurper” and are struggle for their right to self-determination which had been promised to them by India and Pakistan in 1948 and 1949. The people of Pakistan ought to know, that Sikhs too have this right although India and Pakistan had not promised it to them as they had to Kashmiries In our option, the commitments of 1948-49 are only technical additions to Kashmiri struggle for free dom which remains legitimate on its own in intrinsic logic, as also our own struggle.

It is a desperate appeal:”Don’t turn your back to us when we need you to stand by us” As beseechers for help, we ought to Test our appeal on the legitimacy of our case rather than by emphasizing on our common cultural and historical bonds The modern theory of human rights insists on a set of prerogatives, including the right to self-determination, which all the people of the world are entitled to in their urge of positive self-assertion. The sovereignty of state is also an important principle of civilization rightly suggesting itself to be inviolable so long as it is exercised indivisibly with the common will of the people. However, when the state begins to operate on brutish force. purporting might to be right and trying to exact allegiance by dread, the gesture of allegiance becomes an offence to civic con. science that Hindu India personifies. Our struggle has processed from the Indian offence to our civic conscience. The struggle of the people of Kashmir too follows from the same principle. More. over, the cause of freedom has an intrastate validity which unifies all the peoples in the world who was go struggle for its attainment

We are acutely conscious of the Sikh leaders’ responsibility from the colonial era in bringing about the very conditions against which we now rebel. However, allow us to suggest that the follies of our immediate ancestors, do not negative the deeper elements of history and culture which bind our destines. Facts are facts, and there can be no embarrassment in upholding them as reminders that our past historical linkages are the base on which we rest our present appeal for your solidarity for our cause of freedom.

Article extracted from this publication >> April 7, 1995