GENEVA: The message from the lounge is that a meeting of all Kashmiri groups is being planned for Vienna for March 15. The plan could sink or swim after an Iftaar scheduled for this week where “only Kashmiris” will bang their heads and try to find a solution to the problem beginning with getting together next month.

The list of guests who will break bread here together includes Farooq Abdullah and Bhim Singh from Jammu and Kashmir Raja Mumtaz Hussein Rathore, former prime minister of Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Major General Hayyat Khan, former President of PaK will bring up the other side. The principal architect of this plan is the lawyer and president of Panthers Party Bhim Singh, former MLA from Jammu and Kashmir, member of the National Integration Council. Singh’s going for the jugular must make New Delhi wish the ground under him would sink.

“New Delhi is responsible for the bloodshed in Jammu and Kashmir, they have run the state like they would a Dadda and ghee agency.” Bhim Singh said. “Now they are planning to hold elections, no Kashmiri trusts New Delhi because all elections in the state have been rigged and fraudulent some- body has to call New Delhi’s bluff.” Guns, he says, are coming into Kashmir from Pakistan. “We only grow apples, not guns, but we have to analyze why arms are coming. The forefathers of these boys who today have taken up guns fought for India – we have to ask why the younger generation has turned against India, the analysis cannot come from New Delhi because New Delhi is part of the problem,” he said. Singh’s “analysis” is that Kashmir has been run by people with vested interests and where the common man has no right. “If you were a Hindu who criticized Farooq Abdullah’s corrupt Government, you were RSS, if you were a Muslim who raised the same questions, you were a Pakistani agent this is how New Delhi has treated us,” he said.

At the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC), the lounge is where the action is, this is where me Kashmiri, you-Kashmiri and we Kashmiri-over a dozen groups at last count-huddle together and eye each other with suspicion and derision. Each calls the other an agent of the RAW or is Indian and Pakistani intelligence and claims to be the true voice of Kashmir, inside the UNHRC. diplomats describe their Governments as paragons of virtue nobody listens, the lounge outside is not just a watering hole it is where people are all cars and eyes, here, Bhim Singh has a captive audience. “The Indian delegation consists of people like Bhuvanesh Chaturvedi who don’t even know the geography of the region, if free and fair elections were allowed to be held in Jammu and Kashmir, like Farooq Abdullah will disappear like the morning fog,” he says.

Article extracted from this publication >> March 3, 1995