Kashmir’s future ‘safe with India’: Dr Shah Faesal
Strongly suggesting that Kashmir should ‘stay with India’, the 2009 IAS topper and now MD J&K Power Development Corporation (PDC), Dr Shah Faesal has said that it (India) is the “only country” in the world with which a culturally diverse and “politically disparate entity” like Jammu and Kashmir can find “anchor”.
In his article titled “Kashmiris trapped in deadly politics of grief, must abandon macabre heroism” published today on The Indian Express, Dr Faesal has built his argument around the post-1990s phase of of the Kashmir-conflict to censure the five-month-long unrest the valley witnessed this year.
“Every new agitation in Kashmir has had this familiar tetrad of eruption, hope, bereavement, despair. By the time the first stone was pelted in the July uprising of 2016, the outcome was already known to everyone. It is this predictability which has begun to worry Kashmiris now,” reads his article.
Referring to the recent unrest, Dr Faesal says that “revolution cannot be an annual summer carnival” while claiming that Kashmir was the “most unlikely new nation to enter the world map” due to the “flaw(ed) fundamental design” of the Kashmir project.
He goes on saying that the “indiscipline” valley witnessed during the recent unrest has the “potential to criminalise society forever”.
“It was not the state as much as people to people violence, the humiliation of bystanders, vandalism against schools, damage to public property by misguided teenagers that exhausted Kashmiris, reducing a mass movement to a movement of mass from one corner of the street to the other corner,” he says.
Dr Faesal also claims that it was “hard to frame the Kashmir question properly” and thus the region cannot be compared with Palestine, East Timor of Kosovo.
“Is it separation from India, annexation with Pakistan, the search for an Islamic caliphate or a secular democracy? Has it factored in sub-regional and diverse ethnic aspirations? If it is self-determination, then who are these people queued up outside polling stations? If the slogan is “azadi”, why is the Pakistani flag raised? Is it class-neutral or only a proletariat dream? Is it territory or ideology, economics or politics? Today, in Kashmir, it is hard to ask these questions because there are no answers. And because there are no answers, every such question is seen as a provocation or obfuscation of the truth about Kashmir,” the article reads.
The MD JKPDC, in the conclusion, suggests Kashmiris to ‘stay with India’ since the country is an “emerging superpower”.
“Looking at the crisis in the Muslim world, it will serve us well if we help ourselves out of the time warp we are stuck in, abandon false hope and macabre heroism and work towards a dignified exit from the conflict. One possibility is to accept that in spite of all its infirmities, India is the only country in the world with which a culturally diverse and politically disparate entity like Jammu and Kashmir can find anchor,” he concludes.
In his article titled “Kashmiris trapped in deadly politics of grief, must abandon macabre heroism” published today on The Indian Express, Dr Faesal has built his argument around the post-1990s phase of of the Kashmir-conflict to censure the five-month-long unrest the valley witnessed this year.
“Every new agitation in Kashmir has had this familiar tetrad of eruption, hope, bereavement, despair. By the time the first stone was pelted in the July uprising of 2016, the outcome was already known to everyone. It is this predictability which has begun to worry Kashmiris now,” reads his article.
Referring to the recent unrest, Dr Faesal says that “revolution cannot be an annual summer carnival” while claiming that Kashmir was the “most unlikely new nation to enter the world map” due to the “flaw(ed) fundamental design” of the Kashmir project.
He goes on saying that the “indiscipline” valley witnessed during the recent unrest has the “potential to criminalise society forever”.
“It was not the state as much as people to people violence, the humiliation of bystanders, vandalism against schools, damage to public property by misguided teenagers that exhausted Kashmiris, reducing a mass movement to a movement of mass from one corner of the street to the other corner,” he says.
Dr Faesal also claims that it was “hard to frame the Kashmir question properly” and thus the region cannot be compared with Palestine, East Timor of Kosovo.
“Is it separation from India, annexation with Pakistan, the search for an Islamic caliphate or a secular democracy? Has it factored in sub-regional and diverse ethnic aspirations? If it is self-determination, then who are these people queued up outside polling stations? If the slogan is “azadi”, why is the Pakistani flag raised? Is it class-neutral or only a proletariat dream? Is it territory or ideology, economics or politics? Today, in Kashmir, it is hard to ask these questions because there are no answers. And because there are no answers, every such question is seen as a provocation or obfuscation of the truth about Kashmir,” the article reads.
The MD JKPDC, in the conclusion, suggests Kashmiris to ‘stay with India’ since the country is an “emerging superpower”.
“Looking at the crisis in the Muslim world, it will serve us well if we help ourselves out of the time warp we are stuck in, abandon false hope and macabre heroism and work towards a dignified exit from the conflict. One possibility is to accept that in spite of all its infirmities, India is the only country in the world with which a culturally diverse and politically disparate entity like Jammu and Kashmir can find anchor,” he concludes.
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