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Two factors appear to have weighed with those responsible for the
dastardly killings of seven Kashmiri Pandits outside Srinagar on
Friday. The first is the crucial secretary-level talks between
India and Pakistan, scheduled for March 28, which have been widely
viewed as a breakthrough in the nearly frozen relations between the
two countries. The second is recent efforts by the Jammu and
Kashmir government to facilitate the return of thousands of Pandits
who had fled the strife-tom state to return to the Valley. The
tragedy of the killings only serves to drive home the sensitive
nature of both tasks and the political courage needed to accomplish
them. What is especially poignant is that the families of the
victims were among the last few thousands which had chosen to stay
on in the Valley even after the outbreak of militancy. The example
now sought to be made of them is certain to send out intimidatory
signals to other members of the Kashmiri Pandit community who have
long since migrated to safe havens in Jammu and New Delhi. Even
the fact that Muslim neighbours of the bereaved families had openly
rallied around them and expressed their grief is unlikely to calm
the fears of the nearly 90,000-strong Kashmiri Pandits who fled the
state. Nor will the gesture by Mr Yasin Malik, who led a
delegation of the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference to the cremation
of the victims, be seen as anything beyond the ritualistic. It is
unlikely to dislodge the perception that the leaders of the already
discredited Hurriyat are merely seeking to earn some merit in the
eyes of Kashmiris.
The Hurriyat would be better advised to use this sombre occasion to
do some soul-searching. Its chairman had recently written to the
Organisation of Islamic Conference complaining about India's
refusal to enable its leaders to visit Islamabad for the conference
of the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC). He had even gone
so far as to state that the provision of travel documents by New
Delhi would have been ,a tacit test of the honest approach of the
government' to the forthcoming talks. Indeed, even before the
meeting between the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan, he
has confidently stated that the talks have only 'cosmetic value
under the Indian government's scheme of things'. The Hurriyat is
thus set on queering the pitch at a time when political leaders in
both New Delhi and Islamabad, not to mention the media in the two
countries, have been working towards building a congenial
atmosphere for the talks. The tragedy of the Hurriyat is that
though it had once held out hope as a promising avenue for
conducting negotiations with New Delhi, it has now turned out to be
worse than the Tower of Babel. Its faction-ridden leadership,
which had suffered a loss of face after the Charar-e-Sharief
incident in May 1995, wields little clout today. Moreover, not only
does the organisation lack both cohesion and a concrete programme,
but even Mr Shabir Shah, the only leader to offer constructive
proposals, has now been suspended from the organisation. Given the
Hurriyat's present disarray, the least that can be expected of
others like Mr Malik, Mr A G Lone and Maulvi Omar Farooq is that
they step aside and leave it to India and Pakistan to work towards
a cordial entente.
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