Author: Arvind Lavkare
Publication: Rediff
on Net
Date: December 12, 2000
Even as fidayeens or
IEDs killed or crippled our security forces as well as civilians while
Vajpayee in Delhi kept playing his fiddle of J&K cease-fire, a bunch
of people sowed the seeds in Mumbai of an exceptional movement called "Get
Back POK." In concept, it's a daring movement the like of which one cannot
quite recall in the last 53 years since Pakistan, courtesy the United Nations,
merrily retained some 40 per cent of the territory it invaded and has ruled
over ever since, having the cheek to call it "Azad Kashmir."
By a strange coincidence,
that launch in Mumbai occurred on December 6 -- the date when, eight years
earlier, a primitive army of Hindus had culminated their own unique movement
by razing Babar's monument to the rape of Ram's heritage in Ayodhya.
While it has been quite
a few years now that getting back Pakistan Occupied Kashmir has been talked
about by many -- from Mumbai's domestic servants and taxi drivers to Delhi's
parliamentarians -- it is probably the first time now that somebody has
actually put that agenda on a public platform.
The credit for that must
go to Mumbai-based Shiv Raaj Ratnam, 32, who became a member of the Indian
Foreign Service in 1987, rose to the position of deputy high commissioner,
and then, lo and behold, resigned in 1995. Said to have made some
acclaimed documentary films in the USA, Ratnam has also very recently canned
the muhurat shot of AK-57 which will have the theme of "Get Back POK."
Ratnam's script for that film has been whetted with a tooth-comb by J N
Dixit, India's former foreign secretary, and has, reportedly, got the approval
from the Government of India's home ministry. Much else about the
film is under wraps but Ratnam feels confident right now that it will be
ready for public screening by June 2001.
If Vajpayee hasn't capitulated
to Musharraf by then --- fiddle and all --- the film may well be the catalyst
to arouse India's common folks to the concerted demand for POK unheard
of in the past.
Ratnam's thought process
behind this his movement is clear. He believes the entire state of
Jammu & Kashmir is bleeding, and bleeding profusely. He estimates
that, on an average, India loses about 2,500 people every year through
Pakistan-sponsored terrorism.
"I have seen with my
own eyes," he says, "the plight of the Indian ambassadors in the United
Nations, whenever Pakistan raised the Kashmir issue. We feel helpless
and guilty as if we are thieves called to the police station. The
Indian diplomats use all their resources and skills to gather support on
this issue and when the UN session is over, we feel happy as a thief feels
happy after getting bail from the court."
Ratnam cannot comprehend
and stomach this. "Why should we feel guilty?" he asks. "Why?
Why should we be defensive all the time, as if Kashmir belongs to Pakistan
and we have snatched it when the fact is totally opposite?"
He reiterates the legal
position known to the whole world but which, alas, is swept under the carpet
by our own "secular" fundamentalists including newspaper writers, editors
and columnists. "The entire Kashmir belongs to us," says Ratnam.
"Plebiscite and every other thing is secondary" he believes.
Observing that "Pakistan
is offensive both militarily and diplomatically in the United Nations while
we have always been meek and defensive on the ground as well as in the
United Nations" he proceeds to ask the all-important question "How long
should we behave like impotents?"
And he answers that question
himself. "I feel enough is enough and the time has come to tell Pakistan
clearly that 'Hand over POK back to India' or else we will take it by force
as we have got the right as well as the might to take it back."
That is why, a good seven
months before his film AK-57 can create the national mood for an altogether
different version of the misguided Mission Kashmir of Hrithik Roshan, Ratnam
brought an assortment of speakers at a public auditorium in Mumbai the
other day.
While freelance journalist
Muzaffar Hussain was eloquent -- albeit melodramatically so -- about the
need to physically and civilisationally integrate POK with the rest of
J&K, and while General (retired) P N Hoon indicated how the Kargil
conflict last year could have been exploited by us to get more than a toehold
in POK, it was Ratnam who advocated a proxy war by India to attain the
objective of recovering POK. Tit for tat was Ratnam's prescription
with targets being POK, Sindh and Baluchistan so that Pakistan was hastened
on its road to extinction. And his comparison of cross-border terrorism
to a couple of mice let loose in the drawing room was explicit. You
will end up destroying your furniture running after the mice but the mice
will escape, he said; when you do catch or kill the two mice, some more
will be sent.
Maker of films and television
serials, Ashok Pandit, 37, chose to deviate from the theme, but his was
a devastating deviation for all those who have little idea of just how
three hundred and fifty thousand Hindus of the Kashmir valley have become
refugees in their homeland.
Though Pandit himself
migrated to Mumbai from a village 30 kilometres from Srinagar in his school
days, the experience of his blood relations and close friends there has
filled him with wrath.
His narration of Hindu
women being raped and of being literally butchered on machines; his narration
of threatening phone calls to quit or else, of similar notices pasted on
house doors, of aggressive physical intrusions into homes -- all this will
curdle the lay listener and, as Mark Anthony, might have said, ruffle up
thy spirits and move the stones of Jammu to rise and mutiny.
What's more, he did not
hesitate in blaming V P Singh and all the successive prime ministers from
turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the gruesome events even as the Farooq
Abdullah gang was left free to indulge in their diabolical ethnic cleansing
that began some 11 years ago and, Pandit says, is still continuing.
Why, he alleges that Vajpayee's human resources minister has had no time
for weeks together to hear out 3,000 Hindu school children who found that
even as they were forced into transit camps in Jammu, their names were
removed from the Srinagar Board of Education list, thus blocking out their
return to Srinagar for educational and attendant benefits. Dr Murli
Manohar Joshi, says Pandit, is busy talking peace to militants even as
Advani has started aping Nehru in releasing peace doves in the sky.
It was a pity therefore
that not more than 200 people in Mumbai attended the "Get Back POK" launch
that day.
To some extent, the cold
response due to Mumbai being insulated from the gravity of the events in
J&K. The government and the media are responsible for this lack
of communication just as the media was culpable of not reporting Ratnam's
launch.
The organisers must share
a part of the blame why "Get Back POK" got off to a bad start.
First, the day chose
-- December 6 -- was most inappropriate. That day is when the media
stir up a communal fear psychosis among the public by recalling the razing
of Babar's "memorial" to the rape of Ayodhya's heritage. That day
is also the one when thousands of Ambedkar's fanatic followers choke the
roads and suburban trains of Mumbai to descend noisily on the city's Shivaji
Park, there to defile the maidan's turf and environs.
Secondly, the organisers
erred in sending out invitations almost exclusively to the Hindutva brigade.
This was a cardinal error because recovering POK should be a universal
cry encompassing every Indian everywhere, here and abroad.
It is also clear that
Shiv Raaj Ratnam's movement must be more imaginatively managed. Professional
event management is a must.
A clear strategy is also
needed for spreading its objective widely enough so as to pressurise the
government to cease and desist from its current aimless course of action.
An active association with a daring political outfit like the Shiv Sena
and the Akali Dal therefore seems imperative. Also, the "suited-booted"
and stiff upper lip approach of the Indian Foreign Service will just not
do. Kurta pajamas and kurta dhotis must share the space with safaris
and bandh galas.
Ratnam better hurry directing
preparations on these lines. If he doesn't, he could well find Vajpayee,
yearning for the Nobel Peace Prize, conceding the valley even before AK-57
hits the screen in June.
