The Hindu : The dissenters remain defiant

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jan 25, 2004

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

The dissenters remain defiant

Opposition to the talks is strong among sections of the separatists, says Shujaat Bukhari.

The Advani-Hurriyat meeting drew protests in Srinagar on Friday.

SYED ALI Shah Geelani is opposed to the talks without involving Pakistan. Mr. Geelani, who is seen as the "real hawk" in the separatist camp, and who has made no secret of his support to extremism, is also a staunch pro-Pakistan leader of the Jamat-e-Islami, which has however distanced itself from both the factions of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference.

Mr. Geelani led a protest after the Friday prayers in a Srinagar mosque, against the Abbas-led Hurriyat leaders.

"They do not have any representative character and cannot talk to New Delhi on behalf of Kashmiris," he claims.

According to him, the Centre will emerge stronger after the dialogue — it will help New Delhi assert, during the talks between India and Pakistan, that Kashmir is an internal issue.

The Hurriyat leaders, he says, should have waited for the Indo-Pakistan talks in February; "it would [have been] better to have fought for our participation in those talks and clarified that Kashmir is neither a border dispute nor a law and order problem."

In the past 56 years "no bilateral agreement has yielded any result," says Mr. Geelani. "Kashmir is a dispute and instead of accepting that, both the sides (Advani and Hurriyat) labelled the freedom struggle as violence and those involved in it were asked to stop it." Not that he is opposed to talks. They have to be tripartite so that all the three parties "to the dispute" can work for an amicable solution, he says.

Shabir Ahmed Shah, president of the Democratic Freedom Party and the only "genuine" separatist leader who responded positively to the talks offer made by the Kashmir Committee of K.C. Pant and Ram Jethmalani, is an embittered man. He dismisses the talks as "a failure". "That is why we told them to have a broader consensus before the talks.

"The measures announced by the two sides cannot be taken seriously unless implemented on the ground," he says. Recalling his "bitter experience" with New Delhi, the DFP leader says "at one point of time, Mr. Advani refused to talk to the Kashmiri leadership even when the Kashmir Committee proposed it."

The Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, on the other hand, is maintaining a studied silence. "We have nothing to say," says Mohammad Yasin Malik, JKLF chairman.

The Jamat-e-Islami also says it will wait for its apex body, the Majlis-e-Shoora, to meet and deliberate upon the issue.

But the militant outfits such as the Hizbul Mujahideen, the Jamiatul Mujahideen and the Dukhtaran-e-Millat have openly rejected the talks. While the Jamiatul Mujahideen has held out threats to the Hurriyat leaders for accepting "dictates from New Delhi", Asiya Andrabi, chief of DeM, has issued a fatwa saying the Abbas-led Hurriyat is an "Indian creation."

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