Who is real Geelani?

Who is real Geelani? What is the reality of Hurriyat leader Mr Geelani?

From last couple of months, I am hearing statements of Hurriyat leader Mr Geelani. In his each & every interview he reiterates that KASHMIR wants freedom?

Till now I couldn’t understand what type of freedom they want? Have they any idea about Kashmir's  existence for a minute without any economical support from India? Does Kashmir have enough resources to  to feed KASHMIRI PEOPLE? Do they have enough industries to provide jobs to educated people? Do they have enough security to counter terrorist infiltration? Are hurriyat leaders representative of Kashmiris?

I expect that each & every intellectual from all over the world will be answering negative to all these bunch of question.

And now the biggest question- Does Mr Geelani want a free KASHMIR to merge it with Pakistan? Minimum his speeches & his thinking shows the same.

I want to discuss this very question thoroughly. Geelani has said Kashmiris want freedom and then he gives a strange logic India, Pakistan, China and Russia will accept an independent Kashmir, so it is better Kashmir should join Pakistan. This is a subtle attempt to fulfil the Pakistani and not the Kashmiri agenda of annexation. Geelani may have a problem with "Hindu, Muslim secular India" (as he often says) and his own reasons (financial and ideological) to conspire to merge the whole of Kashmir with Pakistan, but what can Kashmiris expect from Pakistan Pakistan, a failed state. Sindh and Baluchistan are seething with discontent and what about Kashmiris in Pakistani?

If Bengali Muslims, being the demographic majority in undivided Pakistan, got nothing but blood and bullets, what can Kashmiri Muslims expect from Pakistan? There is a serious problem if this is the way the world's largest democracy deals with its own people. Indian crowd-control methods were equally harsh in Assam during the 1979-85 agitation when 130 people died in police firings in January-February 1983 in the rundown to state assembly elections. It should not be thought that India is handling differently to Kashmir. What behaviour you can expect to stone pelters? How can a mob of such kind be controlled? The whole blame should not be given to military.

There are two other things Kashmiris will have to give India credit for,much as they have every right to complain that they have usually been denied democracy.India has not tried to change the demography of the Kashmir valley as China did in Tibet and Chinese Turkestan.Bangladesh did this in the Chittagong Hill Tracts under a military dispensation by sending Muslim settlers to the tribal homeland.Indonesia did this in Aceh.The list goes on.India is perhaps the only postcolonial Third World state which did not seek a "demographic answer" to separatist challenges.

Secondly,Indian intelligence,regardless of its endless conspiracies to divide the movements,has fought shy of physically attacking leaders;it has never driven the local Kashmiri leaders to a stage they have to seek exile.Contrast this to Pakistan.Altaf Hussain and his MQM leaders are in London,as are many of the Baloch and Sindhi nationalists.The ISI has perhaps used its Taliban surrogates to hit at MQM leader Imran Farooq outside his house in the heart of London.

As a Bengali who has seen the 1971 Bangladesh liberation struggle at close quarters,i can appreciate the spirit of azadi in the Kashmir valley.It is the Bengalis who buried Jinnah's two-nation theory in the lowlying marshes and river islands of East Bengal.But Jinnah's ghost will return to haunt Kashmiris in the midst of their tehreek.Bengal and Punjab were partitioned,Kashmir was not.Now,at the peak of the tehreek,two of its non-Muslim regions,Jammu and Ladakh, will surely demand their own right of self-determination and exercise it to stay with India.And unless Pakistan accepts Azad Kashmir, how can Geelani ever expect India to do so?

The ironic truth is that many of Indian states ie. Bihar, Uttarpradesh, Orissa and north eastern states don’t have sufficient power but India in contrast trying its hard to start lot of new hydro projects to give proper power supply to the Kashmir state. India is trying hard to make Kashmir a stable and peaceful state but because of terrorist infiltration through Kasmir route to Indian state it makes very essential for the army to stay there as a watch dog for the security of the whole nation. Kashmiris should understand the real motto of Indian army and some special powers given to them.

Geelani & other Hurriyat are not working for the common interest of Kashmir but they are fighting for their own politics, name & fame and extending an illogical support to Pakistan. The real truth should be understood by young leaders.

Reference-

1. Kashmirs Difficult Choice editorial article in TIMES OF INDIA Dated- 27.09.2010 by SUBIR BHAUMIK.

2. Wikipedia- History of Kashmir.



PRAKASH CHANDRA TRIVEDI

ENGINEER, BHEL