JAMMU: A number of Kashmiri opinion-makers and commentators commend the PDP-BJP Agenda of Alliance. It should not surprise anyone. There are potent reasons for them to appreciate the agenda on the basis of which the Coalition Government was formed in the State 64 days ago. They want Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed to implement its political component as soon as possible. One of the fundamental reasons is that they consider the Agenda of Alliance as an agenda of subversion. Their view on the agenda is well considered. After all, the immediate fall-out of the implementation of the political part of the agenda would automatically mean subversion of the Indian polity and a remarkable victory of Pakistan and its agents in Kashmir. That’s the reason they are asking the PDP-BJP coalition to make optimum use of the agenda without losing a minute.
The political part of the Agenda of Alliance reads: “The Union Government has recently initiated several steps to normalise relationship with Pakistan. The Coalition Government will seek to support and strengthen the approach and initiatives taken by the government to create a reconciliatory environment and build stakes for all in the peace and development within the subcontinent. The same will be pursued by taking Confidence Building Measures, such as enhancing people to people contact on both sides of the LoC, encouraging civil society exchanges, taking travel, commerce, trade and business across the LoC to the next level and opening new routes across all three regions for enhancing connectivity. The Coalition Government will facilitate and help initiate a sustained and meaningful dialogue with all internal stakeholders, which will include all political groups irrespective of their ideological views and predilections like Hurriyat Conference”.
These opinion-makers in Kashmir not only want the Chief Minister to implement the political part of the agreed upon agenda, but also want Prime Minister Modi to tread the path which was charted by former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. “If Modi wants to do something really different he will have to follow A.B Vajpayee’s policy towards Kashmir and Pakistan. When the fresh hand of friendship was extended to Pakistan by Vajpayee from the soil of Srinagar on 18th April, 2003, it turned tables vis-à-vis the stranded relations. It led to then President Musharraf changing the stated positions of Pakistan and responding in the same manner,” they say in this regard.
The point is that opinion makers and commentators of Kashmir origin see in the agenda a God-sent opportunity that could help Pakistan and Kashmiri separatists achieve what they failed to during all these 67 years of the country’s independence.
However, of late, they have started losing faith in Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. Certain actions of his, which he had to take under pressure from below, as also under pressure from the ever-alert national mainstream media, have greatly upset their applecart. The re-arrest of terrorist Masrat Alam on 17th April) and house arrest of Pakistani conduit Syed Ali Shah Geelani since 5th May have, for example, shocked and disturbed them to the extent that some of them have accused Chief Minister Mufti Sayeed of walking into the BJP trap and not implementing the agenda. Additionally, they have termed the Chief Minister’s concept of democracy a mere sham and charged him with flouting the cardinal principles of democracy.
Mufti Sayeed has on occasions more than one said that “democracy is a battle of ideas” and that he stands for what he calls “political space” for separatists and extremists so that they could advocate their ideology (in this case anti-India and pro-Pakistan ideology) among the people of Kashmir without any restriction. Only on 5th May, when the Civil Secretariat started functioning in Srinagar after six months, the Chief Minister had made a similar statement, which was, surprisingly, coupled with a caveat: “Everyone is welcome to propagate his own ideas, but these should be within the limits”. They should avoid hoisting Pakistani flags, he had said.
It is this caveat that has been taken by the critics of the Chief Minister to mean an attack on democracy and attempt to please his Delhi masters. They have warned the Chief Minister that the PDP would suffer huge losses in case he continued to subvert democracy by putting restrictions on separatists or arresting and re-arresting the “freedom fighters” and not engaging with Pakistan for the final settlement of the Kashmir issue. They have said the PDP would meet the fate the NC met in the elections. That they urge the Chief Minister to honour the agenda and move forward that there is much in it that can unsettle the settled in J and K. That they commend the agenda must make the BJP sit up and retrospect.
