JAMMU: For over seven decades, Indians in general and the people of Jammu and Kashmir in particular have been happily living with the stigma of having the presence of United Nations Military Observer Group headquarters in their backyards in the Jammu and Srinagar cities. Citizens fondly call two localities as UNO Lane in Talab Tillo, Jammu and UNO Chowk, Sonawar in Srinagar, forgetting that these are the symbols of the Congress’s colossal blunder that inflicted scars on the national pride and causes miseries to minorities in Kashmir, latest in early 1990 and earlier during the holocaust of Kabali Raid in the Valley via Baramulla on October 22, 1947.
The Congress and its ally the National Conference gave ‘terrorism’ respectability of ‘Kabali Raid’. Pakistan has never admitted that the rogue country had Pakistan Army regulars in the guise of Kabalis , as it has been denying its role in 1965 ‘Mujahideen influx’ and 1990s sponsorship of terrorists. The Congress and the National Conference willingly acknowledged the Pakistan line of ‘Kabalis’ for terrorists from her army and ‘misguided youth’ for Talbani, Jammati Jihadis. This is the irony of India under Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress.
On April 13, 2024, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, significantly rightly observed that n 1947, Pakistan sent tribal invaders into Kashmir and the Army countered them and the integration of the state took place, he pointed out: “While the Indian Army was taking its action, we stopped and went to the UN and mentioned the work of tribal invaders instead of terrorism. If we, from the very start, were clear that Pakistan is using terrorism, then we would have had a very different policy.”
India, under Prime Minister Nehru, approached the UN Security Council in 1948 with the plea that Pakistan has unleashed an attack on the State of Jammu and Kashmir with the motive of annexing it, despite the fact that Maharaja Hari Singh had formally acceded to the Indian Union on 26 October 1947. In the first instance, New Delhi should not have gone to the UN at all and then accepted its Military Observers on its soil in J&K. The UN established two group headquarters at Talab Tillo in Jammu and Sonawar in Srinagar. Ironically, what transpired later continued to remain a huge shock and stigma for years to come. The Security Council, has time and again blatantly favoured Pakistan and made her a party to the dispute instead of declaring her an aggressor. The trauma and stigma continued for decades, with the people, under the political banner of the Kashmir centric parties, reconciling with this fact happily till the Narendra Modi Government made up its mind not to tolerate chronic humiliation anymore. What is being circulated on social media now does not only reflect the public mood but their longing to regain national pride. Social media is abuzz with observations like , “The stigma that was there for 74 years was removed in just 30 minutes… India was suffering from a poisonous insect for the last 74 years, whose name is United Nations Military Observer Group UNMO”.
With the Modi government in command, the day is not far when the UNMO will be shown the door. The sentiment of the people against the group is overwhelming.
