BLUNT BUTCHER
JAMMU: Hugely being criticised for raking up controversies and indulging in rhetoric, the Aam Aadmi Party portrayed itself in a different frame and realistic candour during Bharat International Tourism Bazaar Expo in the national capital when its Tourism Minister Kapil Mishra took on Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister, saying tourism and terrorism cannot go together in the Valley. Mehbooba Mufti broke down during the event, after hearing her father pitching for tourism promotion in Kashmir in one of the audio-video presentation.
One just hopes that these were not the crocodile tears.
Mehbooba Mufti and her ilk in the Kashmir’s so-called mainstream spectrum need to introspect and ponder how realistic AAP minister was in his observations about Burhan Wani and Afzal Guru being projected as victims and not the terrorists. “It does not work this way that we will not call Burhan Wani a terrorist but tourism will have to flourish in India. How will that happen? You will say Afzal Guru is not a terrorist and that he should not be hanged. How will tourism develop? It is not going to happen,” Kapil Mishra told stunned Mehbooba Mufti before being forced to call off his speech and leave the venue in huff.
Mehbooba Mufti had told NDTV on 22nd July 2016 that Burhan Wani would have been given a chance had security forces, who shot him been aware of his identity. What does this mean? The dreaded terrorists, behind the killing of eight CRPF personnel and a Sarpanch, needed to be eliminated, even if the security forces would have known it. An office bearer of National Conference also toed the same line while refusing Burhan Wani to be a terrorist during one of the shows on Times Now.
On the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, the PDP is on record having described the execution as a travesty of justice, thus challenging the wisdom of the Supreme Court, which pronounced the judgment after due judicial dispensation.
Where is the AAP minister wrong when he confronts the J and K Chief Minister in full public and media gaze, asking Mehbooba Mufti to make it clear if she considers Burhan Wani and Afzal Guru terrorists or not.
That such a blunt truth came from a functionary of the party which in the recent past supported Guru and Burhan apologist Kanahya Kumar of JNU is like a pleasant breather. He did not stop there but went on referring to the Baramulla terror attack, saying that terrorists behind it ran away and might have been sheltered by some people in their homes. It is a dig at such of the mainstream parties including PDP which have been pleading for AFSPA. Had the army not felt constrained in launching search operations in the civilian areas following Baramulla attack, the terrorists could have been retrieved from their rat holes in some home.
The AAP minister aptly observed that it’s time to ask right questions. “We can fight terrorists, we can fight Pakistanis, but how can we fight people who are sitting inside Delhi and giving shelter to terrorists… We will fight insiders or outsiders. Terrorism and tourism cannot go together. Can it? It’s not possible.”
This is an eye opener for such of the mainstream players in Kashmir, who want to have better of both the worlds. They have been placated much by Indian pseudo liberals and pseudo secularists, who keep begging of the audience from Kashmiri separatists and mainstreamists in order to remain in the good books of their vote banks across India. This might have benefitted them to some extent but the nation has suffered immensely. Therefore, the right thinking people across the country must back what Kapil Mishra of AAP told to the Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister.
Mehbooba Mufti needs to take a call, lest the Indian nation will be constrained to say what Kapil Mishra told her in Delhi.
