The damage done to the Kashmir cause by Pakistan

The damage done to the Kashmir cause by the Pakistani state policies is one of its kind. Because of the Pakistan sponsored militancy of 90s the genuine struggle of the Kashmiri people is reduced to 'terrorism' of a few miscreants. And we must all feel strongly about it, first because any struggle against oppression calls for our support and second because our country has through its polcies and myopia deligitimized nearly a century old people's struggle. Kashmir once used to be a global highlight and would feature as prominently in the annals of oppression as Palestine. Now it is just an internal law-and-order problem for India.

On this side it has been appropriated by the right wing, the likes of Jamaat-e-Islami and the terrorist outfits, who hypocritically raise slogans not for the sake of pain of Kashmir but to sell themselves and to have some brownies. The progressives and the left have shunned the Kashmir cause like it is some sort of anathema. If the right and fanatics are guilty of deligtimizing the struggle, the left and progressives are guilty of trivializing the pain of people of Kashmir and of whataboutery.

The Kashmiri struggle is older than the creation of the Pakistani sponsored militancy and even older than the creation of Pakistan. It was the people of Kashmir who carved their political struggle and it was them who sustained it and projected it unto the global consciousness. Maqbool Butt is the voice of Kashmiris and not Hafiz Saeed. Maqbool Butt made the struggle to be part of global political consciousnesses and it is Hafiz Saeed who erased it from there. The indigenous movement of young men and women on the streets and roads of Kashmir speak for the struggle and not the stage of Difa-e-Pakistan Council. It is time that in Pakistan the narrative of Kashmir cause be reclaimed from those complicit in bleeding Kashmir out and then to sit back and let the Kashmir and Kashmiris talk.