AFOVA Newletters of Year 2001

Page 28 of 52 outdone the one accorded to Emperor Akbar about 400 years ago. Your visit to Ajmer was to be the most expensive in Indian history -- costing the government in excess of Rs 100,000 per minute. That’s how stupid we cultured Indians are, General. Do you then regret, General, that you aborted that bit of history? It pained us civilized Indians all right to note that there was not even an apology to Ajmer from your side. Presumably, professional commandos like you are trained to deliver only shocks, not sops. You really are a queer one on history, General. You want to settle “the core issue” in accordance with “the wishes of the people”. But when you hijacked the position of Pak’s CEO and recently seized the presidential throne -- were both those acts done after securing “the wishes of the people?” In an interview to an Indian newspaper, you showed disdain for going into the composite Simla ‘72 and Lahore ‘99 documents, saying that, if forced to do so, you will then go as far back into history as the UN resolution of August ‘48. Please do just that, General. You’ll find that the promise of plebiscite came with two prior conditions: withdrawal of Pak troops as well as its tribesmen from J&K and reverting the administration of J&K to the state government of the day. That resolution also established that it was Pakistan that was the aggressor in J&K. All your predecessors ignored that truth; all of them ignored those conditions that constituted “the core issue” of the 15 UN pronouncements on the “K” word from January 17, 1948 to May 18, 1964. Did you then want to create history by pressurising India tobury that “core issue”? One last thing about history. What this fundamentalist Indian (not an Indian fundamentalist) said more than once earlier has now been said, for the first time ever, by an Indian with political authority. Jaswant Singh the other day pulled up one of our journalists and told him that the correct nomenclature of the subject about which he had asked a question is “Jammu and Kashmir”. Your obsession with the “K” word made that historic disclosure inevitable, for which, many thanks. In fact, General, you’ll be surprised to know that while Jammu is a city as well as a district in J&K state, there is no town, no city, no district that bears the “K” nomenclature. If it has taken 54 years for even our Delhi-based journalists to be educated on “the core issue”, one reason is because our media people are inclined to be skin deep. Another reason is that the Government of India has never ever bothered to lay before the nation an official publication on the truths about J&K -- right from its legally unchallenged accession to India on October 26, 1947 and the great autonomy it already enjoys to its historic haemorrhage by the Islamic army. That negligence of our government was “the core issue” behind the hoopla and the hallelujah so senselessly woven into your visit here, General. As Bill Clinton might have said, it’s the culture, stupid. Here’s hoping, therefore, that 1. If and when you or your successor next come visiting our Taj, he (or she) and the accompanying aggressive bunch of Pak media will be fully conversant with the true history of J&K and 2. Our own present lot of Track I, Track II and Track III peaceniks will also have understood that J&K is not property that the Indian nation can simply give away in return for imaginary peace and relief from fanatical jehadi hordes. That reciprocal realisation is the real “core issue” in our future mutual relationship, General. Meanwhile, best of luck as you continue passing your beret around to the IMF and the World Bank. Yours etc.