Kashmir May No Longer Be A Bilateral Issue But It Is A Global Concern indianexpress.com
The anger in Kashmir Valley has a long history. To expect it to die due to a constitutional change would be a delusion. It would require concrete policy changes in economic and social sectors to heal the wounds of the past 65 years. In our poky Sarkari flat in Bombay, my father was having a furious, noisy argument with my two maternal uncles. The neighbors were worried. They thought it was a property quarrel that would end up in violence. Alas, we did not have a property to quarrel over. The dispute was about Kashmir. Jawaharlal Nehru had just sacked Sheikh Abdullah, put him under house arrest without bringing any charges and put Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, Abdullah’s deputy, as prime minister of J&K.
Whatever sweet words Nehru may have used in his promise to the people of Kashmir that he would honor their special status ended at that moment in 1953. Soon, the ‘prime minister’ of J&K became ‘chief minister’ as in the rest of India, and the Sadar-i-Riyasat became the governor appointed from New Delhi.
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