Kashmir: The Burning Paradise

Both India and Pakistan have been more interested in Kashmir - without giving a hoot about Kashmiris. The editorial of Daily Times is spot on.


Sadly, however, neither India nor Pakistan has done well by the people of Kashmir or the territories belonging to Kashmir. India has brutalised the poor Kashmiri Muslims for the past decade and a half without success. If the dispute is ever settled, it will have to heal the deep wounds it has inflicted on a small community of people traditionally known to be peaceful. Meanwhile, Pakistan has kept Azad (sic!) Kashmir as an appendage of the Kashmir Affairs Ministry in Islamabad and can hardly rebuke India for reducing the Srinagar Assembly to a puppet. It has detached the Northern Areas from Kashmir and then unleashed on the territory a long and bloody sectarian war whose consequences it will have to face for a long time. Just as after autonomy the Jammu and Kashmir state will be the first Muslim majority province in India, so the Northern Areas if given provincial status would be the first Shia majority province in the country. If both countries get to keep the territories they contest, they will have to work very hard to make the brutalised people forget what has happened.