Govt willing to hold talks with Hurriyat leaders

Union home minister Rajnath Singh dropped enough hints on Thursday at the Centre’s willingness to hold talks with Kashmir’s Hurriyat Conference and pick up the threads of the work the previous National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by Ataj Behari Vajpayee had done more than twelve years ago.

The conglomerate faction led by Kashmir’s chief Muslim cleric, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, had had several rounds of talks with the Vajpayee government in 2004 to mutually seek a just and enduring solution to the Kashmir problem. The ice had started breaking after the then Prime Minister had visited Srinagar in April 2003 and held out a hand of friendship to Pakistan from here.

The BJP-led NDA failed to win the required number of seats in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections and the UPA came into power at the Centre. The new dispensation, upon failing to take the peace initiative forward and after initial engagements with the Hurriyat Conference faction, discarded the whole process.

Now when Kashmir has been caught in a demanding situation once again, the BJP-led Central government is showing inclination towards the Vajp-ayee model on Kashmir and appears to be ready to reopen channels of talks with the separatists.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the government believes in Mr Vajpayee’s mantra of “humanity, democracy and Kashmiriyat”. Mr Singh reaffirmed it during his two-day visit to Srinagar, his second in past month, to make a renewed effort to reach out to as many people as he could as part of the government’s effort to seek an end to the ongoing turbulence.

Reliable sources said that the Centre has already begun a covert effort to make contact with some separatist leaders. In this connection, a few influential people who are equally held in esteem in Kashmir have been requested to act as emissaries. One of them is a former Muslim IAS officer of repute who served in J&K and at the Centre in high-ranking positions both while in service and after retirement. But he is reported to have told the government that he should be expected to “fish in troubled waters” only if it is ready and serious enough to do something tangible and “give some significant political and constitutional concessions” to the people of Kashmir.

Until now, the Modi government has only focused on development and economic incentives and packages which have failed to impress the people in Kashmir, much less the separatists who want a political solution to the problem. Mainstream parties like National Conference, Congress and CPIM and even the BJP’s coalition partner in the state — Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) — have publicly stated, and repeatedly so, that Kashmir urgently requires a political solution to its problems.

The home minister, while addressing a press conference here on Thursday, said that the government is ready to talk to the separatists.

Asked whether the government would talk to the Hurriyat Conference leaders, Mr Singh said, “We are willing to talk to anyone in the ambit of Kashmiriyat, Jamooriyat and Insaniyat.” However, he also said, “Without the future of Kashmir, the future of India cannot exist.”