No restrictions in Kashmir, must correct history: Shah Military rule Pak’s tradition, India hits out in Uganda meet

NEW DELHI: India strongly criticised on Saturday Pakistan’s stand on the Kashmir issue as “propaganda” at the Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference in Uganda and said military rule is the tradition of Islamabad, according to a statement.

The Pakistani delegation raised the heavy presence of security forces in the Valley at the 64th meeting of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association in Kampala, which the Indian side countered.

The Indian delegation, which included MPS Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Roopa Ganguly and L Hanumanthaiah, said the tradition of military rule is prevalent in Pakistan and the country has been under such rule for 33 years, according to a statement issued by the Lok Sabha Secretariat.

“Pakistani propaganda was strongly opposed by Roopa Ganguly, MP and other Members of Indian Parliamentary Delegation,” it said.

The Indian delegation led by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla is taking part in the conference which will conclude on Sunday.

The presiding officers and secretaries of state legislatures, who are members of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, are participating in the conference.

Pakistan also raised the Kashmir issue during the South Asian Speakers’ Summit in the Maldives. But it was rejected in the Male declaration after India’s strong opposition.

When Pakistan’s National Security Adviser, Naseer Khan Janjua, met his Indian counterpart, Ajit Doval, in Bangkok on December 26, 2017, he told him that Rawalpindi GHQ had given a green signal to wage jihad after the Americans had convinced Islamabad that the Soviet Red Army’s main aim behind the 1979 occupation of Afghanistan was to capture the warm water port of Karachi. Janjua, a former Quetta Corps commander, said that Pakistan, without much ado, took up arms at America’s call. Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Imran Khan, repeated the same Army line in his September 27 address at the UN General Assembly, exculpating home-grown jihadists of crimes.

PM Khan’s speech predicting a “bloodbath” in the Valley, did not appear much different from the words used by Jaish-e-mohammed (JEM) leader Mufti Rauf Asghar or Lashkar-e-taiba (LET) leader Talha Saeed routinely from Shaheed Chowk in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

On September 13, at a rally in Gujaranwala, Hafiz Saeed’s son Talha said “jihad fi sabilillah (jihad in the name of Allah)” would bind Muslims, while the younger brother of Masood Azhar, Talha Saif, said the situation both in Afghanistan and Kashmir had reached a “turning point”. The common thread from PM Khan’s speech to Saif’s to Saeed’s was an attempt to incite Kashmiris to react with violence once the restrictions are lifted in the Valley.

The strategy to call on hinterland Indian Muslims to join the jihad in support of their brethren in the Valley is an old one, and has been rejected time and again. In a resolution, the Jamiat Ulema-ihind (JUH), the leading organisation of Islamic scholars based in Deoband, condemned Pakistan by saying that the enemy had made Kashmir a battlefield using Kashmiris “as a shield”, and supported