‘Kashmiriyat’ is Geelani’s new mantra for solving Kashmir issue

Separatist Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani has mellowed down from his decades-old hardliner stand on “Azad Kashmir” or a plebiscite as the solution to the Kashmir issue. Stressing this fact in a video from his hospital bed in Srinagar he said: “We are not demanding separation of any legal territory from India.”

All that he wants from Delhi is to accept the “Kashmiriyat,” the basic birth right of the Kashmiris. “We want India to prosper, develop, grow and be free, but they should not refuse the birth right to the Kashmiris,” he said.

He reiterated former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee''s immortalised phrase of “Insaniyat, Kashmiriyat and Jamhooriyat (humanity, Kashmiriyat and democracy) as a framework for the solution of the Kashmir issue. He had recalled this Vajpayee phrase for solution to the Kashmir issue within the ambit of humanity and democracy only once earlier in June 2014 as a signal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a month after he assumed power, as the only way out to restore normalcy in the Kashmir valley that is witnessing an unending violence for over a quarter of century.

His reference is to Vajpayee’s offer in 2000 to solve the Kashmir issue within the ambit of humanity, which was then seen as a bold departure from the government''s stated position of solving the issue within the framework of the Indian Constitution.