Kashmiri killing

Press, 16 February 1984, Page 16

Kashmiri killing

An Indian diplomat was kidnapped in the English city of Birmingham on February 3 by a group calling itself the Kashmir Liberation Army, and two days later he was found shot dead. Kashmir? Liberation? Birmingham is puzzled. But anybody encountering the problems of Kashmir becomes puzzled sooner or later. The simple thing about Kashmir is that it was once independent. Even when the British ran India it had nominal sovereignty under a Hindu Maharajah, who decided in 1947 to take his Moslem-majority state into India. After the British left, India and Pakistan fought over Kashmir. Since a United Nations-imposed ceasefire in 1949,

one third of the state, called Azad (Free) Kashmir, has been in Pakistan and two thirds, Jammu and Kashmir, has been in India. The frontier has been uneasy, with fighting in 1955, 1965 and 1971. Kashmir has been fertile soil for mischief-makers of all persuasions, some religious and some political. Mr Rajiv Gandhi, the Indian Prime Minister’s ambitious son, said this month, in a vote-seeking gesture, that Pakistan was going to invade Kashmir within the year. To the liberationists, however, both gunmen and intellectuals, Kashmir is a doubly-occupied country. The Kashmir Liberation Army, if it exists except as a name,

presumably draws its members from the 100,000 or so Kashmiris who came to Britain when jobs were plentiful in the 19605. In Kashmir there seems to be no organisation of that name, although there has been violence in plenty. Last month nine people were killed and 2500 injured in riots over what Mrs Gandhi described as “anti-national and secessionist activities” — for which read an attempt by Mrs Gandhi’s Congress Party to unseat the state government. None of this violence received as much attention outside India as the murdered diplomat in Birmingham. Perhaps that is why he was killed.—Copyright, “The Economist.”