Why Kashmir is Not Disputed

Thursday 14th February 2019 05:19 EST
 

Some British Parliamentarians appear to support terrorists. I don’t mean Corbyn feeling sympathetic for the IRA, but British MPs who seem to support terrorist activities in Kashmir.

These are the MPs who dispute Kashmir’s national heritage, who cannot understand that Pakistan is an occupying force and wants to carve a country out of Kashmir and carve Kashmir out of a country. And then there are those MPs who think that people voting for a party and by accidentally electing them, makes their views more important than those of the common person or that of the world’s largest democracy – we are bigger and better than you. To all those MPs I say this today:

“Before all of you this land was mine. By lineage this is my land. I claim it by birthright...To those squatting upon the land of my Fathers. I claim it. By precedence this is my land...Shame on you to desecrate the consecrated. My Gods live on this land. For the ashes of my Fathers and the temples of my Gods I claim it. All of us everywhere in the world who have suffered at the end of an invading sword or imperial pen, we are all Hindustani Kashmiris. All of us, whose ancestors faced the choice, to convert or die, we are all Kashmiris.

I am reminded of my trip a few years ago to India after visiting the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistani Occupied Kashmir (PoK) and the Wagah border in Amritsar. ‘Here, in this place, they call it Hindustan, they call it Bharat’ I thought to myself as I approached the Indian border with Pakistan at the Wagah crossing to see the daily parade. Soldiers stomped their feet, Vande Mataram blasted through the loud speakers, as young girls ran with billowing Indian flags larger than themselves and the families shouted ‘Jai Hind’. I must have stood ten feet tall.

Had my grandmother’s uncle not been busied bringing Hyderabad into the Union in 1947, leaving Kashmir to Nehru, there would not have been a divided Kashmir either. I’ve yet to meet an Indian who believes that that man, Sardar Patel, should not have been India’s first Prime Minister, instead of its first Deputy Prime Minister. Patel should have refused the Gandhi’s request to give the Premiership to Nehru.

Let me tell you about the difference between India and Bharat.

In Bharat there is no Line of Control. In Bharat we look at the Himalayas of Kashmir and know that for 5000 years without dispute, they are a part of Bharat. Governments, invaders, and imperialists come and go but Hindustan is eternal. As Kennedy said 'ich bin ein Berliner' (I am a Berliner) so we say 'I am a Kashmiri' .

So I repeat, before all of you this land was mine. By lineage this is my land. I claim it by birthright. This is my land. To those squatting upon the land of my Fathers. I claim it. By precedence this is my land. I claim it. Shame on you to desecrate the consecrated. My Gods live on this land. For the ashes of my Fathers and the temples of my Gods I claim it. All of us everywhere in the world who have suffered at the end of an invading sword or imperial pen, we are all Hindustani Kashmiris.”


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