Chapter Sixteen

Peace in Kashmir would be a Kashmiri Muslim. I have absolutely no doubt about this. The Kashmiri Leadership I have been seriously pondering on the Kashmir issue for decades now. With God’s blessings, the views that I held about the subject when I started off still appear to me to be valid. With God’s grace, I have never felt the need to change them. I have been writing on Kashmir from 1968 onwards. Probably my first article on the subject was published in the 14th June, 1968 edition of the Urdu weekly Al-Jamiat, the official organ of the Jamiat ul-Ulema-e Hind. Therein I commented that the then Kashmiri leader Sheikh Abdullah was a sincere Kashmiri. Because of his bravery and sacrifices, he truly deserved to be called Sher-e Kashmir, the ‘Lion of Kashmir’. But his moves for Kashmiri independence were simply unrealistic. I wrote that in 1947 he was in a position in which, had he been realistic, he could have decided the fate of Kashmir according to his wishes. But now, I said, when he had lost the power to decide things, he was going about setting up a hue and cry. This furore had no value in the world of today. I described Sheikh Abdullah’s predicament with the help of the following analogy. Once, a young man decided to open a shop. He had just stepped into the real world and had no idea as to the precautions one should take to survive in the world. And so, he used only a very ordinary lock for his shop. One day, the young man returned from his shop looking very downcast. Seeing him, an elderly man asked, ‘What’s the matter? You seem very sad.’ ‘My shop has been robbed!’ replied the young man. ‘How did that happen?’ asked the old man. ‘The lock was just an ordinary one, and so the robber easily broke it and looted whatever was inside,’ said the young man.