A Return to Kashmiriat

so that when certain people, serving their own personal interests, wanted to mislead the Kashmiris, they were able to provoke them into aggression. But this was a temporary phase. Events tell us that now people are returning to their true nature. Now the final hour has come for the Kashmiris to return to their past, to revise their forgotten lesson, to reshape their lives again in line with Sufi traditions, to make Kashmir once again a region of peace and love as it had always been in the past. This is Kashmirness. A return to this Kashmiriat holds the key to progress in Kashmir. Refusal to Accept the Reality I have been writing about Kashmir since 1968. My first article was published in the Urdu Weekly, Al-Jamiat, in its issue of June 8, 1968, (p. 4). One part of this article about the politics of Kashmir is quoted here: “The time for receiving one’s rights is when the decision is in one’s own hands. But our leaders come to the realization of this fact only when their case becomes a moral one. I have this feeling when I read the speeches of Shaykh Abdullah, the leader of Kashmir. His present political campaign is nothing but the refusal to accept the reality of having lost the war. In 1947 he was in such a position that, had he opted for a realistic policy, he could have succeeded in deciding the matter according to his choice. But he missed the bus by indulging in unrealistic dreams. In national matters, when the time for decision has slipped from one’s hands, the problem becomes much more complicated and difficult to resolve. National leadership is a task which can be performed only by those who can envision the future in the present. Those who can see only the present and the past cannot lead a nation. Indeed, by their unwise steps, they can certainly complicate matters.” These words were penned forty-five years ago. The reality of these words has now become a proven fact. The Kashmiris must learn a lesson from this experience. They should never repeat the mistake of continuing the failed politics of the past under new names. Now the final hour has come for the people of Kashmir to take a fresh look at the whole matter of the construction of their future, and, taking realities into consideration, reconstruct their national policy. A viable policy is only that which is sustainable. An unsustainable A Return to Kashmiriat