WASHINGTON: The Soviet Union is ignoring India’s plea for support to her cause in Kashmir, a “Washington Post” dispatch from Moscow said today [Aug 25]. “Despite repeated pleas from India for outright support the Soviet Union has struck a neutral stance toward the current conflict in Kashmir,” the Washington paper’s Moscow correspondent reported.

He said that the Soviet stand on the latest crisis in Kashmir “suggested that the Soviet policy in the Asian sub-continent was shifting experimentally from unequivocal sympathy for India toward balancing off India and Pakistan”. Referring to the “Pravda” comment on the Kashmir situation which took a markedly neutral stand, the “Post” dispatch said: “Indians took this as a double slap. The first was Moscow’s failure to condemn the anti-India forces and the second was that its version of events — defence against Pakistani infiltrators — should be paired off with the official Pakistani denial.”

[Meanwhile, as reported by our Special Representative in Rawalpindi,] the well-known India social worker, Miss Mridula Sarabhai, has warned the Indian leaders against the atrocities being perpetrated by the Indian Army on Kashmiri Muslims.

Miss Mridula Sarabhai, who was in Srinagar recently, is understood to have told the Indian leaders in Delhi that the consequences of Indian brutalities would be very dangerous and India would entirely lose the support of the people. Sarabhai said there is mutual distrust at all levels. Under the cover of emergency, Hindu communalists, she said, are playing a game which is fraught with dire consequences.

According to Sarabhai, there is a strong belief among the people of held Kashmir that through the operations against the Mujahideens attempts are being made to give the innocent people a taste of Indian might. She said that both the Indian Army and the Police are taking a communal approach to the issue.

Published in Dawn, August 26th, 2015

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