LAHORE: Panelists in a session on Kashmir in Faiz Festival on Sunday called for finding out non-diplomatic tools to advance the cause of the Kashmiris facing lockdown by the Indian forces for the last over three months.

Former ambassador to India Shahid Malik stressed mobilisation of the Pakistani and Kashmiri diaspora in various countries to raise an organised and effective voice for the people of Kashmir.

In an apparent reference to Prime Minister Imran Khan’s speech in the UN on the dispute, he lamented that the policies in Pakistan were made after a speech while the situation should be vice versa. He said New Delhi’s move to abolish Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, granting a special status to the held Kashmir didn’t come in one day rather it was in the manifesto of the BJP, the right-wing party ruling India. The Modi government chose the time seeing its decisive majority in the parliament, finding Pakistan over-indulged in its internal affairs and the world overlooking the issue because of Islamabad’s weak position, he added.

The ex-envoy suggested that Islamabad should take on board its few friendly states and frame a strong strategy in view of Narendra Modi’s nefarious designs depicted in his one of election rallies in which he hinted at blocking Pakistan’s waters by saying that ‘blood and water cannot flow together’.

Former Senate chairman Mian Raza Rabbani said the nation must not depend upon the western world, which had dual standards and would take interest in the dispute only if its vested interest would be served. He asserted that the indigenous movement of Kashmiris, taking a cue from the struggle of Palestinians, would intensify with the increase in atrocities by the Indian forces and that Kashmiri diaspora must expose through exhibitions and seminars their genocide by India.

Responding to a query by moderator Ali Raza, Mr Rabbani said that neither the parliament nor could any other institution foresee the Indian move because there were so many non-issues on the internal front that kept all the institutions ignorant of the developments taking place in the neighbouring country. He, however, believed that the abolition of Article 370 would hurt India for the special status related to other states too and that the Hindutva would gradually eat up the institutions keeping multi-cultural India together.

Former principal of the National College of Arts (NCA) Salima Hashmi said cultural tools like paintings, dramas, films, documentaries, books and novels might be employed to expose Indian atrocities in Kashmir and named some of the Kashmiri artists who had already begun treading this path.

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2019