NEW DELHI, Jan 24 - Losing Kashmir to Pakistan or giving it independence through a plebiscite would almost certainly break up India, home minister Lal Krishan Advani said on Thursday, adding that this was unthinkable for his Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) group.
Advani said that truly friendly ties with Pakistan and the resolution of the Kashmir issue were possible only if a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, as distinct from the present BJP- led coalition, were to take power in New Delhi. BJP is the political arm of the RSS. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Advani are members of both.
Advani, who was addressing a meeting of Hindu nationalist activists to commemorate the “martyrdom” over the last three decades of RSS volunteers at the hands of their chiefly communist rivals, said it was the group’s ideal of national unity that had kept India welded together over the last 50 years.
He said of the 429 RSS activists killed in the last three decades, the majority was murdered in communist-ruled states of West Bengal and Kerala.
Advani released a book compiling details of the killings. There were no details of any political rivals killed by RSS members, a charge often levelled by their communist and Maoist Naxalite rivals.
“I was 14 when I joined the RSS in 1942 and soon, after Independence, our quest turned from freedom to the preservation of India’s national unity,” Advani said. “It is this ideal that informs our perspective on Jammu and Kashmir.”
He said it was a western notion that sees Kashmir as an issue of discord between India and Pakistan. “The truth is we see it as an integral symbol of national unity, any other approach, any alternative resolution of the issue would have a domino effect on the whole country,” Advani warned.
It was not clear why the home minister, regarded as an anti- Pakistan hawk, had chosen to express such a hardline opinion at this particular juncture, but his remarks did coincide with apparently contrary comments by Vajpayee who was quoted as saying that he did not see a fourth war as solving any problem between India and Pakistan.
Vajpayee’s words were conveyed to the media by an envoy of Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi who met the Indian prime minister earlier on Thursday.
Dr Salim ben Amer, told reporters that according to Vajpayee a fourth war between India and Pakistan would neither solve any problem nor could the two countries afford it.
The envoy said that the situation between the two neighbours was now “easing” and that there was no military escalation of tension as of now.
“Nobody can set a time frame for resolution of Kashmir problem which has been lingering on for over 50 years,” said Dr Amer, who had earlier met President Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad.
“Both Mr Vajpayee and Gen Musharraf do not want war and are working on defusing tension between the two nations,” Dr Amer said.