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The Rediff Interview/Ashok Pandit

'The danger is not on our borders. It is within'

Was the government right in releasing Hurriyat leaders and initiating peace talks? Can it bring peace to the Valley?

Not at all. But to be honest, we are not surprised. All governments that have come and gone in 11 years have done the same thing. We have been protesting against this, but no one is ready to listen.

These so-called leaders are actually anti-national elements. They are killers and criminals. You cannot expect them to behave properly just because we are ready to talk to them. They want to break Kashmir away from India. They are ready to kill, loot, destroy in the process and have been doing so consistently. How can you trust them? How can you sit down with them at the same negotiating table? They are untrustworthy. They are murderers. You cannot discuss peace terms with criminals.

This is exactly what Rajesh Pilot did, what George Fernandes did. This is what L K Advani is doing now. The government has no will to solve the problem. It is ready to fall on its knees before these militants. We either suffer from an inferiority complex or we genuinely believe this is the only way to solve the problem.

By appeasing the militants?

Absolutely. We are not realising that there is a war going on out there in Kashmir. We are speaking lies to ourselves when we say we have won a war out there in Kargil. No war has been won.

The war is still on. A horrible, dangerous war. The danger is not on our borders any more. It is within. It is a far more dangerous war that is now going on. The war on the borders can be fought and won within a week, but the war within is far more dangerous, far more difficult to win.

In what sense?

When your ammunition dumpyard gets blasted off the earth, blowing away Rs 523 crore [5.23 billion] worth of stuff, it shows how serious the danger is. Who is answerable for this? It can mean only one thing: Your internal security has gone to the dogs! Anything can happen to this country. The ISI has grabbed us by our neck! They can do anything and get away.

You are suggesting this was sabotage, not an accidental fire as claimed by the defence ministry?

Everything cannot be an accident. Three months back, militants attacked the Army headquarters in Srinagar! This was, till then, the safest and most protected area in the city and you cannot imagine the intensity of the nine-hour battle that raged around it.

I was there around that time. The firing went on for an entire day! So you can imagine how compromised our national security is. It has completely degenerated and the militants are having a field day.

The whole nation, on the other hand, is discussing how much Kapil Dev has made from match-fixing and how Manoj Prabhakar has fixed him! The entire attention of the nation has been diverted from this grave national problem towards these silly games that cricketers play. It is sad! No one is worried about Kashmir's future. No one is worried about India's security. All we are interested in is who has made how much money out of cricket!

After this ammunition blast, the defence minister has no right to stay in office. It shows how serious our intelligence failure is. How we have not been able to tackle the dangerous menace of the ISI that is spreading all over India, how we have failed to cope with militancy.

But most people are sick and tired of Kashmir. They want to get it over with and return to the task of nation-building. That is why the government wants to initiate the peace process all over again. We are sick of fighting endlessly with our neighbour.

But people must understand that the Kashmir problem is not just the problem of Kashmir. It is the problem of India. If Kashmir is gone, Delhi will be soon gone. Then Maharashtra will follow and Gujarat. Finally, nothing will be left of India. If one part of India goes, all of India goes. It is as simple as that.

We Kashmiri Pandits have now reached a point where we wonder if we have followed the right track. The way we have protested has brought us nothing. We should have perhaps gone the way of the Yaseen Maliks and Shabir Shahs. Perhaps the government would have taken us more seriously then. They are ready to sit across the table with militants, but not with us: that is the tragedy. That is the failure of the way we have approached the problem.

Perhaps we should have adopted a more drastic style. The government would have been more concerned about our welfare then, instead of worrying so much about these so-called leaders who have been terrorising Kashmir.

We are disappointed. We cannot understand how the Government of India can sit across the table and talk to people who have killed so many of us. It is giving a signal to the whole country that the only way the government will listen to you is if you pick up the gun.

Maybe the government wants to put history behind us and look at a new future? A future that is good for Kashmir and India. A future that overrides terrorism and violence and hatred.

Is it possible? Can you rewrite history so easily? Will the ISI go back to Pakistan and stop intimidating us? Will the Pakhtoons and Turkis and assorted mercenaries who are terrorising Kashmir, who have massacred so many Hindus in cold blood and are now killing Sikhs in their brutal ethnic cleansing campaign, go back across the border? What happened to the eradication of Article 370? What happened to all promises that the Bharatiya Janata Party made before it came to power? Terrorism has never been so bad in 11 years as it is today. Can you imagine how brutally these 35 Sikhs were massacred? This government is even more hypocritical than the earlier ones.

If Jagmohan is given the reins of Kashmir again, it will not take more than 15 days to solve the entire problem. That is our firm conviction.

How did things come to such a sorry pass?

The responsibility vests in one man. Farooq Abdullah. He was the founder-president of the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front. He blackmailed India and the people of Kashmir and every time there was a serious crisis or a conflagration he fled to London. He kept siphoning money in the name of Kashmir's development. That's all he did, nothing else.

Kashmir is in such a mess just because of him.

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