This refers to Sanjaya Baru’s column “Kashmir endgame” (September 20). He is right in recalling Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s approach to solving the Kashmir issue within the boundary of “insaniyat” and highlighting Manmohan Singh’s stress on “making borders irrelevant”. No doubt there are formidable obstacles. One, is the ground reality in Pakistan — it is not the government of the day but the ISI and its protégé terror groups that determine the fate of negotiations on the valley. The continuing conflict in Kashmir will serve their purpose more than the advent of a peace process. Besides, unless the people of Kashmir on both sides of the line of control force their hands, a solution independent of them and the separatists here, is unimplementable. Given the quality of present leadership in the state even this seems remote.
To break this impasse the state should be run by an all-party government with a development agenda as its key result area. Unless they change their stance, India should deal with the separatists in a firm manner. Talking to them will only encourage them.
The government may consider insisting that Pakistan gets its army, ISI and its protégé outfits on board before negotiations. It could revive its insistence on Pakistan, as a precedent condition, to vacate the territory it occupied in 1948 in accordance with the UN resolution of the time.
Y G Chouksey, on email