Srinagar: Hurriyat Conference (M) Chairman, Syed Ali Geelani, on Sunday termed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement that development was remedy to Kashmir issue as unrealistic.
“Kashmir problem is not an issue of economic deprivation and perks and packages are not a solution to it. It is an issue concerning the basic and fundamental rights of more than 14 million humans,” Geelani said in a stamen issued here.
He said beating the drum of “development” as the only remedy for all the issues—“looks not only unrealistic but insane as well.”
The octogenarian termed the India prime minister’s visit to the state of Jammu and Kashmir mere ‘military operation’ “as India has always threatened the people by these armed gestures just to weaken our resolve for our basic and legitimate movement.”
“Converting the whole city into an army garrison, curbing and curtailing the movement of common people, suffocating the whole nation and then sarcastically labeling the state of Jammu and Kashmir as the “Crown”, is nothing but to befool the people.”
Hurriyat Chairman said that Indian premier has deliberately shied away from the historical facts as he has not bothered to go through India’s own freedom movement. “Otherwise he would have come across, the fact that development, like roads and building, markets and mansions, came up only under Mughal and British rule and even today’s India is recognized and known for the remnant of that era,” he said, adding, “Had the economic reforms and development been able to lure the aspirants of freedom—India would have been contented with that glorious slavery.”
He further said that announcing these mega projects, “more loyal than the king”, overjoyed class of local “henchmen – should bear in mind once for all that India with your shameful support has been perpetrating these political dramas for the last 7 decades, but has miserably failed to win the hearts of Kashmiries.”
He said that when life and livelihood are not safeguarded, when basic rights are drained, when more than 10 Lakh armed forces are threatening people of JK, economic empowerment and Mega projects loose the worth. “When our life and honour is at stake, good living has no value,” he said.
Geelani said that youth in particular don’t strive for the “begging bowls of economic packages but they struggle to get rid of this enforced slavery.”
Referring to call to youth to join mainstream, Geelani said that it is the “arrogance, military might and barbaric attitude of the oppressor which has forced our nation to the unending blood bath and economic destabilization, otherwise our people are peace loving and fertile brainy, once we get rid of military occupation, we can flourish both politically as well as economically and will not only be self sufficient, but can extent a helping hand to the needy people of our neighbours including India.”
Hurriyat Chairman said that highly qualified and well placed professionals are up in arms against the occupation as their long and bitter experience of subjugation was enough to make them understand that their life, livelihood, honour, culture, faith and dignity — nothing is safe under the Indian occupation and we are left with no option then to strive and struggle to fight for our existence.
“Even India has realized that despite economic perks and unparalleled force, they have not been able to win the hearts of Kashmiries, except a few “belly slave” class of the collaborators,” he said.
Geelani said that sooner the “egoistic mindset” of Indian rulers and their local faces acknowledge and address these realistic facts, better it is for the sub-continent in particular and humanity in general.
