For fifty years there has been a boundary line on the ground ... Twice in the past fifty years Pakistan has accepted it as the de facto boundary between the two countries – once during the signing of the Indus waters accord, and the second time in the Simla agreement, only to renege on its commitments when it considered the time to be ripe ..

The only way that India can placate Pakistan is to accede to its wishes. But that will mean a change of international frontiers ... Granted the legitimacy of their desire to see peace between India and Pakistan, why are the Western nations and quite a few others leaning towards a 'resolution' of differences that is almost certain to lead to a communal backlash in India and possibly war? Why are they not suggesting ... that Pakistan and India accept the status quo and build peace around it ?... Because India has never given them the chance to do so.

India has based its Kashmir policy on two pillars. The first is the incontrovertible legality of the Maharaja of Kashmir's accession to India. The second is that after the Simla agreement Kashmir is a bilateral issue in which no one else dare intervene ... Both propositions now stand devalued. So far as the first is concerned, Pakistan has spent the better part of forty years chipping away at the legality of the accession ...

As for the second, Indian diplomats have given bilateralism a special twist that has turned what was formerly an asset, into the country's Achilles' heel. For them, bilateralism has ceased to mean that only India and Pakistan can negotiate an agreement. It has come to mean that other countries should not only not refer to Kashmir in public statements, but not even try to speak to India in private about Kashmir. India will not explain, will not clarify, will not rebut accusations, will not show proof of the veracity of its statements, and will not listen to or discuss even well intentioned suggestions. The sole unvarying message that India has been sending out is, "Keep Out" So long as neither India nor Pakistan were overtly nuclear, the world was prepared to accept this position ...

India's special spin on bilateralism was doing immense harm to the country even before the May bomb blasts. The US and, in its wake, most of the world, was being even handed between a country that was trying to change the status quo on the sub-continent by force and subversion and one that was trying to maintain it ir. the face of extreme provocation.

This was tantamount to condoning piracy ... Its anxiety to keep the Kashmir issue a bilateral one has led India into an even more dangerous trap. Not once, in the years of militancy followed by proxy war, did Indian make it a precondition for talking to Pakistan that it first stop cross border terrorism. Instead, in its anxiety to keep bilateralism alive, it went through the charade of round after round of foreign secretary-level talks with Pakistan ... The world could not therefore be blamed for concluding that India did not believe its own accusations, because it knew that what is was facing in Kashmir was not cross-border terrorism but a genuine domestic revolt.

The nuclear tests made Kashmir an international issue .. legitimately, everyone's business ... The world demanded that India and Pakistan either denuclearise themselves, or settle the Kashmir dispute. In these altered circumstances continuing to cling to South Block's special interpretation of bilateralism became a deadly danger to the country's future ...

There was a built-in bias in favour of a settlement that did not seriously disturb the status quo. India thus had a golden opportunity ... to insist that the only agreement it will accept will be one based on the Line of Control.

Instead all that India has done is to lodge a stiff protest every time anyone mentions Kashmir, be it a Clinton, a Mandela or an Annan. When the UN-Secretary General sent a team of officials to visit the subcontinent, Pakistan welcomed them with open arms, but India refused to let them into the country ... This has left the field clear for Pakistan to appear the essence of sweet reason and to sell its version of the solution of the Kashmir dispute to the Western world.

That version goes somewhat as follows: What is going on in Kashmir is a struggle for freedom. Since that struggle is largely confined to the Muslim majority areas west of the Chenab (the whole of Kashmir valley and western Jammu) let this part be separated from J&K. Let it then either merge with Pakistan or have a referendum on which country it wants to join. Pakistan has still not, even for this little part of Kashmir proposed the third option of independence Since India, more than Pakistan has angered the G-7/P-5 countries by challenging their global hegemony these suggestions have fallen on receptive ears.                                                              (Source: The Hindustan Times, 22 September, 1998)