Trump’s statement on Kashmir has kicked a quite a hornet’s nest. While trolls from the media and politics spread falsehood regarding India’s stand despite a clarification from the MEA, Congress leaders seem to have forgotten their legacy.
Congress’ communication in-charge Randeep Surjewala last night took to Twitter to claim that India has never accepted third party mediation in Jammu and Kashmir.
India has never accepted third party mediation in Jammu & Kashmir!
To ask a foreign power to mediate in J&K by PM Modi is a sacrilegious betrayal of country’s interests.
Let PM answer to the Nation!https://t.co/17wRVtRSMD
— Randeep Singh Surjewala (@rssurjewala) July 22, 2019
“To ask a foreign power to mediate in J&K by PM Modi is a sacrilegious betrayal of country’s interests,” he tweeted. Surjewala, however, forgot one very small detail. The enduring problem of Jammu and Kashmir is because of the monumental mistakes made by then PM Jawaharlal Nehru.
When Pakistan first invaded the then independent princely state of Kashmir in Oct 1947, Maharaja Hari Singh signed the instrument of accession to India in return for help from the Indian Army. The Indian Army quickly recovered two-thirds of Kashmir.
In fact, Nehru requested UN intervention to broker peace as early as Jan 1, 1948, when the Army was still in the thick of operations. One wonders what kind of impact this would have had on the morale of the Indian soldier still fighting on the frontier when he heard that his government was already pleading for peace. One wonders how history would have turned out if the Army had been allowed to recapture the whole of Kashmir instead of Nehru making the blunder of taking the matter to the UN.
The UN brokered a ‘ceasefire’. Since that day, Kashmir has remained an open wound.
And while India has maintained that no such request was made to the US, perhaps it is a good time for Congress to revisit the history. After all, they really do like to give Nehru the credit for everything. If Nehru should be thanked for Chandrayaan2, he should also be ‘thanked’ for the Kashmir blunder.
