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Editorial - Kashmir: Dispute or a Tragedy.

The people and the people's voices in the Valley have been muted through violence. The people and the people's voices in Azad Kashmir have been anaesthetized through political and financial favour. The people and the people's voices in Northern Areas are involuble.

Political scene in Azad Kashmir is replete with betrayals, greed and non use of a mature judgement. Islamabad has kept 12 refugee seats in its bag to propose or dispose governments in Muzaffarabad. It does not matter whether refugees vote or do not vote for these 12 seats. They are elected and gifted by Islamabad to their favourite political formations in Muzaffarabad.

Elections are a festival of an organised civil society in a democracy. There can be no democracy without politics and no politics without people. At this jovial festival, people exercise their 'people's power'. This exercise is the basis of an authority to govern.

Tables are turned in favour of 'free will'. Valley voters have after all come to realise that it is time to 'fast forward the clock of reason'.

They have boycotted the boycott call of leaders. It has taken them a little longer to understand that taking part in 'elections' to elect representatives to run the daily affairs of life is a basic human right. It is a right separate from their right of 'self-determination'. It has also taken them a little longer to understand that life could not be suspended or stalled until leaders or Pakistan could help them to realise the ultimate - that is, self-determination. It has also taken them a little longer to understand that 'elections' are not a 'substitute' for self-determination.

Second roundtable scheduled on 25th May at Srinagar is an effort to carry forward if there was anything substantive tabled by Kashmiri schools of opinion on 25 February in the best interests of a people who have a log list of grievances against government of India and the government of Pakistan.

Government of India in accordance with the disputed bilateral agreement of 26 October 1947 has failed to protect their 'life', 'property' and 'honour'.

Government of Pakistan in accordance with her assumed 'trust obligations', under UNCIP resolutions, in her two controlled parts of Kashmir, has failed to secure living numerical for a final count in self-determination.

Sabina has lost liberty and her right to a fair trial has been viciously savaged by common and the institutional wisdom of Kashmir.

The misfortune of Sabina marks a new beginning in Jammu and Kashmir. It has created a space for many to brood over the reliability of their common and institutional wisdom. Both wisdoms stand exposed.

Kashmiri leaders who kick dust every afternoon and yell atop that they have nothing to do with the Indian constitution, have expressed a no confidence in the fairness and ability of their own institutions and people living in any of the three administrations of Kashmir to investigate and make facts public.

The most important of all would be the principal share of the people of Jammu and Kashmir in the 'stewardship of water resources' in any part of Kashmir. If Indus Water Treaty has to stay - it needs to incorporate the right of the people of Kashmir in the management of water uses and water-related activities under the treaty. We have to evaluate the manner and extent which is due to the people of Kashmir in the exercise of the stewardship role for their water resources at Mangla, Baghlihar and Diamir.

Common sense demands that Kashmiris around the Table should not only reflect a full circle of politics and composite wisdom of the civil society, but should have the basic ability to address Delhi without prejudice to their 'best interests'. They should be plural, inclusive, non discriminatory in their composition and substantive in their agenda.

A. G. Noorani in a recent article in Hindustan Times has concluded a high pitched and a complex optimism which reads "There is an air of expectancy in the state. The key to a solution lies in an Indo-Pakistan accord. People look up to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Musharraf to resolve the dispute. They know that this is a rare combination of two deeply committed leaders of manifest sincerity. If they fail, it might not recur for long. Kashmir would relapse into frustration and renewed terror with consequences for India and Pakistan too terrible to contemplate".

In his article he has reminded the Indian political and civil establishment of Pandit Nehru's warning in the Lok Sabha on June 26, 1952: "Do not think you are dealing with a part of UP, Bihar or Gujrat. You are dealing with an area, historically and geographically and in all manner of things, with a certain background. If we bring our local ideas and local prejudices everywhere, we will never consolidate... Real integration comes of the mind and the heart and not of some clause which you may impose on other people".