The definition of hypocritical is “professing feelings or virtues one does not have”. The typical example of this was the Prime Minister’s address telecast live to Kashmiri youth. The speech appeared without any deep feelings of hurt and sympathy. It was without any manifest feelings of emotions and sentiments. It was like someone reading from a prepared text without any personal involvement. An automaton mechanically reading out pages from a book. One may forgive the mechanical rendering as being the typical style of the Prime Minister but the content wise it reflected nothing but hypocrisy. This is more painful in view of the fact that the Prime Minister is an honest and upright person. A real gentleman! It is reported that it was the second time in history that the Prime Minister of India had directly addressed the people of Kashmir. Earlier Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru is said to have done it to reaffirm his pledge to Kashmiris for determining their own future through a plebiscite held under UN auspices. Even though he never kept that promise yet that speech is supposed to have been highly emotional and full of genuine feelings for Kashmiris. Notwithstanding various historical facts, one must admit that the speech made by Atal Behari Vajpaye in a public meeting in Srinagar when he extended a hand of friendship to Pakistan and kick started the dialogue process appeared to be the most sincere and fruitful one. It has been said that present appeal came too late! After 60 days and loss of 51 lives. However, that too is a misstatement. There has been hype in the media built round the recent upheaval and the killing of over 50 youngsters, some even below 10 years. The two decades of the worst ever turmoil taking almost a hundred thousand lives seem to have been totally forgotten. Kashmir has not been under siege just for last 60 days or so. The siege has been there for last two decades. The security forces proliferating in all civilian areas with unbridled powers conferred on them by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act have not been making the life of common Kashmiris miserable just for last 60 days. The people have been in the direct line of fire for at least the last 20 years not considering the off and on upheavals during last 63 years. However, all concerned have been attempting to highlight the incidents of the last two months as if everything was honky dory before that! There cannot be anything more hypocritical than this!

The Prime Minister expressed sympathy with the families of the teenagers killed in recent clashes. What about thousands of youth who were killed during last 20 years? What about thousands of missing persons? What about thousands of orphaned children and widows? What about thousands languishing in different prisons across India for last 20 years? There were no words of comfort for them! There was no solace for the extreme hardships undergone by common people due to an unending siege of last two months. The need for a political solution and dialogue to address the feeling of alienation was highlighted. However, the real cause of alienation that is the harassment meted out to common citizens by the unbridled and unaccountable security forces was conveniently forgotten. On the contrary it was stressed that the security forces were working in difficult conditions and they should not be demoralised. As if introducing accountability and restraining them by withdrawing their most undemocratic powers would render them ineffective and demoralised! Even in earlier times the security forces have been operating in Kashmir with more impunity than now without the draconian legislations. The typical example is the conflict of 1965 when over 10,000 commandos of Azad Kashmir Force had infiltrated into Kashmir from the Pakistan administered part which had resulted in an all out war. At that time also the Army had followed a scorched earth policy by burning dozens of villages and the famous Batamaloo locality of Srinagar. Then no one had presented the excuse of lack of powers and there were no draconian legislations like AFSPA in vogue. The present dithering about revoking these powers and removing security forces from the civilian areas is only an excuse to keep the civilian population under a heavy lid to prevent mass peaceful protests which may cause international embarrassment. The Prime Minister did acknowledge the sentiment of the people in regard to AFSPA but did not give any commitment to revoke it. As usual the development mantra which has failed to solve the Kashmir problem for last 63 years was repeated with a promise to provide more jobs. Kashmir problem cannot be solved by putting the entire youth population on a government dole. Finally, the great political solution on offer was autonomy within the parameters of the Indian Constitution. Well, this has been already there and has been eroded to nothingness in last 63 years. Even this offer was conditional. It was subject to a consensus of all concerned. The BJP immediately rejected it even before Prime Minister’s speech had been registered by the people! So what is the political offer? Promises upon promises to keep and a long long way to go!

There were many other hypocritical aspects. An all party delegation from Kashmir to meet the Prime Minister had taken more than a month to materialise. Most interesting aspect was that the delegation apart from lacking the representation from the most important separatist side did not even have the full representation of the mainstream parties. The PDP and BJP both had boycotted it for their own reasons. Addressing such an unrepresentative delegation in itself is hypocritical. The Prime Minister’s much advertised address had raised great hopes for a dramatic declaration. One had expected some practical announcements giving a healing touch to the hurt feelings of the common people. One had also expected measures to soothe the seething anger of the alienated youth but they were only asked to go back to their colleges and schools. The least the Prime Minister could do was to make a clear and credible commitment on revocation of AFSPA, demilitarisation of civilian areas, and release of thousands of prisoners. This might have cooled the anger. Unfortunately, the speech was not only a great disappointment but a typical example of the hypocritical attitude of Delhi! A repeat of the “Zero Tolerance” episode.