India stunned Kashmiris on Wednesday with a range of surprise announcements — from agreeing to talk with separatist politicians to a proposed bus service connecting the portions of Kashmir controlled by India and Pakistan.
”It is an astonishing change of heart. I can’t figure out what hit them to have made these announcements all of a sudden,” said Kashmiri shawl merchant Mohammad Latif Dar.
But in a grim reminder of Kashmiris’ everyday trauma, violence continued.
Three suspected rebels were killed in a gunbattle with Indian soldiers and five people, including two women, were wounded in cross-border shelling near the line of control that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
Islamic militants have been fighting for the Indian state’s independence or merger with Pakistan since 1989 in violence that has cost more than 63 000 lives.
In a dramatic and sudden change of policy, the Indian Cabinet authorised Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani to hold discussions with the leader of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference in what would be the first high-level contact between the secessionist leaders and the government to try and resolve the 13-year insurgency.
Hours later, India’s Foreign Minister, Yashwant Sinha, proposed 12 measures to normalise relations with Pakistan, including a bus service linking the capitals of Indian- and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir.
Nissar Ahmad Khan (50), an employee of a government-owned agricultural products company in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir, said, ”I couldn’t believe my ears when this was announced.”
Earlier in August, Hurriyat chief Moulvi Abbas Ansari had urged such a service, across a frontier that India says is crossed by militants from the Pakistan side.
”There is nothing to be achieved out of dividing people. Let a bus service between the two parts of Kashmir be resumed,” Ansari had said in an interview with The Associated Press in August.
Linking the two parts of the Himalayan region is an emotional issue for Kashmiris, whose land and families have been divided since 1947, when India and Pakistan fought their first war over the Muslim-majority region.
The Kashmiri separatists welcomed the government announcements, but wanted to see what is on the agenda for the talks.
”This is a positive change in the Indian outlook over Kashmir,” said the region’s chief Muslim cleric and senior separatist leader, Umar Farooq. He said the separatists have ”always wanted a dialogue to resolve this dispute. We are not very clear. We are still awaiting the details and modalities of this offer.” — Sapa-AP