Hurriyat’s itinerary

Once India has, in principle, allowed Hurriyat leaders to board the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir on June 2, it makes little sense to cite bureaucratic procedures to keep them confined to PoK. True, under the current arrangements governing passengers of this bus, movement beyond the territory has been disallowed. J&K Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed may even have a case when he argues that the Hurriyat leaders must follow the guidelines or it could amount to discriminating against the ordinary passenger.

But let’s face it. These are mere bureaucratic devices to constrain the Hurriyat leaders. They are by no means ordinary passengers. They have boarded the bus because they believe they have an argument that needs to be conveyed to Islamabad and New Delhi. They should be allowed to make it. It is Pakistan, in any case, that had a problem with passengers of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus entering its territory without adequate travel documentation and India should therefore not raise any unnecessary objections to their travelling wherever they wish. Their travel plans do not in any way undermine India’s stand on J&K or push it into an uncomfortable corner. This will, in any case, not be the first time that New Delhi has allowed itself to be liberal in these matters. Soon after the Kargil war, the Vajpayee government had offered Hurriyat Conference centrists a chance to visit Pakistan and consult with leaders there. Then again in 2002, Abdul Ghani Lone and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq were discreetly allowed to confabulate with Sardar Abdul Qayoom Khan, the chief of Pakistan’s Kashmir cell, in the UAE.

India needs to respond not in a bureaucratic but a political way to the issue. It should make itself available for engagement with separatist leaders from the other side of the LoC, as indeed enter into substantive talks with the Hurriyat leaders as well. This would exemplify not just national self-confidence but an interest in furthering the peace project in the region.