Genuine or Sham?

Fayez Bukhari

Srinagar: Appointment of former Intelligence Bureau chief Dineshwar Sharma as interlocutor for Kashmir to hold talks with stakeholders came as a surprise. The reason being that for last three years Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government at the Centre has adopted a hawkish policy on Kashmir, and all of a sudden it changed to a softer approach. In the policy till now, there was no room for dialogue. Now, the big question being asked here is, whether it is a departure from the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) policy or a mere farce?

Union home minister Rajnath Singh, while announcing the appointment of the interlocutor on Kashmir, tried to assure that it was a sincere initiative on the part of government. But many in Kashmir and even outside regard it as cynicism on the part of the BJP-led government.

Earlier such initiatives were taken by successive governments at the Centre but they were left midway. Former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee appointed two interlocutors, K.C. Pant and N.N. Vohra, one after the other but to no avail.

Then came a non-governmental panel, headed by noted lawyer Ram Jethmalani. It was well-received by the separatist leadership, but failed to yield anything.

Former PM Manmohan Singh chaired a round-table conference in Srinagar that set up five working groups to study the political, economic and other aspects of the problem. They prepared a detailed report but the report was not acted upon.

And after the summer unrest of 2010,