The Quran refers to everything that relates to what is good for human beings. But there is no mention of freedom in the sense of political freedom. This shows that ‘freedom’ is simply a deceptive term. It does not have any real meaningfulness. A clear practical proof of this is that today there are some 60 Muslim countries that, after immense sacrifices, won freedom from European colonial rule. But, in reality, these countries are not free. What happened in these Muslim countries was that the fight against an external foe later transformed into civil war. This might well happen with the Kashmiris, too. Either they keep up their socalled war of independence, which is bound to degenerate from being an externally-directed war into a devastating civil war, or else they end their present political conflict and focus all their energies on construction and progress.
In July 2001, I spent a week in Switzerland, attending an international conference. There was an 80 year-old Kashmiri lady in our team, who, when taken to various places of interest by the organisers, was so overwhelmed by the beauty of Switzerland that she exclaimed, ‘Our Kashmir was once as beautiful as this, but today it is devastated!’
Who destroyed Kashmir? No Government was responsible for this. The only people to blame were those foolish leaders who, with their emotionally-driven rhetoric, inflamed the Kashmiri youth and pushed them on to the destructive path of militancy. If these leaders had instead set these youth on the path of education and constructive work, perhaps Kashmir would have been even better than Switzerland today. But the inept guidance of these incapable leaders so terribly damaged Kashmir that even an entire century will not suffice to make amends for it.
It is indispensable now for the Kashmiri people to completely abandon militancy and forever. They must adopt the way of peaceful construction. If the people of Kashmir were to do this wholeheartedly and sincerely, it would open a new and glorious chapter in Kashmir’s history
