India’s engagement with the Kashmir crisis in the face of continuing cross-border terrorism and jehadi fanaticism needs stronger resolve both at the political and military levels along with psychological initiatives aimed at the people there, said Gen. S.K. Sinha (Retd.), a former governor of Jammu and Kashmir and Assam, on Wednesday.
Terming the Indian response to the crises of insurgency in Kashmir right since 1948 as one of “repeated political and military blunders scoring self goals,” the noted Kashmir expert said India lacked a clear roadmap for resolving the worsening crisis that keeps affecting the entire nation. “Terrorism has to be crushed militarily. The Indian Army’s record of upholding human rights is far superior to that of Pakistan Army in erstwhile East Pakistan and now in Baluchistan or of the US Army in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said in the second K.K. Sinha Memorial Lecture at Patna’s A.N. Sinha Institute. “Generous economic development in the face of jehadi fanaticism, as has been the experience of the US in Pakistan and Afghanistan and ours in Kashmir, has little effect. The solution lies in winning the hearts and minds of the people with well-planned psychological initiatives to win their hearts,” said Gen. Sinha, who has had a long association with Kashmir right since October 1947, when the Indian troops intervened there to secure the people against Pakistani invasion.
Credited with bringing about wholesome changes in insurgency-hit Kashmir during his tenure as governor between 2003 and 2008, Gen. Sinha said the Kashmir region historically has been a very secular place and that Kashmiri Muslims are actually a minority in the Valley.