Someone pointed me to this piece by Tavleen Singh in Indian Express:
Prashant Bhushan got thrashed by thugs last week. Thugs will be thugs, alas, which is a bore. It would have been better if Bhushan and his Leftist fellow travellers were challenged verbally on their preposterous position on Kashmir. How dare they ask for a plebiscite? Do they not see that regular elections have nullified the need for one? Are they suggesting that all the elections held since 1947 were fraudulent?
Her suggestion is that high voter turnout proves Kashmiris are happy. She doesn’t spend any words saying why one implies the other. If she can’t fill this obvious hole in her logic, she is offending readers.
Back to her point about voter turnout and contentment of the population. It’s like saying a person is not gay because he married a woman. (That’s not just a funny analogy; it’s apt in this case.)
To me, unless a plebiscite asks Kashmiris a pointed question with three options: India, Independence, Pakistan, we don’t know the answer to that question. We could continue making policy decisions without this knowledge, but don’t try to trick me into believing we have the answer.
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Before someone runs for the comments: Yes, feel free to bring in all the displaced Pandits for this referendum. The more the merrier.
I don’t want any option in particular — all I want is for Indians to face this test once without fear. It’s only fair.
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October 16, 2011 at 10:01 pm
Salil
Her suggestion is NOT that high voter turnout proves Kashmiris are happy. Instead, she suggests that Kashmiris did not heed the call by separatists to boycott the elections. If they did support the separatist movement, they would have boycotted the elections.
October 16, 2011 at 10:22 pm
Deepak
If at all it proves anything, it is that they think separatists are dick-heads. Or that they think electoral process is the way to getting their demands heard.
But why infer: Why not just ask them?