United on Kashmir

The whole of Pakistan erupted in solidarity with the oppressed Kashmiri people on Friday in a remarkable show of unity. The Kashmir Solidarity Day, an annual feature on February 5, became the unifying force as both the government and the opposition spoke the same language on the longstanding, unresolved dispute, despite deep political polarisation buffeting the landscape. Prime Minister Imran Khan, who is ever so ready to skewer his political foes, struck a conciliatory note when he addressed a gathering in Kotli in connection with the Kashmir Day. His entire focus was on highlighting the wrongs committed by the Hindutva-inspired Modi government against the innocent, unarmed Kashmiri people. He reminded the audience that the United Nations has still not fulfilled the promise it made to Kashmir: the right to choose their future. “Today, I am here to remind the world of the right that has not been given to Kashmiris after all these years,” he thundered.

And it was indeed heartening to hear PML-N leader Maryam Nawaz, who seldom lets a chance of tongue-lashing her arch nemesis Imran Khan go by, declaring that the entire nation is one on the issue of Kashmir. “There are political differences but when it comes to matters of national interest, whether it’s atomic programme or Kashmir, the people of Pakistan stand as one,” she told a huge rally under the auspices of the PDM in Muzaffarabad. Even though the youthful PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari used the occasion to spew the usual vitriol against the government, his speech on the festering wound that is Kashmir was in harmony with the consensus national narrative. He rightfully called Kashmir an unfinished agenda of the partition and repeated call for a plebiscite to be held in accordance with the UN resolutions so that the Kashmiris, at long last, win their inalienable right to self-determination.

With parties as diagonally opposed to each other as PTI, PML-N and PPP, who essentially span the gamut of political opinion, speaking with one voice on the decades-old dispute, it is clear that some subjects have the potential to band the nation together. Kashmir, no doubt, is one of them.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 7^th, 2021.

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