As expected National Assembly’s strongly worded resolution passed on Thursday censuring the hanging of Afzal Guru and demanding his body be brought back to Pakistan sent shock waves through Lok Sabha that lashed out at it the very next day as ‘interference in internal matters of India’. In the heat of the moment, the furious Lok Sabha passed a resolution stating that the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir including the part under Pakistan’s control, “is and shall always be an integral part of India” but offered to the world community yet another instance of its blatant disregard for the UNSC resolutions that regards the territory as a disputed piece of land whose fate is to be decided by the people of the state themselves.
Since this is what the Indian Parliament has barracked and so coldly, this should be more than enough to shatter the illusion that the present PPP regime has been basking in so far. JUI-F Chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman is justified in warning that India should not be given the MFN status without the approval of the Kashmir Committee. The pity is that the ruling setup’s posturing has softened in the backdrop of the continued human rights abuses by the Indian security forces that shot in cold blood another youngster the other day. The high-handed reaction to the demonstrations against the extra-judicial killings whereby the state army resorted to curfew – a routine affair – in parts of the Valley makes mincemeat of the Lok Sabha’s mantra of integral part. With such a maniacal obsession to impose itself on Kashmir, it was quite natural for Indian parliament to lose its nerve over Pakistan’s resolution questioning its atrocities, although given the record of the past five years, the PPP government stands accused of maintaining a guilty silence.