New Delhi:
Hours before Wednesday's crucial all-party meeting, BJP leader LK Advani has slammed the UPA government, describing it as "useless and spineless." Advani also reiterated his party's opposition to any amendments to the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which headlines the agenda of the all-party meeting.
This is the speech he delivered at a media workshop for party spokespersons in Delhi:
Friends, the situation in the country is a cause of concern on many counts. In Jammu & Kashmir, it is indeed alarming.
There is no government worth the name in J&K. It has completely collapsed, ceding the ground to secessionists.
However, the mess in Kashmir is not the making of only the government in Srinagar. In New Delhi, the UPA government is totally clueless and spineless.
Each passing day strengthens our apprehension that the UPA government is about to capitulate before Pakistan-supported secessionists.
There is talk of a "political solution" to the Kashmir issue. Instead of giving a fitting reply to the secessionists, the Government has been demonizing the security forces. There is continuing talk of diluting the AFSPA, and withdrawal of the forces! This is nothing but a surrender before Islamabad's strategy of breaking India's post-1947 unity.
This is what the military rulers of Pakistan have been dreaming of ever since their defeat in Bangladesh's War of Liberation in 1971. It is a shameful irony that if one Congress Prime Minister was responsible for India's historic victory in that war, another Congress set up is working towards India's surrender to Pakistan's proxy war on India in Kashmir.
There is talk of granting "maximum autonomy" to Kashmir. Decoded, it means giving J&K its pre-1953 status. Far from repealing Article 370, the UPA government looks all set to repeal years and decades of our collective gains in Kashmir, all because of its lack of will, vision, commitment and competence.
All of us know that the Union government has extended many of its powers over Jammu & Kashmir since 1953. This has happened primarily because of the courageous struggle waged by my party, as the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, and more specifically because of Dr. Mookerji's martyrdom.
May I remind the Prime Minister and Smt. Sonia Gandhi that even Pandit Nehru had stated in Parliament that Article 370 was a purely temporary provision? On 27 November 1963, he said in the Lok Sabha: 'Our view is that Article 370, as is written in the Constitution, is a transitional, in other words a temporary provision. And it is so...as a matter of fact, as the Home Minister has pointed out, it has been eroded, if I may use the word, and many things have been done in the last few years which have made the relationship of Kashmir with the Union of India very close.
Rather than speeding up the "gradual erosion", leading to abrogation, of Article 370, the UPA government is bending over backwards to placate the secessionists.
I would like to remind the UPA government that when the J&K legislative assembly adopted the so-called "autonomy resolution" in June 2000, the Vajpayee government rejected it outright. I had told the media on that occasion: 'Its acceptance will set the clock back and reverse the natural process of harmonising the aspirations of the people of the state with the integrity of the nation. If the government were to accept it, it would encourage trends that will not be conducive to national unity.'
We are all in favour of giving greater powers to all states as the concept of federalism warrants. But in the name of autonomy we cannot allow the process of Kashmir's integration to be reversed.
Therefore, I would like to warn the UPA government that if they decide to bow before the secessionists' designs in J&K, the country will not pardon them.
I thought I should use the occasion of this workshop to explain to all of you what is at stake in J&K, so that you in turn can explain it to the people. In the months to come, this could become the main issue of mass agitation, as far as the BJP is concerned.
I thank all of you for giving me a patient hearing.