If Kashmir is a married woman, then Pakistan is the jilted lover. Srinagar-based journalist Yana Mir’s analogy of Pakistan trying to come between a happily married India and Kashmir on a YouTube panel discussion sparked much laughter on social media. The Indian Army’s retired generals and lieutenant-generals as well as officials in the civil service gave her a thumbs up.
Yana Mir was a panelist along with Pakistani journalist Fakhar Yousafzai in a live news debate, ‘Point of View’, hosted by Islamabad-based independent journalist Arzoo Kazmi on Sunday. “The interfering boyfriend needs to stop,” Yana Mir said, in an attempt to break down the Kashmir issue for Yousafzai.
Recent comments by Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto on Kashmir where he called Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi the ‘butcher of Gujarat’ has sparked a war of words between the two countries. And Kashmir is once again in the news.
Mir called Pakistan’s ‘obsession’ with Kashmir a “one-sided love affair,” much to the delight of Indians on social media and viewers of the debate.
‘She is happy with her husband’
Fakhar Yousafzai, a journalist and analyst at Khyber News, blamed the lack of a resolution over Kashmir on India’s part and that terrorism and dialogue cannot go hand in hand.
“Fakhar sahab, suppose you are in love with a girl who is married to somebody. And you repeatedly go to the international forums to claim that she is not happy with her husband,” said Mir in response.
Taking the analogy further, she said: “You claim that her rights were snatched away, and she was married forcefully but the lady is claiming everywhere that she is happy with her husband…”
She compared India to an angry husband who wants to take action against the jilted lover targeting his wife.
“Grassroot thinking in Pakistan needs to change and only then would government officials stop vilifying India,” Mir said when asked about why she chose to use this example to drive her point home.
For Mir, public perception is the issue at hand. “And giving a common social example could reach them better,” she said in conversation with ThePrint. According to her, the issue of Kashmir is always cited as a ploy by the Pakistani government to “divert the attention” of its citizens from problems that are plaguing their country.
She further stated that when well educated Pakistani journalists are approached to talk about the Kashmir issue in debates, they all inevitably point fingers and vilify India. “They think they have a birthright over Kashmir because they are Muslims. If you look at their other neighbouring countries. they (Pakistan) would not have the guts to say the same things about Iran or maybe even Afghanistan for that matter. When it comes to Kashmir there is a sense of entitlement.“
Retd Lt. General Vinod Bhatia retweeted the viral video saying ‘Kashmir problem and solution simply and well explained.’
Rising tensions
The debate is set in the backdrop of the recent set of comments at the United Nations Security Council.
On 14 December, India’s Foreign Affairs Minister S Jaishankar stated that a country, which hosted Osama bin Laden and attacked the Indian Parliament building did not have the credentials to “sermonise” before the UN.
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari in his United Nations Security Council address on Friday, then compared Modi to Osama bin Laden. “I’d like to remind the honourable Minister for External Affairs of India that Osama Bin Laden is dead but the butcher of Gujarat lives and is the Prime Minister of India. He was banned from entering [the United States] until he became PM.”
Zardari also referred to Narendra Modi as the “Prime Minister of the RSS”, likening the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to Adolf Hitler’s Schutzstaffel (SS).
The remarks made between the two ministers have sparked protests and debate in both countries.