[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 10]
[EXTENS]
[Pages 13180-13181]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




        INDIA'S HEGEMONIC AMBITIONS LEAD TO CRISIS IN SOUTH ASIA

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 16, 2002

  Mr. TOWNS. Mr. Speaker, we are all hoping that war can be avoided in 
South Asia. A war there would take an enormous toll in human lives and 
in damage to land and the fragile economies of India and Pakistan. The 
biggest losers, clearly, would be the Islamic people of Kashmir and 
Sikhs of Punjab, Khalistan.
  Unfortunately, some of the media accounts of this conflict have been 
very one-sided. You would think after reading a lot of the papers and 
watching a lot of TV news that India is absolutely blameless in this 
conflict. That is not true. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out on 
June 4, it is India's hegemonic ambitions, as much as anything, that 
have brought this crisis to a head.
  Mr. Speaker, at the time that India was partitioned, the Hindu 
maharajah of Kashmir, despite a majority Muslim population, acceded to 
India. That accession has always been disputed and India promised the 
United Nations in 1948 that it would settle the issue with a free and 
fair plebiscite on Kashmir's status. As we all know, the plebiscite has 
never been held. Instead, India has tried to reinforce its rule there 
with over 700,000 troops. According to columnist Tony Blankley in the 
January 2, Washington Times, meanwhile, India supports cross-border 
terrorism in the Pakistani province of Sindh. Indian officials have 
said that everyone who lives in India must either be Hindu or 
subservient to Hindus, and they have called for the incorporation of 
Pakistan into ``Akand Bharat''--Greater India.
  In January, Home Minister L.K. Advani admitted that once Kashmir is 
free from India rule, it will bring about the breakup of India. India 
is a multinational state and history shows that such states always 
unravel eventually. We all hope that it won't take a war to do it. No 
one wants another Yugoslavia in South Asia, but there are 17 freedom 
movements within India. Unless India takes steps to resolve these 
issues peacefully and democratically, a violent solution becomes much 
more

[[Page 13181]]

likely. As the former Majority Leader of the other chamber, Senator 
George Mitchell, said, ``The essence of democracy is self-
determination.'' It is true in the Middle East and it is true in South 
Asia.
  The Sikh Nation in Punjab, Khalistan also seeks its freedom by 
peaceful, democratic, nonviolent means, as does predominantly Christian 
Nagaland, to name just a couple of examples. The Sikhs declared the 
independence of Khalistan on October 7, 1987. They ruled Punjab prior 
to the British conquest of the submcommittee and no Sikh representative 
has signed the Indian constitution.
  India claims that these freedom movements have little or no support. 
Well, if that is true, and if India is ``the world's largest 
democracy,'' as it claims, then why would it not hold a plebiscite on 
the stauts of Kashmir, of Nagaland, of Khalistan? Wouldn't that be the 
democratic way to resolve these issues without a violent solution?
  Until that day comes, Mr. Speaker, we should support self-
determination. We should declare our support for a plebiscite in 
Khalistan, in Kashmir, in Nagaland, and wherever they are seeking 
freedom. We should stop aid to India until all people in the 
subcontinent live in freedom and peace. These measures will help bring 
the glow of freedom to everyone in that troubled, dangerous region.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to place the Wall Street Journal article 
into the Record at this time.

                     [From the Wall Street Journal]

                       India's Kashmir Ambitions

       Western worry over Kashmir has focused on Pakistan's 
     willingness to control terrorists slipping over the border 
     with India, and rightly so. But that shouldn't allow U.S. 
     policy to overlook India's equal obligation to prevent a 
     full-scale war from breaking out in Southwest Asia.
       That obligation has come into focus with today's Asian 
     security conference in Kazakstan. Indian Prime Minister Atal 
     Bihari Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan 
     will both be on hand, and everyone has been urging a 
     bilateral meeting on the sidelines. But so far Mr. Vajpayee 
     has ruled out any dialogue until Pakistan presents evidence 
     that it is acting against the Kashmiri terrorist groups 
     crossing the U.N. line of control to attack Indian targets.
       This is shortsighted, not least for India, because it 
     allows Mr. Musharraf to take the moral high ground by 
     offering to talk ``anywhere and at any level.'' On Saturday 
     the Pakistani leader also went on CNN to offer an implied 
     assurance that he wouldn't resort to nuclear weapons, as 
     something no sane individual would do. This went some way 
     toward matching India's no-first-use policy and could be 
     considered a confidence-building measure, however hard it 
     would be for any leader to stick to such a pledge were 
     national survival at stake.
       India's refusal even to talk also raises question about 
     just what that regional powerhouse hopes to achieve out of 
     this Kashmir crisis. If it really wants terrorists to be 
     stopped, some cooperation with Pakistan would seem to be in 
     order. We hope India isn't looking for a pretext to intervene 
     militarily, on grounds that it knows that it would win (as it 
     surely would) and that this would prevent the emergence of a 
     moderate and modernizing Pakistan.
       This question is one the mind of U.S. leaders who ask 
     Indian officials what they think war would accomplish, only 
     to get no clear answer. India is by far the dominant power in 
     Southwest Asia, and it likes it that way. Some in India may 
     fear Mr. Musharraf less because he has tolerated terrorists 
     than because he has made a strategic choice to ally his 
     country with the U.S. If he succeeds, Pakistan could become 
     stronger as a regional competitor and a model for India's own 
     Muslim population of 150 million.
       The danger here is that if India uses Kashmir to humiliate 
     Pakistan, Mr. Musharraf probably wouldn't survive, whether or 
     not fighting escalates into full-scale war. That wouldn't do 
     much to control terrorism, either in India or anywhere else. 
     It would also send a terrible signal to Middle Eastern 
     leaders about what happens when you join up with America. All 
     of this is above and beyond the immediate damage to the cause 
     of rounding up al Qaeda on the Afghan-Pak border, or of 
     restoring security inside Afghanistan.
       No one doubts that Mr. Musharraf has to be pressed to 
     control Kashmiri militants, as President Bush has done with 
     increasing vigor. The Pakistani ruler was the architect of an 
     incursion into Indian-controlled Kashmir at Kargil two years 
     ago, and his military has sometimes provided mortar fire to 
     cover people crossing the line of control.
       But at least in the past couple of weeks that seems to have 
     changed, as Pakistani security forces have begun restraining 
     militants and breaking their communications links with 
     terrorists already behind Indian lines. In any case, the line 
     of control is so long and wild that no government can stop 
     all incursions. More broadly, Mr. Musharraf has already taken 
     more steps to reform Pakistani society than any recent 
     government. U.S. officials say he has taken notable steps to 
     clean up his intelligence service and that he has even begun 
     to reform the madrassa schools that are the source of so much 
     Islamic radicalism. (The problem is that Saudi Arabia hasn't 
     stopped funding them.)
       The Pakistani leader has done all this at considerable 
     personal and strategic risk, and it is in the U.S. and (we 
     would argue) Indian interests that he process continue and 
     succeed. He deserves time to show he is not another Yasser 
     Arafat, who has a 20-year record of duplicity.
       As it works to defuse the Kashmir crisis, the U.S. has to 
     press Mr. Musharraf to stop as many terror incursions into 
     India as possible. But it also must work to dissuade India 
     from using Kashmir as an excuse to humiliate Pakistan, a 
     vital U.S. ally. The U.S. has a long-term interest in good 
     relations with India, a sister democracy and Asian 
     counterweight to China. But self-restraint over Kashmir is a 
     test of how much India really wants that kind of U.S. 
     relationship.

     

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