Both Pakistan and India stand to gain immensely from normalization of trade and other relations between them. India can benefit many times more than Pakistan because of the greater potential of its exportable industrial products which have a ready market in Pakistan and beyond in the central Asian countries, the easiest way to which is though Pakistan. But Indiahas denied itself and to the other countries the expected benefits, by its obduracy over the Kashmir dispute.

India, which is an aggressor in Kashmir, has been trying to tire out both Kashmiris and Pakistanis to give up their struggle and accept its hegemony in the state. It may, however, be reiterated here that Kashmir is not merely a territorial dispute but a big human rights issue. India occupied the Muslim majority Kashmir by naked military aggression just after the partition of British India into independent states of Pakistan and India in 1947.The Kashmiris Muslims who wanted Kashmir to be part of Pakistan , have been living in subjugation of the Indian military ever since. They have been victims of worst kind of atrocities by the Indian forces all these 65 years. Pakistan cannot ignore the plight of the Kashmiri Muslims at the hands of Indian military and police because of deep ties of blood and faith between Pakistanis and Kashmiris and the latter’s aspirations for freedom from the Indian yoke.

The history of Kashmiris’ struggle for emancipation actually goes back to more than hundred years. Prior to the independence of the Sub-continent the Kashmiris had been fighting against the atrocious rule of the British –appointed Hindu ruler of Jammu & Kashmir. It had been a most cruel and inhuman regime, one can get a glimpse of which from the article on Kashmir Day on page…. of this journal.

No government in Pakistan can ignore the Kashmir issue to be friend India. But at the same time almost every government has tried to persuade India to let the Kashmiris decide their fate through a free and fair plebiscite, and thus pave the way for normalization of relations between the two countries of the sub-continent.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has always been eager to have good relations with India. No surprisingly therefore, even before taking over the government, he made a very friendly gesture to his counterpart in India. But the response from the other side not only lacked in spirit, it was followed by ugly events in Occupied Kashmir and on the Line of Control between the two sides. There were violations on the border with several civilian and military casualties. It has been interpreted in Pakistan as a yet another refusal by India for a talk on the Kashmir dispute. The future of Pakistan, India relations therefore continues to remain as uncertain as the fate of the Kashmiris Muslims.

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