On Thursday 21 Aug 2008 10:14:39 pm Perry E. Metzger wrote: > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/south_asia/03/kashmir_future/html/def >ault.stm
Ah -a "Kashmir for dummies"? Well it IS the BBC after all and fudges the detail.. Reading this and other such pieces that have appeared in the past, I recall what we as a group of boys used to discuss when one of our group picked up a very pretty girlfriend at a 3 or 4 day intercollegiate sports festival. Every one of us had ideas about what he should do with the attractive girl and how he should go about doing it. There were a couple of things missing though - mainly what the girl, and our friend (the boy who was too busy with the girl) thought about our plans. Every country on earth may have a "plan for Kashmir". Without getting India on board - none of these plans is going anywhere. There is a vague feeling that Kashmir can be "solved" like Kosovo was solved, or like East Timor was solved. To sink into Indianese again "It would be wise for intereted parties to disabuse themselves of the notion that they can make plans about sovereign Indian territory" The BBC is a mere media organization, but the litany of Indian grievances about Britain's role in the Kashmir conflict runs long and deep. A good source of information is the book by Narendra Sarila, "In the shadow of the great game". But still the BBC reveals its usual British brand of jingoism with the promiment mention of Mountbatten's P-word, leaving out tall semblance of detail. To me this is reminiscent of the same BBC in the 1980s. The average Brit was generally contemptuous of the ability of Americamn special forces in war. But when the latter notched up a spectaular success the BBC reported "And the US marines have been trained by the British SAS" shiv
