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Kashmiris have not been brutalised for 60 years: Omar
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Posted online: May 16, 2008 at 0858
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To suggest the people of Kashmir have been subjugated and brutalised for six decades is to stretch things way too far. I don't recall crackdowns, searches, arrogant convoy commanders on our roads before 1990, he wrote in his blog.
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Srinagar, May 16: The opposition National Conference has rubbished separatists arguments that people of Jammu and Kashmir have been "subjugated and brutalised" for six decades and defended its founder Sheikh Abdullah's decision opting for India over Pakistan in 1947.

In the first weblog started by a politician of the state, NC president Omar Abdullah writes "while agreeing that nothing can justify the extra-judicial killings, rapes, torture; I have to ask - was there any of this happening before militancy started in the late '80s".

He said nothing could justify what the people went through but "to suggest the people of Kashmir have been subjugated and brutalised for six decades is to stretch things way too far. I don't recall crackdowns, searches, arrogant convoy commanders on our roads before 1990".

On NC founder Sheikh Abdullah going with India, signing an accord with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975 and disbanding the "plebiscite front", he said "some will argue that this was a betrayal and they would not be completely wrong in as much as he settled without getting what he set out to get... But look at the circumstances".

He said going by the "present state of Pakistan and the side of Kashmir with it", one cannot see how his grandfather could opt for it in 1947.

"Was independence an option? Sure. Let us ask Tibetans about how it is to survive as an independent country with China, India and Pakistan for neighbours... We had a cold war, we had two blocks and two choices - India or Pakistan," he writes in the blog peppered with sarcasms and sayings he calls his "mum's gems".

Omar described his grandfather as the "tallest leader" of the state and no one had a funeral on the scale of Sheikh Abdullah's in 1982.

On the common refrain that politicians have let the people down, he said others were equally responsible.

"Politicians have let Kashmiris down - sure we have. But what of the engineers and officials who were hand in glove with us? What of those trusted individuals who on a meagre salary have built palaces and sent their children to the choicest colleges paying hundreds of thousands of rupees?" he said.

"Do they bear no responsibility for the suffering of the people? As a politician I have let the people of my state down but I had a lot of willing and able supporters along the way. I am a hypocrite because I draw my salary from the Parliament but I'll live with it because its better than living as a mute spectator," Omar said.


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