Kashmiris react to Vaidik-Saeed meet; JKLF's Yasin Malik decries 'double standards'

Kashmir’s streets were full of angry protesters on Monday, protesting against the Israeli offensive in Gaza, when the pictures of Ved Prakash Vaidik, a close aide of Baba Ramdev, meeting with 26/11 terrorist attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed were being flashed on TV. It surprised many! [caption id=“attachment_1619961” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Ved Pratap Vaidik.[/caption]But it was his assertion on Kashmir – that there was no “harm if Kashmir is made an independent nation” in an interview with a Pakistani television channel – that has most shocked people across the divide in valley. Vaidik had said to Dawn news channel that both India and Pakistan should stop fighting over Kashmir and make it an “independent nation," and one possible solution was to merge divided Kashmir into one. Surprisingly, in Kashmir, no one among the track-II circles, who have previously been associated with the process of conflict resolution between India and Pakistan is familiar with Vaidik. Chairman of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), Yasin Malik – who was the target of BJP outrage for allegedly sharing a dais with Saeed in 2013 –  criticised the party’s double standards. “When in opposition it stalled every initiative of the next government. Now it wants to sense the pulse in Pakistan. This meeting shows the double standards of BJP and RSS.” Malik told Firstpost. Malik, however, says that he did not even share the stage with Saeed and that latter had joined him at the ‘sit-in’ in Pakistan, but despite that upon landing at the Delhi’s IGI Airport, Shiv Sena and RSS activists thrashed him. “Why don’t these activists now ask [Vaidik], who sent him to meet Saeed?” He asks Malik says although there is no problem in meeting anyone to promote a cross-border dialogue, the double standards are wrong. On the streets of Srinagar and in popular hangouts, people across the divide believe that Vaidik’s meeting with Saeed would not have been possible without the consent of Modi government. Kashmiri businessmen Shahid Athar, who recently returned from Pakistan, points out that every Indian who goes to Pakistan is watched and tracked. “Both sides even know when you went to wash room, forget meeting Hafeez Saeed," he says. Those familiar with Track 2 diplomacy between India and Pakistan have no idea who Vaidik is. Prof Gul Mohmmad Wani is director of Kashmir Studies Institute in Srinagar and has been a public face of Track II diplomacy in Kashmir. He says he has never seen or heard of Ved Prakash Vaidik in Track II circles or meetings be it in Delhi, or in Islamabad. But that doesn’t mean Vaidik was not sent by the government, he says. “If an individual has the capacity to deliver, it is not necessary that state would always use a track II diplomat. Vaidik was meeting Hafiz Saeed not any political leader of Pakistan. And who facilitated that meeting and for what purpose remains to be seen,” Wani told Firstpost. The Modi government on Tuesday informed the parliament that it had nothing to do with the journalist and asserting there was no sanction from its side for the meeting. The government also denied that there was any “Track-2 or Track-3 diplomacy involved.”