“Unlike other States, Kashmir didn’t accede to India unconditionally. They acceded to India under what is called an ‘Instrument of Accession’. They ceded to GOI only four subjects, and said in all other matters, ‘we will be autonomous’. Most people don’t know it, and those who know it have forgotten or conveniently ignored it. We are adopting a muscular, militaristic and majoritarian approach, which is pushing people more and more into the arms of the militants,” said former Finance Minister and Congress leader P. Chidambaram during a panel discussion on his new book, Undaunted: Saving The Idea of India , in Chennai on Saturday.
Speaking as part of a panel comprising Praveen Chakravarthy, Chairman, Data Analytics, Indian National Congress, N. Sathiya Moorthy, Director, Observer Research Foundation and Vaishna Roy, Associate Editor, The Hindu , Mr. Chidambaram said the people of Kashmir want to run the State themselves.
“Over the years, governments, Congress governments included, have eroded this autonomy which was given to them. They are not asking for the Instrument of Accession to be scrapped and [seeking to] secede from India. We forget this fundamental fact – [former PMs] Vajpayee Ji and Dr. Manmohan Singh recognised it and both of them genuinely believed that the Kashmir problem could be solved if we restore a large degree of autonomy to the Kashmir valley,” he said.
Pitch for devolution
While stating that more powers should be devolved to the States, he defended the Congress-led government for not doing so when they were in power. “For thirty years, there has been no majority government. I have always said, ‘Imagine what could have been done if we had 282 seats. It is a great opportunity. We could have united the country, [but] we have divided it. We could have given more powers to the State. The States’ capacity to deliver today, like [in the case of] Kerala and Tamil Nadu – on education and health care – is better than the Centre’s. We must devolve more powers to the States, and the Congress manifesto could promise greater federal powers,” said Mr. Chidambaram.
“The coalition governments of Atal Bihari Vajpayeee, Deve Gowda and Manmohan Singh have delivered. There are checks and balances in the system. Can you imagine demonetisation happening in a coalition government? There is no way,” he added.
Mr. Chidambaram said the Congress will implement the minimum income guarantee scheme if voted to power.
