Saddest Story In Kashmir Is Farooq, Who Was Once Promised The Vice-Presidentship thehinducentre.com

By an order of the President, issued on August 5, 2019, Jammu and Kashmir was stripped of its special status under Article 370, and downgraded from a full-fledged State to a Union Territory. The Valley was also placed under a lockdown that continues to this day. Amarjit Singh Dulat, former chief of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), and Special Adviser on Kashmir to Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, laments that more than the removal of the special status, which was at best a fig leaf, it was the manner in which it was done that has hurt and demeaned the Kashmiri people. In a free-wheeling interview with Vidya Subrahmaniam, Senior Fellow at The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy, Dulat expressed fears over the spiraling anger in Kashmir and the shape and form it could take once the lockdown is lifted. Dulat says he sees a likely parallel, not in the Emergency, but in the 1947 Partition, although he underlines that he hopes for the best and hopes he is proved wrong. He urges Delhi to ‘talk and engages’ with the Kashmiris and with Pakistan before things get out of control.