{"id":3093,"date":"2017-05-22T08:05:33","date_gmt":"2017-05-22T02:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/?p=3093"},"modified":"2017-05-22T08:21:34","modified_gmt":"2017-05-22T02:51:34","slug":"importance-yusuf-buchs-writings-to-kashmir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/editors-take\/importance-yusuf-buchs-writings-to-kashmir\/","title":{"rendered":"Importance Yusuf Buch’s Writings to Kashmir"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like>

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Punchline <\/u><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Reading Yusuf Buch <\/u><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Z. G. Muhammad<\/strong> <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I learned two new phrases in the past fortnight that I believe are important to our narrative and need to dwell upon a bit at length. One, \u2018life writing\u2019 and another \u2018conflict parasites\u2019- the first one I heard from a Kashmiri born novelist Nitasha Koul at the Kashmir University and the second one from a young journalist. The first one gives more power to the narratives of the struggling people and the second one is a chink in the armor of the resistance movement.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I wrote about the power of \u2018life writing\u2019 in my last week column. \u00a0To get more information about Kashmir related \u2018life writing,’ I googled. It took me to a series of article on Kashmir by Eqbal Ahmed, a\u00a0 \u2018political scientist, writer and academic known for his anti-war activism, support for resistance movements globally. And also to the presentations and writing of Mohammad Yusuf Buch ( Ambassador M. Yusuf Buch ) a Kashmiri intellectuals exiled to Pakistan by Maharaja Hari Singh\u2019s Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah few months after the landing of Indian army at Srinagar airport.\u00a0 \u00a0Buch, the Kalashpora, Srinagar-born alumni of Islamia High School, Rajouri Kadal later in life was an advisor to the UN Secretary-General, Ambassador to Switzerland and Federal Minister of Pakistan.<\/p>\n

Yusuf Buch, a KCS officer and a supporter of the Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference, was arrested and bundled into a bus with few other intellectuals and pushed into Pakistan near Suchetgarh in Jammu. Other intellectuals who were on the bus included Agha Showkat Ali, Barrister Abdul Gani Rentoo, and Mahmood Hashmi. One of their contemporaries lamenting over Kashmir not having produced any influential speaker, writer or politician to \u2018present a sober account of the Kashmir case at the international level \u00a0as something larger than a territorial dispute\u2019 writes:<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the period between 1949-1950, there were at least three bright young Kashmiri activists who held out a lot of promise to emerge as exponents of their case at the intellectual level like Palestinian \u00a0intellectual Ghada Karmi. They were Yusuf Buch, Mahmood Hashmi, and Agha Shaukat Ali. They had all the makings of committed revolutionaries endowed with the gift of persuasive speech and simple, well-reasoned writing and, above all, the advantage of youth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mahmood Hashmi who in 1947 was a Professor at the Amar Singh College, Srinagar wrote a memoir and couple of books in Urdu on the Kashmir problem. True, Yusuf Buch did not write any memoirs or books. Nonetheless, his presentations at various international conferences and forums and writings in journals and newspapers if compiled will not only enrich the Kashmir narrative but will also serve as a lodestar for the future generation to guide them through a complex matrix of the Kashmir Dispute.<\/p>\n

Every speech or piece of writing of Yusuf Buch comes up with an answer for the questions raised as an alibi for procrastinating the resolution of the Kashmir Dispute and maintaining the status quo.\u00a0 On many an occasions \u2018intellectuals\u2019 in India and Pakistan high on rhetoric have been talking about a road- map on Kashmir outside the realm of the right to self-determination. In one of 2004 presentation, Buch has an answer for this. To quote him: \u201cAny road-map which deviates from the principle laid in the primacy agreement concerning Kashmir is bound to be arbitrary in conception and failure in effect.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the peace times in some political circuits of activists calling themselves as friends of Pakistan or India the pep talk often is that the resolution to the Kashmir Dispute lies in some \u2018give and take.\u2019 \u00a0M. Yusuf Buch has an appropriate take on this subject:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question arises here: if Pakistan is not to be pressed to surrender its position on this issue, why should India be? The answer is that neither of the two has to surrender: both have to respond to the common interest of their people and return to the rational position each originally took when they brought the issue to the United Nations. Their shared position was that the future status of Jammu and Kashmir should be determined by the will of the people (equally important) that should be ascertained under impartial auspices without coercion or intimidation from either side.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2005-06, many a \u201cpolitical personalities\u201d from Kashmir chose to walk into a booby trap discourse of the \u2018porous borders without changing them.’ \u00a0\u00a0Yusuf Buch saw the phrase \u2018borders cannot be redrawn\u2019\u00a0\u00a0 coined in this context by Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh as \u2018appearing soothing but, in effect calling for not settling the dispute but embellishing the status quo.\u2019 In a terse prose, he explains it further:\u00a0 \u201cBorders cannot be redrawn, it is said.\u00a0 When were they legitimately drawn? If they are to be, in the Indian Prime Minister’s words, “just lines on a map,” they should be easily changeable in the interests of peace and concord.\u00a0 We can see that his language represents the sheep’s clothing on the intransigent wolf.\u201d\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Since 1955, when the Plebiscite Front was established \u2018political personalities\u2019 of Jammu and Kashmir have been looking at the UN resolution as one of the modus-operandi for the settlement of the problem. They never saw the UN\u00a0 resolutions on Kashmir \u00a0as an international agreement equally never talked about dynamics of their non-implementation. Buch in a paper titled, \u2018Kashmir the Festering Wound\u2019 with all subtlety and sobriety tells us how non-execution of UN resolution is a total \u00a0disregard of an international agreement:<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce two parties signify their unreserved acceptance of proposals jointly submitted to them regarding their mutual dispute, they enter into an international agreement governing the settlement of that dispute.\u00a0 The agreement becomes more binding when the rights of a third party–a whole people—are involved.\u00a0 There can be no two opinions that adherence to, and fulfillment of, international agreements is one of the essentials of a stable international order.\u00a0 Nothing but chaos would be the world\u2019s lot if this principle were cast aside.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are lots of serious writings on the Kashmir Dispute, like that of Eqbal Ahmed and M. Yusuf Buch that are yet to be compiled and published as books or have escaped the attention of researchers. Such works, whether published in India, Pakistan or any other part of the world are an intrinsic part of the Kashmir narrative. They need to be disseminated and preserved for the posterity. So far Kashmiris living on the both the sides of the LOC and other parts of the world have not institutionalized their narrative by setting up an institution like \u00a0\u00a0the \u00a0Institute of Palestine Studies.<\/p>\n<\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

 
\n 
\nPunchline
\nReading Yusuf Buch
\nZ. G. Muhammad
\n <\/p>\n

I learned two new phrases in the past fortnight that I believe are important to our narrative and need to dwell upon a bit at length. One, \u2018life writing\u2019 and another \u2018conflict parasites\u2019- the first one I heard from a Kashmiri born novelist Nitasha Koul at the Kashmir University and the second one from a young journalist. The first one gives more power to the narratives of the struggling people and the second one is a chink in the armor of the resistance movement.
\nI wrote about the power of \u2018life writing\u2019 in my last week column. \u00a0To get more information about Kashmir related \u2018life writing,’ I googled. It took me to a series of article on Kashmir by Eqbal Ahmed, a\u00a0 \u2018political scientist, writer and academic known for his anti-war activism, support for resistance movements globally. And also to the presentations and writing …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editors-take"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3093"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3093"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3096,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3093\/revisions\/3096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}