India’s foreign office mandarins may be laughing up their sleeves at the failure of the much-touted “Million March” of Pakistanis against so-called human rights violations in the Kashmir Valley.
The official India line, that a country with a billion people was not going to be cowed down by a million or so gathering in London’s Trafalgar Square and marching to the 10, Downing Street residence of the British Prime Minister, was largely justified. As it transpired, the rally did not even get five-figure support, leave alone a million.
The march became a casualty of intra-Pakistan politics, predictable had it been known in advance that players like the Pakistan People’s Party, represented by Bilawal Bhutto, and the Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI), represented by Imran Khan’s nephew, Hassan Niazi, would be present on the occasion.
In any case, such dramatisation was unlikely to work on foreign soil since the Kashmir question was and will remain a bilateral issue.
The United Nations has no role to play in resolving the oldest dispute of the Indian subcontinent, a fact it has often reiterated in the recent past.
Nor is the UK, the progenitor of Partition, ever likely to change its stand on the issue, which it has said often enough is to be resolved by talks between India and Pakistan.
Pakistan has been barking up the wrong tree for ages, its efforts to internationalise the issue getting less and less attention in world forums.
Even so, it would be futile to believe Pakistan’s politicians or its people would have learnt anything from the failure of the London march.
