Muslim clerics in India, on Tuesday expressed their displeasure at Hurriyat leaders who resisted and criticised Indian politicians’ effort to hold talks with them in held-Kashmir.
Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani and other members of party refused to meet Indian delegation which was led by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday
Sources reported that the separatists had reservations over talking to the team mainly because of the fact that Union Home Minister was leading it. Indian-occupied Kashmir has been engulfed in turmoil since the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani.
Muslim clerics from the Barelvi school of thought said that members of that delegation should have avoided meeting those who raise slogans like Pakistan zindabad. “Some people who went with the home minister to Kashmir went to meet separatists, they should not have done that. How can we talk to people who are raising Pakistan zindabad slogans? We are very clear that we would not go at their doorstep only to be turned away by them, like they did to a handful of people recently,” Maulana Ansar Raza of the Garib Nawaz Foundation said.
Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front chief Yasin Malik had also rebuffed the parliamentarians when they had tried to meet him at a police station, where he is detained. He told them that he would talk to them when he visits Delhi. “You see the situation outside. What can we talk about in such a situation?” Malik was quoted as saying.
Further, former moderate Hurriyat Conference chief Abdul Ghani Bhat welcomed the members of the Singh-led delegation but informed them that a decision had been made to boycott them. Bhat called the visit a “futile exercise”, saying nothing concrete would happen unless India talked to Pakistan.
