Vajpayee 2.0: New Kashmir needs a consensus that builds on legacy of former PM | The Indian Express

Vajpayee 2.0: New Kashmir needs a consensus that builds on legacy of former PM | The Indian Express

Written by Amitabh Mattoo, Nirupama Subramanian |Updated: April 12, 2019 9:07:01 am

The writer served as a cabinet-level advisor to Mufti Mohammad Sayeed

Vajpayee 2.0: New Kashmir needs a consensus that builds on legacy of former PM

Since 1947, Kashmir has remained India’s foremost national security challenge, the nature of the challenge changing with the decades.

Without doubt, the most popular mainland leader in Kashmir was and continues to be Atal Bihari Vajpayee for both his sincerity and imagination as well as his spontaneity and vision.

Kashmir is in a mess. The sooner the people of the country realise this, the easier it will be to forge a consensus once the din of the elections is over. We need, today, a national framework on Jammu and Kashmir, based not on positions of the past or manifestos articulating absolutist ideas, or national security doctrines that conflate nationalism with religion. We need a policy outlook, which we term as Vajpayee 2.0, that builds on the imagination and legacy of the former prime minister and his vision for the state.