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As headlines break one after the other with more details of the unofficial trip by 27 EU Parliamentarians to a locked-down Kashmir, The Quint spoke to foreign policy experts and ex-diplomats about what the trip has achieved.
Asked about the upsides of this unofficial delegation of mostly right-wing Members of European Parliament (MEPs) visiting the locked-down Union Territory, out of the four experts we spoke to, only former ambassador to South Korea and former high commissioner to Canada Vishnu Prakash had an answer:
In Prakash’s estimation, members of the ‘left-liberal’ foreign press and politicians have bought into the version of events presented by Pakistan – “the self-appointed custodians of Muslims” – and so there is nothing wrong with choosing only to bring over MEPs who are “open minded” about India. Some might call this propaganda, but Prakash doesn’t.
Manoj Joshi, Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, took a rather different view. When asked whether the MEPs’ trip to Kashmir had turned up benefits for India, tangible or perceived, he said,
1. That the MEPs were disproportionately right-wing or far-right, and therefore not a representative sample of EU Parliamentarians. The perception being that the government of India, through a private organiser, is attempting to do damage control amid international concern, and it’s doing this bringing in only a section of MEPs who can be expected to look favourably upon the situation.
2. That the visit was organised by a lobbyist, Madi Sharma, through an NGO called WESTT, ostensibly an organisation for the promotion of women’s rights. However, this trip and other past events she has been involved in have had little to do with women’s rights. Questions are being raised on who is footing the bill for this high-profile visit.
Former foreign secretary Salman Haidar, speaking about whether such an arrangement between an NGO and heads of state is a normal occurrence, said that the process of organising the visit through an NGO and private citizen like Madi Sharma in itself was not problematic:
Joshi raised questions about the nature of Sharma’s association with the government of India.
TL;DR
Joshi and Haidar both say the fact of an NGO organising an unofficial trip like this is not inherently a problem, however questions remain over whether this was a wise move for the government to execute so publicly.
Asked if he thought the the far-right skew of the MEPs who visited was a problem, Vishnu Prakash said [speaking of left-liberal politicians]:
Ultimately, in his view, the political leanings of the MEPs are of little relevance because the real issue has become one of ‘perception management’.
Khalid Shah, ORF Associate Fellow with expertise in the Kashmir conflict, said the rightward skew of the MEP group would not play well in the international press, and could have broader negative implications for Kashmir.
TL;DR:
All experts we spoke to agreed that the visit by the EU MPs was an exercise in perception management. While Vishnu Prakash thinks such an exercise was necessary due to the ‘doomsday’ narrative being peddled by Pakistan, Joshi and Shah think this kind of overt damage control does its own damage to the government’s standing when other individuals seek to visit Kashmir, and invites even more of the backlash it was seeking to quell.
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