Chief Justice of India T S Thakur has opposed the idea of India seeking arbitration of Kashmir dispute with Pakistan at the international court of Justice [ICJ].

Speaking at the launch of Aman H Hingorani’s book “ Unravelling the Kashmir knot” published by Sage Publications in Delhi on Monday, Justice Thakur said that at the moment, Kashmir  issue seems beyond solution.  Advocate Hingorani’s book explores the legal and constitutional backdrop of the Kashmir dispute and also concludes that India should go to the ICJ against Pakistan and China for reclaiming its territory.

 Justice Thakur, who hails from the state, however, said that had this [going to ICJ] been a viable solution, the government would have opted for it long ago.

 He said the present turmoil in Kashmir is rooted in an ideology that Hindus and Muslims cannot live together. “This thought process had led to the partition, but Kashmiris had out rightly rejected it then.”  Justice Thakur said though Pakistan emerged as a state exclusively for Muslims, India had rejected this idea on the belief that we, Indians, are an inclusive society.

 However, today, he lamented that Kashmir had become a much divided society – people of Jammu wanted abrogation of Article 370 and total integration with India; those of Ladakh want their territory to become a union territory due to their mistrust about Kashmir’s hegemony, the people of Kashmir are yearning for independence, while the Hindus of Kashmir who have been hounded out of the Valley want to have a homeland in there.

 This all, he said, makes Kashmir a much divided house and therefore the solution to it was not easy. “I don’t see any immediate solution to this.”

 However, he said the only aspect of the problem that could be worked on was the changed aspirations of the people of Kashmir.  “The only way to make people of Kashmir valley change their way is to shower them with love,” he said.

 Justice Dalveer Bhandari of the ICJ, however, refused to give his opinion on whether India should go to the ICJ on Kashmir to resolve it.

 Explaining his book, Hingorani said that law alone cannot resolve the Kashmir issue and added that it was India which had raised doubts about the unconditional nature of the accession of the J&K state to India and internationalised the issue by taking it to the UN. “My book, therefore, proposes that India should, as a first step, make a legal reference to the ICJ so as to confirm, as it were, its title deeds to the state.”

 He said three chapters of the book are devoted to how the Indian State can, post a successful reference to the ICJ, can resolve the imbroglio and win the trust of the people in Kashmir.

 Actor M K Raina said that Kashmir had turned into a theatre of tragedy due to the conspiracy of the Birtish empire, which wanted to keep south Asian states weak and unstable, for their own interests.