TRIAL OF NATIONAL CONFERENCE LEADERS

“Oppressed by the extreme poverty and o freedom and opportunity of the people of Jammu and Kashmir State,I and my colleagues of Jammu and Kashmir National Conference, may of whom are behind the prison bars or in exile today, have humbly sought to serve them during past sixteen years. We have endeavoured to give faithful during past sixteen years. We have endeavoured to give faithful expression to the growing consciousness among the people of their imprescriptable rights, aspirations desire for freedom. This has attracted the panel and preventive provisions of law, where law is not based on the will of the people,it can lend itself of the suppression of their aspirations. Such law has no normal validity even though it may be enforced for a while. There is a law higher than that, the law that represents the people’s will and secures their well-being, and there is the tribunal of human conscience, which judges the rulers and the ruled alike by standards which donot change by arbitary will of the most powerful. To that law I gladly submit and that tribunal I shall face with confidence and without fear, leaving it to history and prosperity to pronounce their verdict on the claims. I and my colleagues have made not merely on behalf of the four million people of Jammu and Kashmir but also of the ninety-three million people of all the States of India. That claim has not been confined to the people of a particular race, religion or colour. It applies to all,for I hold that humanity as a whole is indivisible by such barriers and human rights must always prevail. The fundamental rights of all men and women to live and act as free beings,to make laws and fashion their political, social, economic fabric, so that they may advance the cause of human freedom and progress, as inherent and cannot be denied though they may be suppressed for a while I hold that sovereignty resides in the people, all relationships,political, social and economic, derive authority from the collective will of the people.”