Author: Arvind Lavakare
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: October 30, 2002
URL: http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/oct/30arvind.htm
The Kashmir Vale has won yet again.
And Jammu remains jinxed as always. The Congress giving away the J&K
chief ministerial post to Anantnag-based Peoples Democratic Party, despite
being favoured by the arithmetic of the results of the assembly election,
is a baffling decision. It's a decision that is likely to lead to consequences
other than merely intensifying the movement for a separate Jammu state,
which formed part of the RSS demand for J&K's trifurcation in June
this year.
The initial discontent reported
in the Congress party's Jammu camp against Sonia Gandhi's so-called sacrifice
and so-called statesmanship seems a sign of things to come. If the Sangh
can weave this discontent into something tangible, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's
coalition government could soon have trouble on its hands, what with its
common minimum programme having enough to attract the wrath of the 28-member
National Conference that would be only too happy to tease and torment the
coalition every step of its way.
Let it be stated straightaway that
the demand for a separate Jammu state by the RSS in June this year was
not really a new demand. It can be traced to the late forties and early
fifties when the Praja Parishad party in J&K resented the fact that
the Indian Constitution was not applicable in its entirety to J&K because
of the wishes of the National Conference's Sheikh Abdullah aided by Jawaharlal
Nehru's inexplicable blind support to him.
The resentment had begun when none
of the four members from J&K, nominated on India's Constituent Assembly
by the state's yuvraj (crown prince) on the advice of Sheikh Abdullah,
was from Jammu. Further, the Praja Parishad was insistent that Jammu and
Ladakh had wanted full integration with the Dominion of India without Article
370. In a public speech in Kanpur on December 29, 1952, Dr Shyama Prasad
Mookerjee, president of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (precursor of the Bharatiya
Janata Party) had said: "If Sheikh Abdullah is adamant, Jammu and Ladakh
must not be sacrificed, but the Kashmir Valley may be a separate state
within the Indian Union receiving all necessary subventions and being created
constitutionally in such manner as Sheikh Abdullah and his advisers may
wish for."
It was not to be. And so, for 50
years, Jammu has had fewer seats than the valley in the J&K assembly
though in terms of land area and number of voters it has warranted the
same number as, if not more than, the valley. (In the latest election,
Jammu had 37 seats, Ladakh four, and the valley, 46). Jammu has suffered
in other spheres of the state as well: allocation of financial aid, education
facilities, and employment in government.
With the PDP's 16 MLAs being all
from the valley, it can hardly be expected to have a soft corner for Jammu,
or Ladakh for that matter, especially when the Mufti is on record that
the PDP deserved the CM's post because the various problems of the state
emanate from the valley. The new coalition's multi- point common minimum
programme is in keeping with that hypothesis, its reference to equal treatment
for all three major regions of the state being so casual as to arouse doubts
about sincerity in that direction.
The most serious drawback of this
CMP is its over-emphasis on political aspects to the almost total neglect
of the need for the state's economic resurgence and the urgency to root
out the widespread corruption --- the two evils that had characterised
the Abdullah government. These two evils had been clearly revealed in the
pre-election press reports from various parts of the state (Now for some
governance please. But the PDP doesn't seem to have read those reports.
It has, instead, chosen largely
to mollify the militants in the state and pass it off as "the healing touch".
Scrapping the applicability of POTA in the state, release of detainees
after "screening", finishing off the Special Operations Group of the state
police, increasing the aid to families of slain terrorists by another Rs
100,000, making the state take over the education of militants' children
--- these are measures, really, that constitute a reward for terrorism.
Similarly, this policy intention
to talk to various groups in the state, including militants and the Hurriyat
Conference, is totally irrelevant as a solution of the state's adversaries.
Just what will these talks achieve? If, for instance, the Hurriyat reiterates
its demand for a plebiscite, what does Mufti Mohammad Sayeed do about it?
Will he endorse that demand? Will he expect the Government of India to
act on it?
Clearly, the Mufti has, at best,
a foggy idea of what the problems of a state called J&K are, of what
the solutions are to those problems. The MORI poll of some months ago and
the very recent Asian Age- Nielsen poll have not had any impact on his
thinking. He still seems to nurture the belief that most of the J&K
people, rather than a minuscule minority, want to secede from the Union
of India and are therefore the cause of the turmoil in the state. And that
what the Kashmir valley wants is what the rest of the state wants. Sad.
Sadder still is why the Congress
has agreed to all this as the platform for governance. Sonia Gandhi had
more than once lambasted the NDA government that it had no Kashmir policy.
Now, having got the chance to show its mettle, she has instead revealed
that she too has no policy on the subject.
It's either that or an enactment
of the saying that "discretion is the better part of valour". By taking
the rear seat and instead allowing the PDP to occupy the hot seat, and
by riding along with the core of the PDP's poll agenda, Sonia Gandhi has
chosen the "heads I win, tails you lose" formula. If the PDP fails in its
allotted first use of the batting crease in Srinagar, the Congress can
always claim to have been only the non-striker. And if, by chance, it succeeds
in whatever it is trying to achieve, the Congress can share the hurrah
to boast about when the 2004 general elections come.
It's a dangerous game either way,
which the Congress president has chosen to play with the people of Jammu,
with those of Ladakh, and with all those in the whole of Jammu & Kashmir,
including the thousands of Kashmiri Pandits who're no longer in that state.
Tailpiece: The missus says that
that only reason why Madam didn't choose to bat first in the J&K Test
was because she wanted to punish Ghulam Nabi Azad for strutting about in
the two weeks after V-Day as though he were Virendra Sehwag. Considering
her past, that's not an entirely implausible theory, is it? Sonia analysts
are free to give us a final take on that.
