Prof Hari Om
JAMMU: 550-odd princely states acceded to India in 1947 as per the constitutional law on the subject. J&K was one such state. The process of integration into India of almost all princely states was fast and almost smooth. As for J&K, sadly, it was highly painful and very slow. The process is still on. The fundamental reason: Instead of promoting the forces of democracy in J&K, Delhi handed over the state power to those in Kashmir whose concept of India and on India was completely different; who would muddy the Indian waters in Kashmir to widen the gulf between the people of Kashmir (read Muslims) and the rest of the countrymen. Delhi sidelined the forces of democracy in J&K.
To be more exact, Delhi considered the Kashmir’s majority community as a race apart. It also didn’t consider J&K an integral part of India to the same extent as other princely states. It threw in the lot of J&K with that Kashmiri leadership which earlier had tried to link the Kashmir’s fate with the votaries of Pakistan but turned towards JL Nehru after they failed to negotiate the Kashmir’s and their own political status with Muslim League leaders, MA Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan, vis-à-vis Pakistan.
The exigency of the time, the need of the nation, the nature and ideology of the Kashmiri leadership and the country’s geo-political interests warranted a very careful handling of the sensitive border state of J&K. But PM Nehru further messed up things. In October 1949, his government drove J&K away from the national mainstream through Article 306A (read Article 370). In May 1954, it bypassed the Parliament and applied Article 35A to J&K, which declared all non-Kashmiris, including President and Prime Minister of India, a persona-non-grata in J&K. In between (1952), PM Nehru held talks with J&K Wazir-e-Azam Sheikh Abdullah on the state’s political status vis-à-vis India. In 1952, the Sheikh had openly challenged the Indian state; he had made his intentions clear that he would not accept anything short of “Switzerland-type Independent Kashmir”.
The Congress’ kid-glove policy towards Kashmir and Kashmiri leaders was, in the words of Penderal Moon, bound to “excite powerful appetites and individual hopes” in Kashmir and “these, once aroused, would not be readily assuaged” (India: Divide and Quit). This precisely happened in Kashmir. PM Lal Bahadur Shastri did try to halt the process of drift in Kashmir in 1965 by bringing J&K under the ambit of Supreme Court, Election Commission and Comptroller General and by rendering Sheikh Abdullah’s National Conference, a protagonist of greater autonomy bordering on sovereignty, unreal and ineffective. Unfortunately, his successor Indira Gandhi much to the chagrin of the nation reversed the process in February 1975 by bringing back to power the deflated Sheikh whom her father Nehru had got dismissed as Wazir-e-Azam and arrested on August 9, 1953 under the sedition charge.
It was expected that things would worsen in Kashmir and it did happen. Things started going out of control in Kashmir with each passing day after 1974. The party politics and insatiable lust for power and pelf further aggravated the situation. Not that the ruling class in Delhi (Congress and BJP) didn’t enter into accords with Kashmiri leaders of all hues. It did enter. Take, for example, the 1975 accord between Indira Gandhi and ardent believer in the concept of Kashmiri sub-nationalism, Sheikh Abdullah; the 1984 accord between her and a bitter critic of all central laws, GM Shah; the 1986 accord between PM Rajiv Gandhi and pro-autonomy NC president Farooq Abdullah; the November 2002 accord between the Congress and pro-self-rule Mufti Sayeed; the 2009 accord between the Congress and Farooq Abdullah and his son Omar Abdullah; the March 2015 accord between BJP and Mufti Sayeed; and the April 2016 accord between the BJP and votary of self-rule, Mehbooba Mufti. But all these were power-sharing accords, notwithstanding the loud assertions by the Congress and the BJP that these agreements were reached in the “national interest”. Not one accord or agreement was aimed at integrating J&K into India or promoting politics based on democratic and economic issues. As a matter of fact, all these accords, instead of bridging the gulf between Kashmir and New Delhi, further widened it.
The ruling elite in New Delhi not just hobnobbed with controversial Kashmiri leaders but also accorded a special financial treatment to Kashmir ostensibly to keep the Muslims of Kashmir in good humour. Believe it or not, but it’s a fact that J&K received 10% of all Central grants given to states over the 2000-2016 period, despite having only 01% of the country’s population. In contrast, UP, which makes up about 13% of the country’s population, received only 8.2% of Central grants in 2000-2016. In other words, J&K having a population of 12.55 million as per the 2011 census received Rs 91,300 per person while UP received Rs 4,300 per person over the same period. Did New Delhi’s special financial treatment win over Kashmir or Kashmiri leadership? Sadly, the answer is a big NO.
That the nation suffered huge socio-political and economic losses and witnessed reigns of senseless brutalities and attacks on the Indian state and its symbols in J&K at regular intervals and also witnessed demographic changes on a massive scale not only in Kashmir but also in Jammu and Ladakh before 2018 is not a secret. Everything, including the circumstances leading to the forced exodus of the miniscule and hapless minority of Kashmiri Hindus in 1990 and demographic changes in and around Jammu city and elsewhere in Jammu province and the trans-Himalayan Ladakh, is in public domain. Hence, it’s hardly necessary to reflect on all this.
It was only from June 2018 that the Central Government started asserting its authority in J&K to protect and promote further the country’s paramount sovereign interests. Mehbooba Mufti-led PDP-BJP coalition government was brought down. Almost all top-ranking secessionists and terrorists were put behind bars. Radical outfits like Jamaat-e-Islami were banned. Hurriyat Conferences brought to the knees. Cases against those involved in hawala business aimed at promoting the cult of terror were registered and action also being initiated against them. Article 370 was read down and Article 35A scrapped. Ladakh was separated from J&K and granted UT status. J&K itself was reduced to the UT status. All the 890 Central laws made applicable to J&K. All or nearly all so-called mainstream Kashmiri leaders, including three former Chief Ministers, were put under detention. All these definite actions produced positive results. Kashmir witnessed peace for one year. Things started worsening after August 2020, when those responsible for communal unrest and secessionist violence in Kashmir, including three former Chief Ministers, were freed. Almost all Kashmiri parties joined hands to form Gupkar platform with a view to playing the kind of politics these parties had played in Kashmir independently or in alliance with the ruling elite in New Delhi. The results are there before our eyes: spurt in terror related incidents, target killings, attacks on paramilitary forces, open threats to Kashmiri Hindus and all non-Kashmiris, murder of innocent government employees inside their offices, recommencement of process of migration from Kashmir, to mention only a few. The whole point is that the powers-that-be in New Delhi and official think-tanks, policy-planers and trouble-shooters have hardly tried to diagnose what ails Kashmir or willfully ignored the hard realities. They continue to tread the same old path in Kashmir that promoted the forces inimical to democracy. They continue to blame Pakistan for the ills inflicting Kashmir conveniently overlooking the fact that while Pakistan came into being only in August 1947, Kashmir has been consistently witnessing troubles with the rise of Shahmirs since 1339. They have to review their whole policy based on the ground realities as they exist in this region. It was not for nothing that Congress veteran and former President R Venkataraman had urged PM Indira Gandhi to grant statehood to Jammu and UT to Ladakh and treat Kashmir separately (My Presidential Years). The Modi Government did exceedingly well to grant UT status to Ladakh in 2019. It should also treat Jammu like Ladakh so that the area of strife is limited to Kashmir Valley. Similarly, the Modi Government has to devise and apply a definite policy that induces the internally-displaced Kashmiri Hindus to return to Kashmir and live a peaceful, secure and prosperous life in an area that they prefer.