Prof Hari Om
JAMMU: The Indian response to what has been happening in Kashmir in the aftermath of the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen’s Kashmir poster boy Burhan Wani on 8th July has once again disappointed the people of Jammu province, who constitute almost half of the State’s population. Those who masquerade as trouble-shooters and conflict managers have been writing and speaking for Kashmir and Kashmiri Muslims and their “aspirations” and “woes” and accusing the successive governments at the Centre of betraying them and not doing anything substantial to “bring them into national mainstream” by going beyond the confines of Article 370. Under this Article, the Kashmiri ruling elite already enjoys absolute and unbridled legislative, executive and financial powers.
Some of the trouble-shooters and opinion leaders have been saying that they are feeling “ashamed of”, “Kashmir is a big blot on the Indian political system” and India will suffer grievous injury in case it didn’t resolve the “political (read religious) problem of Kashmir politically”. It is hardly necessary to explain what they mean by political solution to the political problem of Kashmir.
Worse, none of them, like any Kashmiri leader, even once thought it politically prudent to refer to the people of Jammu province as if their life was not one of political and economic aspirations; as if they were not part and parcel of the country and the State. This, despite the fact that it was Kashmir that was merged with the Dogra kingdom in March 1846 under the Treaty of Amritsar, and not the vice-versa, as also despite the fact that they contribute more than 70 per cent to the State exchequer every year. All this has disappointed and angered the people of Jammu province, who already had little or no say in the governance of the State, as political power and financial institutions became the sole preserve of Kashmir soon after J and K acceded to India and the seat of power shifted from Jammu to Srinagar in 1947.
What disappointed the people of Jammu province all the more was the nature of the parliamentary debate on Kashmir on 18th and 19th July. Not a single lawmaker, not even those who represent Jammu province in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, spoke for them; they all spoke for Kashmir and in one voice accused the security forces of applying excessive force against the Kashmiri protestors (read mostly seditious mobs) and urged the Union Government to talk to Kashmiri people and address their concerns. One of them even proposed “referendum in Kashmir”.
It was hoped that the government’s response would be comprehensive and holistic and it would tell the lawmakers in unequivocal terms that Kashmir was not the whole of J and K State and that Jammu and Ladakh were the State’s two bigger provinces which housed people whose aspirations ranged from separation from Kashmir to complete merger with India to application of the Indian Constitution to the State in full to statehood to Union Territory status, but, sadly, it was not to be. It, like all the opposition parties, chose to ignore them and focus only on Kashmir and “Kashmiriyat” – a term coined only after Sheikh Abdullah was brought back to power by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in February 1975.
The point is that all rigorously excluded the people of Jammu province under the misguided notion that meeting the aspirations of the Kashmiri people would be the same as fulfilling the aspirations of the entire population of the State.
Kashmir Valley is just 40X90 sq km and those who have been pitching for the “political solution to political problem of Kashmir” do not constitute even 23 per cent of the State’s population. Only the members of one religious sect are involved in the activities the nation has been witnessing, particularly since 1987, when the National Conference, in collaboration with the Congress, rigged the Assembly elections wholesale to recapture power and ensure the defeat of the Muslim United Front candidates.
Yes, there is a serious problem in Kashmir, which needs to be surmounted. But this could happen only if think tanks, conflict-managers and policy-planners are prepared to diagnose what ails Kashmir and adopt a holistic approach. The manner in which they have sought to tackle the problem has only further complicated it and caused alienation of extreme form in Jammu province. The nature of alienation in Jammu could be determined from the fact that the political players in the region have all become pariah for their respective constituencies. They have lost faith in them and hold their leadership and New Delhi squarely responsible for their miserable plight, neglect and marginalisation.
J and K is a highly politically diverse State and if the issues confronting the people of the three regions of the State are to be addressed, policy-planners in the South and North Blocks and opinion-leaders and conflict-managers have to recognise the diversity in the strategic and communally-sensitive State. In other words, they have to deal with different regions differently and work out a solution that not only limits the area of strife to the very small Valley but is also acceptable to the people of Jammu and Ladakh whose battle-cry all along was, and continues to be, complete merger with India. Any move on the part of policy-planners in New Delhi to impose the will of Kashmiri leadership on the unwilling people of Jammu and Ladakh will only provoke political explosions of portentous dimensions in the otherwise peaceful but estranged regions of Jammu and Ladakh and if it happens, the results would be disastrous.
