All the 12 ‘young achievers’ picked up from one religion
BLUNT BUTCHER
JAMMU: BJP and its Ministers in the coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir will be soon in the eye of a storm over the year 2017 calendar of a bank that is controlled by the State government.
Information leaked to social media in Jammu makes it clear that the bank’s next year calendar would not carry any of the State’s heritage sites, picturesque shooting locales, fruits, flowers or handicrafts. It would, instead, carry portraits of 12 “young achievers”, all below 40 years of age, who, according to the bank’s selectors, have won laurels for Jammu and Kashmir in different fields.
Much to the chagrin of the people of Jammu, who constitute nearly 50% of the population and electorate, only two of the 12 “personalities” have been selected from this province. One runs a school in Doda while another is a young man from Udhampur district who got a distinction in a BSF competitive examination.
All the 12, including the “educationist” from Doda and the student from Udhampur, are of a particular community. Nobody has been selected from the Jammu Dogra heartland, from Hindus including Kashmiri Pandits, from Budhists, from Sikhs, from Ladakh or Rajouri-Poonch belt.
The most prominent of the 12 “personalities” is a 42-year-old Kashmiri author whose age has been reduced to 39 to make him qualify for the “selection”. From his memoirs to his journalism, from his prose to his poetry, from his films (read one film script) to his speeches, he has grown as an icon of azadi for the young Kashmiris, telling them day-in and day-out that India is an “occupying, illegitimate, oppressive country” that has “grabbed” Jammu and Kashmir by “cheating and deceit”. He calls it the “world’s biggest militarised zone” and openly pleads for Kashmir’s separation from India.
One of the controversial calendar’s pages would carry the image of a Kashmiri who is working with a social network site in India after success eluded him in some national television news channels. There is no independent confirmation to it but his one-time colleagues insist that he was “thrown out” from a premier national television channel after he refused to work on certain news assignments during a street turmoil six years back.
The calendar would also promote a young Kashmiri IAS officer who deserves a place in any such selection for standing first in IAS but has, of late, attracted virulent criticism for seeking to appease the separatists and threatening to resign in “protest” when a TV channel projected him as a counter icon to the Hizbul Mujahideen poster boy Burhan Wani.
The selectors have chosen two brilliant sportsmen to add some credibility to the selection but nobody has been noticed in Jammu and Ladakh. One has represented India in an international football event and scored a goal against Bangladesh in Karachi in December 2005. Another is a brilliant cricketer from Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s hometown of Bijbehara.
The latest addition— some call it replacement— to the list is 8-year-old kickboxing champion Tajamul Islam of Bandipora who is being prominently promoted the PDP MLC and Minister of Education Naeem Akhtar, himself a resident of Bandipora.
A fruit merchant from Shopian whose high-density apple orchard was destroyed in Bamdoora (Kokernag) by a frenzied mob two days after Burhan Wani’s death in an encounter, does also figure on one page of the bank’s calendar. He was reportedly targeted for his close association with late Chief Minister Mufti Sayeed, incumbent Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and some PDP Ministers including Naeem Akhtar and Haseeb Drabu.
A Kashmiri fashion designer, a young Kashmiri woman computer engineer, who developed the first Android app in J&K in 2013 and a male Radio Jockey working with a private FM radio station in Srinagar have also been picked up for the calendar.
Palpable resentment in Jammu is no good indication for the bank. Some of the dejected entrepreneurs have reportedly threatened to make a bonfire of the bank’s calendar it carried pictures of the known supporters of Azadi to promote secessionism. Many of them have said that they would close down their accounts with the bank in protest.
Most of the officials in the bank said that they had no knowledge of the selection but at least two of them, both working at zonal headquarters in Jammu, confirmed that the calendar had gone to printing. According to them, there was a possibility that the bank was printing separate calendars for Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh regions. But that could be seen as “divisive” and aimed at disintegrating the composite culture State.
