A State divided: Just distortions
Sir,
Mr. Balraj Puri's article
"A State divided" appears to be a politically
motivated essay [The Times of India, Jan. 30]. For, it
contains nothing but distortions. For example, he
denounces the RSS spokesperson, Mr. M G Vaidya, for his
unstinted support in favour of the Jammu and Kashmir
Nationalist Front [JKNF] demand that seeks the status of
a full-fledged State for the grossly ignored and
politically neglected Jammu region. He asserts that Mr.
Vaidya and his organisation, RSS, and the JKNF convenor
are only advocating the pernicious two-nation theory with
a view to integrating the Hindu and Buddhist-majority
areas in Jammu and Ladakh with India and enabling the
Muslims of the State to have a dispensation of their own
choice.
Again, he says that
"it would be extremely difficult for minorities to
survive in any one of the regions" in case the State
is trifurcated on the lines the RSS suggests-lines
similar to the ones being advocated by Mr. Farooq
Kathwari, an American think-tank. His argument is that
the Hindus in Jammu region, the Buddhists in
trans-Himalayan Ladakh and Muslims in Kashmir province
would become extremely intolerant and do everything to
crush the minorities.
Not only this, he
emphatically asserts that the statehood demand enjoys the
backing of the Hindus alone and that the Muslims in the
region have nothing to do with it.
But these are just three
of the several such distortions that this article
contains and to catalogue all those would require one to
write an essay which would be far more lengthy than that
of Mr. Puri's.
It would not be out of
place to mention here that I was also one of the speakers
in the largely-attended seminar Mr. Puri has referred to.
It is true that Mr. Vaidya, like me and several others,
supported the idea of statehood for Jammu. But to say
that the speakers vouched for a communal division of the
State would be to put such nasty ideas in the mouth of
those who actually castigated communalism and opined very
forcefully and convincingly that the reorganization to
J&K on regional lines is a must. The upshot of their
whole formulations was that such a reorganization would
not only empower the Jammuites and Ladakhis to compensate
for the political and economic losses they have suffered
so far at the hands of the successive Kashmir-dominated
and Valley-centric governments in the State, but also
enable New Delhi to start parleys with Valley leaders of
all shades of opinion and strike a truce over Kashmir.
The most striking aspect of the whole seminar was not
that it was attended by a large number of Muslims but
their enthusiasm and unstinted support for the idea of
the State's reorganization. And, whatever happened in and
transpired during the seminar was faithfully reported by
the entire local media, both print and electronic.
Mr. Puri would do well to
look once again at the press reports dispassionately. He
must accept the realities in J&K. One of the
realities is that Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh cannot be
maintained as one political unit. For, the political
needs, compulsions and aspirations of the people
inhabiting these ethnically, historically, economically,
culturally and geographically distinct regions are
different and conflicting. Yet another reality is the
emergence of the Gujjars United Front [GUF]. It is a
premier organization of the ethnically different Gujjar
and Bakerwal Muslims, who constitute the third largest
social group in the State after the Kashmiri Muslims and
Jammu Dogras. Its sole watch-word is : 'Segregate all the
six districts of Jammu region from Kashmir and convert it
into a full-fledged Gujjar and Duggar Jammu State within
India and under the Indian Constitution". Who in the
State doesn't know that this organization is working day
and night to achieve its objective. Mr. Puri should also
remember that the solution to the Kashmir problem lies
only in the segregation of the entire Jammu region and
Ladakh province from the Valley. To work against this
solution and frighten the minorities by distorting or
inventing facts would be to further aggravate the State's
political scene, perpetuate the domination of one region
over the other and help the Pakistani cause in Kashmir.
Yours etc....
Prof. Hari Om
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