Vijay Gupta
Every time coalition partners (The PDP and the BJP) go into a huddle the State Actors read ‘ Stake Holders’ (politicians of all hues and separatists from the Kashmir Valley automatically qualify for this privileged designation whereas leaders from Jammu Province need to establish their credentials) see red – meaning imminent abrogation of Article 370. The reactionary political spectrum becomes weird.
The separatists across Kashmir Valley threaten bloodshed, Abdullahs fearing their privy purses being snatched naturally go in a tizzy, Panthers led by Prof. Bhim Singh dare BJP do it and while Congress men Gulam Nabi Azad and G A Mir look askance M/s Sham Lal and Raman Bhalla try to find a subterfuge. Of late, however, there is a tentative offer of help for the purpose.
While the fact of the matter is that the issue of WPRs and, I take the liberty of adding, that of a few hundred Safai Karamcharis who come in the category of ‘maha dalits’, is not political but of a grave Human Rights Concern deserving national attention. Allow me to bat for this.
In 1959 an African of Kenyan origin migrated to America, met A Dunham of Kansas and married her. From this wedlock in 1961 was born Barack H. Obama. Only 47 years later in 2008 this Barack Obama became the First Afro-American to become President of the USA. In 2012 this 44th President of America got elected again – a fete replicated by 12 of the 44 Presidents of USA.
In 2011 when a civil war broke out in Syria an estimated 11 million people mostly Muslims were forced to migrate and seek refuge in most of Europe and America too. As on 2015 Germany alone had accommodated 476000 refugees raising Germany’s Muslim population to more than 600000. Hungary had highest proportion – 1800 migrant to 1, 00,000 of Hungarian population. In spite of some muted opposition and also the fact that Christianity being official religion in most of these host countries, the hosts had been moved by the plight of these migrants and thus have lived up to their ideals of democracy, rights, liberty, opportunity and equality – all conforming to the United Nations Charter on Human Rights. Their resolve remained steadfast even though militants masquerading as refugees have been striking in some of the host countries creating mayhem. Note none of these countries including tiny Hungary has ever raised the bogey of “demographic change”
Now contrast this with the situation in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
On the eve of Partition in 1947 a few thousand Hindu families, mostly Dalits, from West Pakistan areas bordering Jammu while escaping Muslim fury and in the process losing some of their kith and kin and most of their assets landed in Jammu, then perceived to be a part of Independent India. In their hour of despair these ‘less miserables’ believed and rightly too, that in a culturally akin Jammu they would find immediate succor and shelter. While they got most of that they realized albeit too late that they had inadvertently made a colossal mistake. Many years later they (WPRs) realized that Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru the then Prime Minister of India in an act of misplaced magnanimity had ‘gifted’ the State of Jammu and Kashmir as a ‘Jagir’ to his protégé Sheikh Mohd. Abdullah which, Abdullah’s have always been maintaining is a sort of irrevocable arrangement. While a WPR settled in Delhi after partition could become Deputy Prime of India a WPR who had settled in Jammu in a similar situation could not aspire to become even a peon in this Jagir of Abdullahs.
Nehru, his progeny and a few other Prime Ministers including Atal Bihari Vajpayee willy-nilly are all partners in this abominable act of depriving the WPRs in Jammu their right to permanent citizenship in any part of Independent India including Jammu and Kashmir.
Sometime in late fifties due to an emergency like situation arising out of shortage of Safai Karamcharis (Mahadalits) and amid growing fear of an impending epidemic the Government of Jammu and Kashmir had beckoned these Safai Karamcharis from the neighboring Punjab with the promise of job and eventual settlement in Jammu. A few hundred of these poor things were lured by this offer. For most of these five decades these dalits have been carrying night soil on their head and manually clearing septic tanks even now thereby keeping this city clean for us. Five decades later, an extremely ungrateful State finds an Engineer/Doctor ward of this Mahadalit eligible only for the job of a ‘safai Karamchari’ in this land.
Since these two issues have been Jammu centric it is relatively easy to understand why a troop of never-guzzling Interlocutors took no notice. For a large corps of national print and electronic media it has always been fashionable to report a sneeze of Geelani and a yawn of Yasin Malik. Jammu and its issues have been of least significance all these years.
It has taken almost seven decades for WPRs to get noticed and for more than five decades a few hundred dalits have remained in abject misery and yet are not even mentioned at all because this part of India, world’s largest democracy is covered by a draconian law, conceived by some wily politicians and patronized by all central governments of free India, too timid to even attempt a repeal.
But we do have a state chapter of Human Rights Commission which derives its strength from the United Nations Charter for this purpose to take this insidious law head on. Haven’t we?
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