News Analysis
Spotlights on Kashmir valley alone
Why little importance to Jammu, Ladakh?

By B L Kak

An emotion when once aroused tends to persist and leaves behind an emotional mood which can, in the initial stage, lead to the subdued expression of discontent. The phase of this type of discontent is already over in the all-important north Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir. What has now-a-days become the topic of hot debate in the respective State is the continuance of New Delhi's official policy to attach more importance to the Valley of Kashmir than to Jammu region and Ladakh.

There is no denying that the Muslim-dominated Valley of Kashmir has been greatly shattered in terms of loss of human lives and economic losses since the outbreak of insurgency and militancy towards the last quarter of 1989. But it would be holding the stick from a wrong end if the powers-that-be in Delhi and Srinagar chose little importance to the mounting discontent and grievances of the population in the Hindu-majority Jammu region and Buddhist-majority Ladakh province.

If the Union Home Minister, Shivraj Patil, was asked during his recent visit to Jammu as to why Central leaders first set their feet on the soil of Srinagar and then stir out on a visit to Jammu, there was obviously sufficient reason and provocation behind a question of this nature. Numerous, indeed, are the instances to substantiate the grievance or discontent or hurt feeling over New Delhi's greater attention on the Valley of Kashmir.

This kind of approach and attitude, apart from the far-from-effective handling of the affairs in Jammu and Kashmir by New Delhi for years together, only contributed to the growth of regionalism in the troubled State — Muslim regionalism of the Valley of Kashmir, Hindu regionalism in Jammu and Buddhist regionalism in Ladakh. Valley's sectarian regionalism is so potent and combustible that pro-India Muslim leaders and politicians appear afraid of openly propagating or justifying the relevance of the accession of Kashmir to the Union of India.

Of all these leaders and politicians, Farooq Abdullah alone has had the courage and conviction to uphold the State's accession to India. Farooq Abdullah's successor, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, who in his capacity as Chief Minister of J&K, continues to be the esprit de corps of the regional outfit, known as People's Democratic Party (PDP). More importantly, since the formation of the PDP-led coalition Government in J&K over two years ago, Mufti Sayeed has not deemed it necessary to talk of, even once, the State as "an integral part" of the Union of India.

The Congress party, though an important constituent of the coalition Government in J&K, has an unenviable task while meeting the threat or challenge from Muslim rebels and separatists, particularly in the Valley. True, Mangat Ram Sharma, senior Congress leader of Jammu, is the Deputy Chief Minister. But he is not a force to reckon with. Hence, Kashmir's masses were not stirred at all when, during Shivraj Patil's visit to J&K between this November 6-8, Mangat Ram Sharma publicly talked of Jammu and Kashmir being "an integral part" of the Union of India.

At a time when advocates of 'militant Islam' and lovers of Pakistan, particularly Syed Ali Shah Geelani, wanted New Delhi to accept that Kashmir "is a disputed territory and not part of India", Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, went all the way to the Hague to proclaim that Jammu and Kashmir State "is an integral part of India". This statement did not set Kashmir's river Jhelum on fire as, soon after his return to the country, manmohan Singh played 'Kashmir card' by issuing instructions for the reduction of troops in J&K. The announcement was taken well by the average Kashmiri in the Valley at a time when the area reeled in the aftermath of the "rape" of a Kashmiri woman and her daughter by an Army official.

That the Prime Minister had sensed disapproval by large sections of Jammu and Ladakh population of any demilitarisation process in the troubled State was borne out by his assertion: It is not an irreversible withdrawal. We cannot afford to relax our vigil. We are aware that infiltration attempts from across the border and the LoC continue and the infrastructure of terrorism in the shape of training camps and launching bases remains intact". More importantly, the decision to reduce deployment of troops, Manmohan Singh made it plain, would be kept under constant review.

Fine is this. Finer and more encouraging and rewarding, politically, will be Government's re-structured approach and attitude towards the people of Jammu and Ladakh and their expectations and requirements. Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, and the Government he heads at present will have to realise and admit that the problem of the organisation of a region is that of the relationship between its subjects and the administrative apparatus.

Since the Kashmiris alone do not constitute the population of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, New Delhi cannot and should not accord lesser attention to the equally important regions of Jammu and Ladakh. If the ill-advised policy pursued by New Delhi could not help the Indians win over the Kashmiri Muslims hearts, the people of Jammu and Ladakh should not be further provoked to further promote their respective regional and communal feelings. And if little effort was made to make the people of Kashmir understand why secular democracy is preferable to theocratic military dictatorship, the pro-India feeling and stand of the most people residing the regions of Ladakh and Jammu should not be allowed to be underrated or ignored for the sake of the 'unwilling' masses of the Valley.

Mufti Sayeed and his Government, like the previous Governments in J&K, cannot be faulted for the demand for greater financial aid to the cash-starved State. The Prime Minister is ready to make an announcement of an encouraging economic package for the State during his forthcoming visit to Kashmir.

What is needed is New Delhi's intervention in ensuring that economic benefits now and later will also travel to Jammu and Ladakh without any bias and prejudices. New Delhi's 'Kashmir card', one expects, is also meant for these two regions.

Trusted Advani to revive party

By Atul Cowshish

The rather abrupt manner in which Lal Krishan Advani was appointed as president of the Bharatiya Janata Party-for the fifth time-- in place of his protégé, Venkaiah Naidu, makes it clear that the party has an acute leadership crisis and that it has still pinned its hope on following a hard-line Hindutva course which may be packaged by Advani under a different label to hoodwink the gullible. After making boastful claims about 'profusion' of talent among its younger generation of leaders, the BJP has settled for 75-year-old Advani who had declared recently that he did not see himself leading the party in the next general election due five years from now. But he added on a wishful note-encouraged by astrologers--that he did not see the UPA Government lasting its full term.

Mr Advani's reliance on soothsayers for fulfilling his life's ambition of becoming the number one chief executive in the country is on par with his party's medieval moorings, being a party that likes to define nationalism and patriotism with religious tones. But if he is a realist he might like to rely more on the only thing that helps in capturing power in India-winning the confidence of the people. The people have been moving away from the BJP as has been shown since early summer this year. The BJP has received one resounding blow after another from the people of India. The BJP was so paralysed and stupefied by the Lok Sabha poll defeat in May that it still refuses to acknowledge the factors that drove people away from it within six years of the hearty endorsement the people gave to a BJP-led coalition. The defeat in the recent Maharashtra assembly poll is another testimony that the people remain disenchanted and disillusioned with the BJP.

Rusted ideas and tired faces generally do not bring the desired results. It is not going to help the new BJP president revive the party's fortunes when there is a great paucity of leadership at the top as well its second rung. The widely reported divisions among the second rung of BJP leadership makes matters more difficult. The BJP is said to be undecided whether to expose its naked communal face or cloak it under some 'secular' mask. The allies of the BJP in the national Democratic Alliance are sitting quietly perhaps waiting to jump off the sinking ship. A leader of one of these parties, George Fernandes, has formed a 'gang of four' ostensibly to challenge the Congress president and Fernandes' pet object of hate, Sonia Gandhi, but in reality to explore avenues for forming a 'front' where he (Fernandes) will be the king.

Advani and his party pronounced the Congress-led Government a 'failure' in less than 100 days of its rule. But if Advani looks around the political spectrum he might discover that this 'failure' has not helped the BJP win new allies and friends in the past five or six months. Advani does not see that he has an uphill task ahead of him. He believes and so does his party that he has a 'magic touch'. It is being said that it was largely under his stewardship and his hard-line policies that the BJP, a party with just two members in the 545-member Lok Sabha in mid-1980s, moved up the ladder and became a ruling party at the centre.

His intense pursuance of a Hindutva course with a much publicised 'Rath Yatra' as one of its star attractions had indeed contributed much to the emergence of the BJP as a party to reckon with at the centre. But the question is can that 'spirit' be revived to deliver the same kind of results? Will the BJP again benefit from its divisive politics? No matter how much Advani may contest it, there can be no doubt that a dangerous consequence of the kind of 'strategy' he had devised in the 1990s to make his party popular was the demolition of the Babri mosque in December 1992 and the subsequent feeling of alienation among the minority.

Those who talk of the Advani 'magic' overlook the fact that the BJP was able to rise at a time when for various reasons the majority of the population was turning away from the Congress and the non-BJP alternative-the so-called Third Force--presented to the people looked unreliable, brittle and incapable of governance. Advani or the BJP did not have to do much to discredit this alternative, which was jostling to occupy the space for the main rival of the Congress. The waning popularity of the Congress looked very 'promising' to the BJP. The BJP had only to arouse further the anti-Congress sentiments to realise its goal of power at the centre. This it did by spreading all kinds of stories against its 'number one enemy' the Congress with the help of the RSS network and the party sympathisers in the media. In other words a strong anti-Congress and anti-Third Force ambience already existed when the BJP was trying to gain access to the seat of power in Delhi. These circumstances made it easier for Advani, who can articulate his views quite forcefully, to be bracketed as the top party leader with Atal Behari Vajpayee.

But many of the stories planted by the BJP, or the Sangh Parivar, in the 1980s and 1990s, especially those directed against the Nehru-Gandhi family, have proved to be false and motivated. This started to happen even when the BJP was in power at the centre. This has deprived the BJP of an effective tool for launching another forceful offensive against its 'enemy number one'. More uncomfortably for the BJP, the people have become wiser since then and the stories churned out regularly by the rumours mills and propaganda vehicles of the BJP leave the majority of people cool towards the BJP.

It will appear that one of Advani's strategy for regaining power at the centre will be creating a fear that under the new Government at the Centre the country has become unsafe and its integrity is under threat with insurgents in the northeast flexing their muscles. But Advani forgets that the biggest threat to the country's security had come during the rule of the BJP-led government when Pakistan was able to capture many heights in the Kargil hills, the militants sent by Islamabad attacked parliament and the jittery NDA Government could think of nothing but 'freezing' for over one year the major part of Indian army at the borders with Pakistan.

The Pakistani military strongman kept threatening India with nuclear attack to force the world to agree with him that Kashmir was a 'nuclear flashpoint'. Kashmir as an issue was truly internationalised when the BJP was in power. And it was the government of which Advani was a prominent part that took the first step to legitimise the rule of Gen Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan after his bloodless coup when he was invited to Agra where he stole the thunder from under the bumbling NDA leadership. (Syndicate Features)