Sir,
Please refer to news item “Jammu serves another ultimatum to Centre, State with unprecedented bandh” (DE. May 28) , which was very comprehensive, highly objective and revealing.
Indeed, the bandh was unprecedented and the message from the Jammu bandh to the BJP and the BJP-led NDA Government at the Centre was loud and clear: The people of Jammu province, who suffered huge political and economic losses during the past 67 years due to the discriminatory policies being adopted and ruthlessly implemented both by the national leadership and the Kashmiri-dominated successive Governments in the State, will no longer accept the position of servitude and subordination and achieve a political status in the state polity they deserved. Politics of exclusion will be strongly resisted and countered was actually the message from the bandh.
The second message from the Jammu bandh was that the people have completely lost their faith in the Jammu-based political leadership and the national leadership and that they themselves will now shape their own political future as per their own specific needs and aspirations, political aspirations included.
The third unique aspect of this unprecedented bandh was that the people’s anger was directed more towards the BJP and the BJP-led NDA Government than the Kashmiri leadership and that the bandh was perfectly peaceful and spontaneous with the people from all walks of life on their own supplementing to the hilt the sincere and novel efforts of the Bar Association-headed Coordination Committee so that the event became historic and authorities knew that their policies towards the people of Jammu province were unjust, unfair, discriminatory, and even gravely provocative.
Yet another message from the massive Jammu bandh was that it was held on the day Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh visited the City of Temples to throw light on the achievements of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The objective of the organizers of the bandh obviously was that they wanted to tell the Prime Minister in unequivocal terms that his policy towards Kashmir was similar to the one adopted by his predecessors towards Kashmir and that he was not dealing with the same Jammu the national leadership hitherto used to deal with. Their objective was to tell the Prime Minister in clear terms that the people of Jammu province are an important factor in the state’s political situation, that they are also an integral part of the problem the country has been facing in the state since 1947, that they needed to be treated at par with the people of Kashmir and that the BJP-led NDA Government needed to adopt a policy that empowers them and, at the same time, integrates them in the national mainstream so that they also enjoy all the fruits of Indian democracy. In other words, the message from the Jammu bandh to the Prime Minister was that while the people of Jammu province want the establishment of the proposed AIIMS in Jammu and an early completion of the Tawi artificial lake project at any cost, they also want him to adopt a policy that secures their political future within the democratic India.
It is hoped that the BJP-led NDA Government at the Centre would appreciate all the messages from the Jammu bandh and take appropriate steps to end widespread unrest in Jammu province.
Yours etc…
Akhil Mahajan
Jammu
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