Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
It is not on, this sadistic streak now so prominently noticeable, the conscious, fine-tuned effort to build permanent walls between a people who only until the other day seemed to be conjointed twins. Not exactly that, but somewhere thereabouts. No denying the fact that separation of the two has been very close to the hearts of some who have always claimed they know better.I am ,of course, speaking of the great deliberation with which the Sangh parivar and its masked minions are determinedly pursuing their ‘Man Ki Baat’,the separation of Jammu and the Kashmir vale, both together answering to the name the State of Jammu and Kashmir.
To the BJP’s credit it must be conceded that the sangh mascot has never minced its words when talking of its plans for the state last ruled,until the dawn of freedom, by Dogra Maharajas who in turn had earned the estate from Maharaja Ranjit Singh.The rest is recorded history,on either side of that takeover of the state by Raja Gulab Singh. Not for nothing did Sheikh Abdullah, the leader who questioned the takeover during his long drawn out agitation in the 1940s, speak of Kashmiris having been bought over by the Raja Sahib at approximately the same price as that of an egg.
In retrospect I don’t quite know whether the Sheikh’s agitation against the Maharaja was exactly needed or not. The seeds of suspicion between the two halves of the state(am leaving Ladakh out for the present) truly laid then. To the credit of the last Maharaja it must be noted that he had by and large acted fairly between these two distinct halves of his state. It was indeed as a consequence of the Sheikh’s quit Kashmir movement (quit for Maharaja) that Jammuites had started looking askance..
It was also around this time that the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh made its formal debut in the State, with the late Balraj Madhok in the van. The State’s accession to free India in 1947, marked by the invasion by Pakistani tribals, aided and abetted by the Pak army of the day, saw the Maharaja abdicate in favour of his son, Dr Karan Singh and the emergence of the Sheikh, as the Prime Minister. The rest, again is history and it tells us of how the Sheikh was deposed and arrested, how the newly formed Jana Sangh, precursor of the BJP, then led by Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, took exception to the special status granted to the state by Nehru’s New Delhi and the consequent Ek Vidhan, Ek Nishan agitation.
The Sangh Parivar did in between, over the years, revert to its slogan of the early 50s but it had by then merely become a ritual. Now, in power in New Delhi and sharing it with the Valley-based predominant political party, Mufti Sayeed’s People’s Democratic Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party is desperately trying to give wings to its long held dream. When after two months of hard bargaining the PDP and the bjp finally agreed to give the state a coalition Government it was assumed that the national partyhas for the present chosen to put its agenda in Jammu and Kashmir on the back-burner.
And indeed senior party leaders in delhi admitted as much. With the coalition now in its fourth month, the strained nature of its relationship with the pdp is becoming apparent. The Jammu bjp leaders ,their endeavours obviously blessed by the central leadership, have clearly chosen to revert to their agenda, at the very least to tell its partner that it can reconsider its position at any given time . Ek Nishan,Ek Vidhan is out there in the front, as is abrogation of Article 370 (guaranteeing special rights to the state) and the Jammu mp, dr Jatindra Singh, junior minister in the Prime Minister’s office, obviously feels free now to assert that his party’s commitments remain unchanged.
Singh obviously enjoys the blessings of Prime Minister Modi without which he wouldn’t have dared to make the assertion. Ram Madhav’s clarifications in Srinagar last week inthis regard may sound reassuring but the truth is that there is nothing particularly sacrosanct about the bjp’s assurances .It has its mind made up : no going back on its stand on its core issues including what it sees as the despicable Article 370. Madhav had hardly finished saying his piece when Jatindra Singh reiterated his party’s firm stand on the core issues which in effect are anathema to any Valley-based party.Hence the likelihood of the coalition bubble bursting in the face of its adherents,, if the bjp continues its double-speak on these very sensitive issues issue with such recklessness. Forget bjp, no Valley-based political party will ever accept the bjp agenda.
If you ask me, the bjp has given a clear indication of how it sees the end-game in Jammu and Kashmir. It’s driving the wedge between the Jammuites and the people in the valley with single-mindedness of the bigot. The Modi Government’s failure to come to the rescue of the Valley in the aftermath of last september’s devastating floods offers a clue to the working of the saffron mind.
As pointed out in this space a few days ago the high level official team to assess the loss suffered in the Valley is yet to make an appearance in the state and yet the Home Ministry found the time to tell us that the Defence Ministry had raised a bill of Rs. 500 crores for the rescue operations the armed forces had conducted in the valley during the floods. This amount would be deducted from the Rs.16 thousand crore package announced by Prime Minister Modi earlier.
Such callousness truly exposes the mindset of the bjp leadership when it comes to dealing with the suffering the valley underwent last year. Was I surprised by the question a Kashmiri flood sufferer, a retired senior Government official asked : Has the Government of India sent a similar bill to the Government of Nepal for the aid it offered to that country after it was struck by unprecedented quakes earlier this year ? Was Uttarakhand asked to repay the amount spent on identical relief during the floods there ? The bjp as the party in power at the centre and in the state (shared) needs to do some serious introspection ; it cannot determine state policy with an eye permanently stuck on its favoured prejudices. Much as the party would like to it’s simply not possible for it or its Governments to wish away the diversities of india; it also cannot afford to see the entire country awash in its favourite colour. Should it persist, it would surely make for a jaundiced view, a bhagwa view. That certainly is not what this country of 1.25 billion people needs or wants.
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