M. L. Kotru
There is this old saying about all marriages being made in heaven. Yes, many would love to believe that theirs is or was the one that the heavens truly blessed. Some might go a step further and argue that the institution of marriage has undergone a sea-change since grandpa and grandma’s days. There is this thing called a live-in state, where a couple may live together endlessly, procreate and yet not be married. You also have marriages born of love between two persons, man and woman (don’t wish to transgress into forbidden territory).
Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
And then you have the marriages of convenience which may be something like a contract between parties more lasting than ‘muttah’, a temporary marriage between the lonely traveller who spent months on a camel back, across desert lands, and did of necessity and honour enter into a contract with a woman en route, whom he took up as his wife for a certain period, depending on how much time the traveller was to spend in a populated city or town or port. This last one, an honourable exit for the man or woman, neither accused of doing anything contrary to the societal norms of the times.
How come, I ask myself as I write, that I have embarked on this virtual social discourse. Simple, I just can’t make head or tail of what exactly the Bharaitya Janata Party is up to in Jammu and Kashmir. Days have turned into weeks and now months, the party continues to be in a trance, as it were, induced by its undying and unexpected euophoria over its performance in the Hindu majority region of the State overall, taking the second place to the predominant valley-centric (with a reasonable presence in Jammu region as well) People’s Democratic Party of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.
The two, we have been repeatedly told, have agreed to join hands to give the State a new government which on the face of it had initially seemed the unlikeliest of marriages, given their chalk-and-cheese political beliefs, particularly concerning the State including their diametrically opposite positions on some issues considered basic to their political identities by the two parties.
That the People’s Democratic Party, the largest single party in the State Assembly, should have had reservations about the studied ambivalence of the BJP over the retention of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution is very understandable, an undeniable element determining the State’s relationship with the Union— an anathema, if not worse, to the chauvinistic Bharatiya Janata Party which has sought annulment of the provision ever since its incorporation in the Constitution of
The BJP did try to under play this commitment while campaigning in the valley but at the national level, including on the odd occasion during its Jammu campaign, it reiterated its determination to undo the constitutional provision. There have been other issues such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act which have had the potential to upset the coalition plan now in the works.
And, frankly, one had hoped the BJP would take two steps forward to PDP’s one to give concrete shape to their plans. And when the two did agreed to pool their resources in the Rajya Sabha and the State Legislative Council elections nearly two weeks ago it appeared that the die had finally been cast and the new government would shortly take over. Mufti Sayeed’s programme appeared to be just a matter of detail and that’s what did not happen smoothly as one would have liked.
Truth to tell the mandate Mufti Sayeed has secured,he is the only possible choice to head the new government in the State and he could well have done it by accepting the unconditional support offered to him by the National Conference and the Congress. That would have been a soft,opportunistic option.
He chose the more difficult route to ensure that his party’s political agenda continues to remain centre-stage as reflected in the public disclosure by it of what would be the shared agenda of the PDP-BJP coalition whenever it is finally forged.Of interest here is that the non-existence of a similar commitment in the party’s earlier alliance with Congress had eventuallhy resulted in its being a less than a cooperative endeavour.
The BJP is stuck in the maze of contradictions of its own creation. While arguing that talks to hammer out a joint minimum programme are on course it obviously is still very much engaged in the process of selling the package to the rest of the parivar.Ram Madhav the link man between the RSS and the BJP on the one hand and the BJP and the PDP on the other admitted as much when he mentioned in passsing the concerns of some parivar outfits which needed to be addressed by the BJP. oOne thing that emerges clearly as the parleys between the two principals move towards closure, the PDP leader not have very many concessions to make than may have already made.
To conclude ,I don’t know whose idea it is – Mr. Modi’s I presume – but you can’t afford to wear out the PDP in this enforced waiting game when it is known that the party ,more than the PDP perhaps, is keen to lay its hands for the first time on office in the State of Jammu and Kashmir. In the short term it may seem a game worth playing but it has the potential to put the party in the State on a self destructive path.
In a different situation such posturing may seem an attractive proposition but not in like the one we have in Jammu and Kashmir. Even extending governor’s rule in the hope of achieving through the backdoor what you can’t otherwise, may just become impossible. Governor’s rule cannot in the first place be a long term solution; then, if you have fresh elections in the State what guarantee do you have that Mufti Sayeed cannot do a Kejriwal to you in Jammu and Kashmir in the subsequent elections.
For one thing it could provide the valley enough reason to come together and vote for a single mainstream party ,the People’s Democratic Party in the instant case, for the simple reason that it stood up to the bullying by the ruling party in New Delhi, the BJP.
I started by speaking of marriages, those made in heaven and also the unlikely ones. The PDP-BJP alliance, much as I wish it materializes and comes to serve the State and its interests as best as it can, I am a little worried by the sneers and the giggles I hear, emanating from BJP sources, at socials as much as at funerals.
Of the funerary types I had this one only the other day when a middle level party man ambled up to me to make conversation: “kahiye, kya ho raha hai aap ke Kashmir mein”. My retort that I thought Kashmir was as much his as it was mine, missed him by a mile. “Wahan toh srakar hamari hi rahegi, yeh maan ke chalna padega. Shyama Prasad Mookerji yaad hai na aapko,” was his parting shot. In desperation I asked him to talk something about the man whose pyre had been lit in front of us. And I moved on. And this after six decades plus of my journalism in the country and outside it.
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