J N Dhar
Mehbooba seeks Central funds, power and Govt.of separatists’ liking Mehbooba Mufti, PDP Chairperson, has said that her party will be in a position to form a Government in Jammu and Kashmir, if the Centre provides her confidence-building measures. She has been repeatedly asked as to what these measures are. She does not explain and continues to keep the voters of the state and political parties of J & K and of the Centre waiting sine die.
She adds that her party will, also, have to keep in mind the views of the separatists. In the commonsense terminology it implies that separatists will become stakeholders in the proposed Government.
On November 27, last year, as an MP of the J & K government ruling party, Mehbooba told Parliament that the country owns Muslims and Muslims own this country. She added that Muslims had rejected the two-nation theory and stayed back in India. She told the House: “Let us make our country a showcase window of harmony.” Now, when a time has come which gives her an opportunity to make her state a showcase of harmony, she dilly-dallies.
She says that Muslims have rejected the two-nation theory. That is a fact. The secular minded Muslims did that. That included her father, Mufti Sayeed, Sheikh Mohammad Abdhulla, Ghulam Mohammad Sadiq, political Godfather of Mufti Sayeed and crores of others. That was, also, the reason why, in 1947, when Azim Premjee’s father was, offered by M. A. Jinnah, the Finance Minister’s post in Pakistan, he refused to leave India. Similarly, Dr. Zakir Hussain, Rafi Ahmad Kidwai, Ghulam-ul-Sayidain and a large number of Muslim intellectuals, who had the opportunity to go to Pakistan, in high positions, refused to go there. They preferred to live in democratic India – in a pluralist atmosphere.
At that time, even, some secular Muslims left Pakistan and came over to India. Among them was the nephew of Sarhadi Gandhi, Abdul Gaffar Khan, who became my colleague in the Hindustan Times, as also a Kashmiri Muslim, a resident of Lahore, who left Pakistan and settled in Delhi where he was appointed at a high post in the Delhi University and whose sons, today, are top-class engineers.
Ten months ago, when the Assembly election results were announced, Mehbooba’s father, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, thanked separatists and Pakistan for having allowed the election process run in a peaceful atmosphere. Actually, that day, the Election Commission deserved thanks for having arranged the polls in an unbiased manner and, also, the security forces which helped maintain peace and order at the polling stations.
It was the voters of the State – and not Pakistan or the separatists — that facilitated the PDP attain 28 seats in the legislature. Pakistan and separatists are opposed to democratic elections being held in the state. They term these as farce. Many a time the separatists have given a call for the boycott of elections.
As the separatists are opposed to the very process of elections, they have been killing some elected panchas whose only crime has been that they had, courageously, contested the panchayat polls and succeeded therein.
If the PDP finds it difficult to work with the BJP, how can it work in cooperation with separatists, who dislike democracy, pluralism and respect for religions, other than theirs? PDP seems to be trying to secure Indian tax payers’ money and the separatists’ desire that their religion should become the super executive, legislature and judiciary of the state. The party seems to have sympathy for people who have set a building on fire and also for the fire brigade that fights such a fire. This amounts to standing on two sailing boats, simultaneously, and likely to fall in the running water of the river.
In the talks, held after the Mufti Sahib’s passing away, between the BJP, the PDP, the government and the leaders of different political parties, many matters were discussed. I found no leader of these enlightened classes talking about the discrimination Jammu and Ladakh has suffered for 58 years, or of Kashmiri Hindus who were driven out of their homes and hearths at the point of AK-47 — as if such problems are so insignificant that the leaders feel: “Why talk about these at all?”
(The writer has been working as a news analyst in Pakistan, Delhi, Jammu, Kashmir, Ladakh and Washington.)
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