Rekha Chowdhary
Where does Jammu region stand after the August 2019 changes and what is the response of Jammu’s civil society to these changes? One can get a glimpse to the mind of Jammu’s intelligentsia by going through the opinion pages of Daily Excelsior. Scores of opinion pieces have been written since the abrogation of the special constitutional status of the state and its reorganisation into the Union Territory. (Unfortunately not much opinion has been expressed about the separation of Ladakh from this once upon a time the largest princely state of India.)
Many of these opinion pieces have raised concerns about the direction of Jammu’s politics and have sought to focus on Jammu’s regional identity. Of these opinion pieces I am picking up three with the purpose of expanding the debate and inviting further comments and discussion. Of these articles, I have already responded to Lt. General Bhopinder’s Singh’s elaborate piece ‘When the Agenda of Jammu becomes bigger than the political agenda’ (DE, 14/5/2020) However, due to the significance of the points raised in this article, I am including it in this article again. The other two opinion pieces are Anil Anand’s ‘Need Jammu Declaration’ (DE, 28/2/2021) and K B Jandial’s ‘Jammu Identity : Why don’t we Assert it?’
Though written with a specific theme in mind, there are certain common points raised in these three pieces. All the pieces reflect a common anxiety about the direction of Jammu’s politics in the wake of the new realities of J&K. All the three pieces also share the feeling that August 2019 developments have not contributed to Jammu’s empowerment and all three of them are looking inwards to find a solution to the problems of Jammu’s disempowerment. Their common focus in on Jammu’s cultural identity with its composite, inclusive and secular character. For all of them, it is in this cultural identity that one can find Jammu’s strength and its road to empowerment. However, the problems as identified by all of them is the failure of the region to translate its cultural strength into its empowerment. Jandial finds the problem in lack of people’s ownership of their identity and its assertion. Anil Anand finds fault with Jammu not having a narrative that goes beyond the ‘seasonal’ demands and General Bhopinder Singh finds fault with the polarising politics of ‘oversimplified binaries’ between Jammu and Kashmir.
The points raised by these scholars are very pertinent and need to be debated widely by the civil society and the political class – much more so in the context of the growing sense of disillusionment regarding the continued state of powerlessness of Jammu region. In the situation in which Jammu region continues to find itself disempowered, notwithstanding the drastic changes of August 2019 – questions can be raised about the directions of its politics, especially the way Jammu’s political identity has been articulated and asserted.
One major problem that has been identified by K B Jandial in Jammu’s politics is its failure to assert itself.This is the core question that many are asking in Jammu. The region does not represent itself as a political force to recon with and does not make an impact within the larger politics of J&K. Why?
In my understanding one of the reasons for this lies in a mismatch between the reality of the region and its political representation by the political class. Till now the political class has not succeeded in offering a politics for the region which represents the region in its entirety and thereby represents its strength. Jandial is very much right about the strength of Jammu’s cultural identity. It is a unique region unmatched by any region of the erstwhile state of J&K – neither Kashmir nor Ladakh would match its multi-layered diversity (not only of religion, but of language, culture, tribe as well), its culture of mixed life, its layers of rich cultural traditions and much more. But there has been a lack of political vision in representing this cultural strength into the politics of the region – a politics with which all sections of society represented by this diversity could identify. While the society since 1947 has been evolving as a composite society (and projecting its tradition of accommodation and co-existence all through the provocative period of militancy), the identity politics has meanwhile been taking exclusive shape. One could see the region getting politically fragmented in so many ways. With peripheries – whether those physically distanced from mainland Jammu or those socially distanced from the dominant sections – being excluded from the political discourse of the region – Jammu has not been able to speak in one voice. And this remains the perennial weakness of the region. Had Jammu’s politics succeeded in speaking from its peripheries and articulated its political agenda of disempowerment keeping the remote areas and section in the loop, it would have acquired a different meaning altogether. Imagine for a moment, what would have been scope of Jammu’s politics if any politics of regional assertion or any demand for resource allocation (say for instance ‘Central University’ or ‘AIIMS’) could be made by keeping the peripheral areas of the region at the centre.It would not only have created an impact of unifying the whole region but would have also made the demand and therefore its politics much more forceful. It is the lack of an-all pervasive regional discourse that Jammu region has not been able translate its strength into a political advantage.
Standing at the cross-roads of history today, the political class needs to rethink and re-imagine the politics of the region. Jammu will be one step nearer its empowerment if its politics is ‘unifying’ in nature (using Anil Anand’s words).
Related with the problem of exclusive nature of Jammu’s politics, is the issue of the lack of positive identity perceptions about Jammu region. Rather than identifying with the rich cultural traditions of Jammu- as the base of Jammu’s identity, this politics has evolved as a reactive identity politics. Much of the identity politics of Jammu region has been asserted in reaction to Kashmiri identity and politics. Regional sentiments here have been articulated mainly in response to the development in Kashmir region. This kind of assertion of Jammu’s identity politics has kept the region permanently trapped into a a negative politics of victimisation of the region. This has also resulted in what General Bhopinder Singh has pointed out – the ‘superficial binaries’ between Jammu and Kashmir. The politics of regional binaries leads us to zero sum relationship in which the gain of one is seen as the loss of the other. The August 2019 developments have shown that this zero-sum relationship does not do Jammu any good. Kashmir’s loss as Jammu’s gain does not work in reality – in all possibility, Kashmir’s loss can mean Jammu’s loss as well!
In the light of the new political realities of J&K since August 2019, one needs to make a case for paradigm shift in the identity politics of Jammu region. The new situation as it has evolved demands a change in the nature of Jammu’s regional politics from its reactive to more positive nature. Apart from the fact that Jammu has enough regional resources (as all the three authors have pointed out) to carve a positive identity politics (an identity based on Jammu’s composite culture and mixed society) – but also the fact that it is time to reconcile to the co-existence of two regions. August 2019 changes have made it abundantly clear that no government in the Centre is going to de-link Kashmir from Jammu region. That it was easier to carve a separate UT of Ladakh but the political and strategic implications of separating Jammu from Kashmir are too many. That Jammu has to co-exist with Kashmir is something that one needs to be reconciled to and rather than thinking in binary terms and wasting one’s energies on constantly harping on the ‘dominance of Kashmir’ or promoting the idea of a separate state for Jammu, one needs to think how to get.a better deal for Jammu within the existing structure. Jammu region needs to strengthen its negotiating powers. Of course, the minimum that is required for this is a visionary leadership with inclusive regional consciousness and an ability to put forth the regional point of view forcefully.
The paradigm shift in the identity politics of Jammu region can also be suggested from another point of view. The post-August 2019 situation has opened up new possibilities for Jammu region. Overcoming its deep sense of victimisation, it can take the leadership in setting up the agenda for the entirety of Jammu and Kashmir. In a situation in which the mainstream politics of Kashmir had been facing a set back, all major political responses since August 2019, have been articulated mainly in Jammu region. In a way, Jammu has come to represent the politics of J&K.
Can Jammu region take the lead and redefine the politics of J&K? Can it reverse the rules of the game and rather than playing a second fiddle, play a bigger role of not only devising a politics of development of whole J&K but also of acting as a bridge between Delhi and Kashmir? It may seem to be a far-fetched idea at the moment but given the change in Jammu’s politics, there is no question why it may not be able to take the initiative and the lead in the times to come. The minimum that is required is a vision about the strength of the region; a narrative that focuses on the agenda of inclusive development of the region; a capacity to reach out to the peripheries. Once the regional politics acquires the visibility and the force, it should be in a position to bring Kashmir into the loop of developmental politics. This way, rather than being struck up in negativities of identity politics, particularly of the binary kind, it can look for a ‘unifying agenda’ and seek the empowerment not only of the region but of whole of J&K.
I would like to conclude the article by echoing Anil Anand’s vision that solution to many problems of J&K lie in the empowerment of Jammu region. In his opinion, only a strong Jammu region can pave way for a strong Jammu and Kashmir and in turn a strong Jammu and Kashmir is imperative for dealing better with the threat from across the border.
(Feedback at rekchowdhary@gmail.com)
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