Vishal Sharma
While we all talk and take our respective positions vis-à-vis Art 370 and residency laws based on where we come from within J&K, none, and more significantly, local media, have spoken about the intra region apprehensions that exist today in the state. There has been a stray comment or two, that too of fleeting nature, as a part of entirely different debate in which the intra regional polarization has been subtly held as an important variable in the political calculus of the state-one that will change the way politics and the sociology have historically played out here.
The pathologies associated with sociology of a system donot change the existing paradigms within which societies transact themselves in a jiffy. Change comes about over time. And it is a disruptive change. That’s because the pathologies are aspirational and, therefore, do not settle for status quo. Disturbance of status quo, for we all know, is not a quiet transition. Similar such thing may be in the process of incarnating itself in the state. And if this prognosis is even remotely true, we may be in for some serious spring cleaning. Who knows?
For as much I can remember the social fabric of the state has been an exemplar of syncretic traditions- one which has had the influence of three of the world’s most important religions. Although not easy, there has been tremendous harmonization of disparate ways of life both at the social and interpersonal level. Sometimes, there has been lurking intra regional suspicions though of the kind that one region has made economic merry at the expense of the other or one region has had more political enfranchisement than the other so on and so forth. But such apprehensions did not ever harden the positions ideologically within the state as much. The psychological coherence in the state’s discourse has weathered the assault on its physical.
This coherence though seems to have come apart during the Amarnath land row or so it seems. The various strands of narrative have unraveled and taken different ideological hues. From what was merely an intra regional drift in the beginning, the polarization has now travelled down to sub regional levels and, what’s worse, its streak has become progressively potent. Each ethnic region vies for political, economic and social empowerment and visibility. Their competing instincts are fierce and unsparing; the collective has given way to individual. The state does not matter; it’s the region or sub-region, if you will, one comes from that is important. If one’s region is not sufficiently empowered, one could not care less about the state.
The polarization that we see today is the result of failings at all the three levels: political, economic and social. Politically, Jammu and Ladakh regions see themselves as inconsequential. Politics is always a numbers game. In this arithmetic calculus, the two regions see themselves as only top up entities and not an integral prime in themselves. Kashmir on the other hand sees its domination being increasingly extenuated with the creation of ideological alternatives in a polity that has lived only by a singular political thought.
On the other end of spectrum, the political polarization is also exemplified by the fact that there has been no single pan state party representing aspirations of all the people. Even when a party has emerged on a pan state level, it has had to posture differently in the three regions to stay relevant. This constraint on a pan state party to speak in different voices in different regions of the state is reflective of the failure of the politics to forge cross regional consensus on important issues.
Nowhere the polarization has been as stark as in the economic sphere. While the state’s economic pie has been limited, the claims on it from different quarters have been disproportionately high. This has been due to mutual suspicions that the regions have harboured vis-à-vis each other. And it’s not only the resources which have been lusted after or coveted wildly, regions have also been very touchy about contributing to the tax kitty of the state. Concerns have been raised by one region or the other that it has been made to fork out more than the other. Then there have also been issues of which region has landed more big ticket projects; which regions is the biggest beneficiary of a particular CSS so on and so forth. Such intra regional bickering in the economic arena has also been seen in the SFC report which was filed but perhaps never accepted by the Government.
At the social level, for more than a decade, the interpersonal relationship between the people of Jammu and that of Kashmir has weakened. It is a sociological malaise that has its genesis in the turbulence of 90 and onwards. Though we are well past the blood and gore of 90s, we have not seen the sociological bonding of the pre 90 days when the friendship at the offices was strengthened by the visits to each others’ families in the evenings and the off days. Darbar moves of pre 90s were distinctly different from what they are today. The hordes of the families of the employees who would come and add to the vibrancy and buzz of the bazaars in Srinagar have been replaced by only the service persons coming now with the move, with their families joining them later only on  sojourns. Some families would even put their kids into the local schools at Srinagar for the duration of summer holidays. This allowed kids to mingle and assimilate the cultural values of the other side. Similar such adjustments were made by Kashmiris when they moved with darbar to Jammu. Such spontaneous mixing led to an inter-cultural understanding that also showed up in the cross party political consensus of the time. But 90s changed it forever.
The unusual thing about this polarization is that it exists, but is not publicly debated, perhaps, for fear of some wider implications- the implications which a saner element would be hard put to it to figure out. But even, if these implications were in the nature of taking the state to the brink of whatever it is, would it be not appropriate to deal with it. Putting off a problem does not resolve it. It only compounds it. It was expected of the political parties in the state to discuss how politically polarized our state has become and, of course, the ways to address it. But they continue to look the other way. It can’t be believed that it does not cross their minds when they sit to discuss Art 370 and other issues. It is perhaps the proverbial elephant in the room which they feel is best left untouched. But the recent elections show that this elephant in the room has got up and become wild. And, if it is not tamed, it may knock us down forever.