Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
Thanks be to the Bharatiya Janata Party and Prime Minister Modi, Jammu and Kashmir’s most spectacular poll campaign is just about winding up. And what a campaign it has been, if only for the reason that the ruling party in Delhi has spared nothing to make a conquest of it. If only it had kept up with the spirit of the season just ahead of us. I must resist the temptation to make a reference to the spirit of Christmas in the charged atmosphere in the State; such a reference is more likely to be misunderstood at a time when political tempers are running high, with reckless terrorism providing a saddening footnote to a lengthy process that has brought into the open the good and bad in us. Imagine how incongruous the whole thing would seem, once the poll-time high jinks end, allowing the valley to put on its natural winter-time white coat, layers upon layers of snow. A dream land it would be.
Indeed it would attract the wrath of some, given the subtext of the sensitivities of the ruling dispensation in New Delhi. Remember the’ Ramzada’- ‘Haramzada’ ruckus that dominated the political discourse the whole of a fortnight, rendering Parliament House into a virtual home for idlers.
Frankly, it is not the outcome of the polls which bothers me. It is the manner in which the ruling party in Delhi has sought to score a win. Win or lose will of course be known around Christmas day but with three fourths the distance already covered, as I write, I seem to be ending with a distasteful experience. Strictly speaking for myself.
Mind you, the deed would have been sealed before the New Year dawns, with the people, particularly in the valley, having shown a remarkable sense of maturity, pragmatism even as they handsomely responded the call of the polls. The breath-taking enthusiasm, the predominantly Muslim valley showed this time over, has indeed been a most remarkable feature of the present elections to the State Assembly, a feature that frightfully upset the terror machine lying in wait across the border or the LOC, if you will. A string of foolhardy terrorist strikes, one on a major, well-manned outpost in Uri, including four more attacks the same day. Hits in Srinagar and other parts of the valley were resumed subsequently causing the Indian Army to be put on high alert, less than three days before the third phase of polling in the State Clear-cut provocations in mid campaign.
The Pakistani outfits and their mentors were apparently most upset by the over 70 percent turnout that marked the first two phases of the poll. Lost on the Pakistan-based bosses was the existence of the other possibility : the strong push made by the ruling BJP in New Delhi to somehow grab as many seats from the Muslim-dominated valley, hopefully adding to its pickings from the 37 assembly seats from the Jammu region, where the Hindus constitute a majority and the BJP believes it is in command. And given the party’s firm commitment to fully integrate the State with the rest of the Union, its studied vagueness over Article 370 of the Constitution during its campaign in the valley, as opposed to the pro-abrogation stance on the issue adopted by it in Jammu notwithstanding, the valley obviously chose to fight back in numbers.
The BJP has thrown its all into the valley including Mr. Modi’s secret weapon, Mr. Ram Madhav, the party General Secretary, a former RSS spokesperson who has made the valley virtually his home these past few months. Madhav it has been who has strategized the party campaign, presenting his unfamiliar smiling face to friend and foe alike. He virtually chose the candidates in the valley, managed to sell Modi to the business community, to sections of the educated unemployed and even summoned Muslim clerics from North India to canvass on behalf of his party.
For the record Madhav is the party’s rising star, its ambassador of sorts in the capital’s diplomatic enclaves, masterminded the visits of the Chinese President, managed Modi’s US foray including the much spoken about rallies in New York etc. And, lo and behold, he was the man who managed the Prime Minister’s Australian expedition as well including, of course, the remarkable Sydney show. Not to mention his visit to the tiny Indian-dominated island nation of Fiji in the Pacific, taking a lot of sheen away from the Chinese President’s visit there.
The good thing about Madhav is he always stays in the background just as he has in Jammu and Kashmir. It is he who planned Arun Jaitley’s well-timed pow wow with Kashmiri businessmen in Srinagar just prior to polling there. For the record also the BJP has thrown its all into the campaign, the Prime Minister and Central Ministers leading the charge, with Madhav as the super conductor of the party orchestra.
Back to my poll theme. May be I am wrong but I do believe that the massive turnout of the valley’s population was the result of the suspect BJP initiatives in the State, including the party giving 30 odd seats out of 46 to Muslim candidates to contest and adopted by it as its own, a figure which exceeds the number it allotted nationally to Muslim candidates nationwide in the last general elections.
It took the local politician and the plebian hardly any time to see through the game dubbed Mission 44 by the Bharatiya Janata Party. The massive turnout reported by the media was clearly an attempt on the part of the people in the valley to frustrate the national party’s designs.
This is at best a guess but a probability. May be I am misreading the situation. Be that as it may and leaving polemics aside, the truth is that the present elections have been an absolute success in one respect; the divide between the Valley and Jammu and between these two and Ladakh and Kargil has been sealed and delivered by the ruling party in Delhi. It is also in accord with the BJP’s long-cherished desire to give a separate status to the Hindu-dominated Jammu.
There have been saffronite leaders in the past not loath to see Jammu becoming part of Himachal or even having an enlarged Dogra State. There are people in Jammu who genuinely believe that they haven’t received their due share of developmental funds over the past few decades and that the region has as a consequence suffered. Some of the Jammu grievances were addressed to by the Gajendragadkar commission, mainly in terms of employment opportunities etc. The truth also is that through their own ingenuity and entrepreneurship the people of Jammu have transformed the winter capital into a bustling, prospering business hub.
Equally true is that – and I don’t want to be hectored on that -the Jammuites resented the presence of Kashmiri Pandits when they landed up in the city en mass post 1989-90. I had occasion then to visit the Kashmiri Pandit camps in and around Jammu, for a foreign TV network and I have heard accounts which bear out the point I am making.
I personally know how a BJP Minister in the Vajpayee government from Jammu had virtually made a gift of a friend’s sprawling mansion in Srinagar to former Muslim MP from the valley for the simple reason that he was the Prantiya Adhyaksha or UP Adhyaksha of the non-existent BJP in the valley then. A young IAS officer from Delhi got the house evacuated. Having earlier spoken of the BJP’s long-held belief in a separate identity for Jammu it might not be a bad idea to go back to the old plan of breaking up the State into three autonomous regions, each managing its own affairs, each with a legislature of its own’ — fully empowered units. There is a Kashmir assembly resolution on record advising grant of autonomy to the three regions. Even Gen. Musharraf of Pakistan in his day had proposed the setting up of autonomous regional bodies for the various regions with a supervisory joint committee or commission keeping an eye that each unit stays within bounds.
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