NEWSLINKS
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
THE STATES
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES
SEARCH REDIFF

Search the Internet          Tips

Recent Columns

Abdullah III talks     too much The autonomy shrill --     yet again 'Free and fair'     in J&K A 'titular' head Lessons in 'morale     terrorism'

The woes of Jammu and Ladakh

The very talk of separating Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh is falling in line with the two-nation theory,' said Omar Abdullah to PTI as reported in The Asian Age, Mumbai, of July 1, 2002. He also said, 'These leaders [of the RSS and VHP] do not know anything of Kashmir.'

Well, well, well, Abdullah III, 32, has a lot of reading to do. And if he only yields his acidic tongue to the printed words of history, he will learn of three major realities --

1. With a view to facing the threatening storm of Sheikh Abdullah's separatist postures for J&K state, some RSS workers founded a political party, by the name of Praja Parishad, in November 1947. Among their demands were:
   1. one flag and one constitution for the entire nation, including J&K,
   2. ending of the discrimination against Jammu and Ladakh regions (Page 42 of RSS: A Vision In Action, Sahitya Sindhu Prakashan, second edition, June 1998)
2. Immediately after the accession of J&K to India in October 1947, the Ladakhis took the stand that their future was linked to India though culturally, racially and linguistically they were closer to Tibet. While [Sheikh] Abdullah was fighting for a separate flag for J&K state, the Ladakhis glowed with pride on seeing the Ashoka wheel on the Indian flag (Claude Arpi, The Land of the Passes).
3. 'Jammu and Ladakh must be fully integrated with India according to the wishes of their people. Let me repeat and state categorically that I do not want Jammu & Kashmir to be partitioned. But if Sheikh Abdullah is adamant, Jammu and Ladakh must not be sacrificed, but Kashmir valley may be a separate state within the Indian Union.' (From the presidential address of Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerjee at the first all-India session of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh in Kanpur on December 29, 1952.)

That is why the PTI report in The Asian Age, Mumbai edition, dated November 27, 2000, wherein Abdul Rouf Ganai, co-convener of the Jammu Kashmir National Front, denied that his organisation's demand for the state's trifurcation was 'communal and RSS-backed'; in fact, in support of that denial, Ganai stated, 'Both Hindus and Muslims of Jammu are treated as second-class citizens by the Srinagar-based elite.' Equally important was his belief that 'Jammu Muslims are ethnically and culturally different from the Kashmiri Muslims. We are closer to the Hindu Paharis, Gujjars, Dogras and Punjabis.' So what is all that cock and bull about 'Kashmiriyat' that we've been brainwashed with all these years by cunning politicians and two-penny pen-pushers?

Another outcome of Srinagar's domineering suzerainty over J&K all these long, long years is the PTI report in The Asian Age, Mumbai edition, of June 19, 2000, which announced the Ladakhi Buddhist Association's plan for observance of a 'black week' to oppose the 'rule from Srinagar'. That report also quoted a senior leader of the LBA as saying, 'The Ladakhis are apprehensive that the proposed step for greater autonomy for the state or to restore the pre-1953 position will ruin the interests of Ladakh people who have been clamouring for Union territory status for a long time.' So what is behind all this clamour of the Abdullahs for 'greater autonomy short of azadi?'

This Ladakhi agitation against Srinagar's domination dates back to 1952 when Sheikh Abdullah presented the state's budget to its Constituent Assembly, forgetting Ladakh altogether; when Kushok Bakula Rinpoche, head lama of Ladakh, protested in a strongly worded speech, Abdullah asked his speech to be expunged from the records on the ground that it was in English and not in Urdu. Bakula was the one who recently retired as India's ambassador to Mongolia. The reader -- and Abdullah III -- will discover that fact and more in Arpi's above-referred Rediff Special that is as much a succinct narration of Ladakh's tribulations as it is a tribute to the courage of the Ladakhis and to their love-cum-loyalty for the Indian nation.

It should be clear to the impartial observer that the latest RSS resolution advocating J&K's trifurcation is not rooted in communal soil, but in the discrimination practised against the Jammu and Ladakh regions by the long line of Wazir-e-Azams ruling from the seat of the Kashmir valley. Below is evidence of that discrimination as spelt out in two signed newspaper articles: one in The Tribune of August 27, 2000, written by Hari Om, history professor at Jammu University, and the other in Tarun Bharat of July 7, 2002, by M G Vaidya, chief spokesman of the RSS.

• The valley has 46 state assembly segments as against 41 of Jammu and Ladakh although the latter two are much bigger in terms of population and land area. The valley also has three Lok Sabha seats out of the six allotted for the entire state.
• Kashmiris hold over 2,30,000 out of the nearly 2,40,000 positions in government and semi-government organisations in the valley besides cornering about 25 per cent of jobs in the regional services of Jammu and Ladakh. A corollary: out of the total of 35 positions of state government commissioners and secretaries, 31 go to the valley. Another corollary: out of the 1,55,000 absorbed in government service since 1996, only 15,000 are from Jammu.
• All the professional and technical institutions, universities and big public-sector units located in the valley are the sole preserve of Kashmiris.
• More than 50 per cent of the seats in Jammu's ill-equipped and understaffed medical and engineering colleges go to the students from the valley. Ditto for the Sher-e-Kashmir Agricultural University. The position in Ladakh? No such institutions exist there!
• Jammu and Ladakh contribute over 90 per cent to the state exchequer. Only a small part of that is spent on the underdeveloped Jammu and backward Ladakh.
• During the last 55 years, not a single person from Jammu region has become chief minister of the state.

Why, Vaidya says the RSS report recommending the trifurcation of J&K is based on the views of 48 delegations expressed to the Sangh's three-man committee headed by the chief justice of the Punjab and Haryana high court.

In fact, when Abdullah III alleges that the demand for trifurcation is communal because it gives the signal to Pakistan that the valley is up for grabs, it is he who is hoist with his own petard. His reaction mirrors his belief that the Muslims of the valley are all pining to be gobbled by the fundamentalist, India-hating neighbour of ours, and that we, the people of India, will meekly comply. It would seem then that apart from ignoring the 55-year history of our nation's blood, toil, tears and sweat lost in defending Srinagar against the evil designs of Pakistan, the young man hasn't studied even the recent MORI poll of J&K. Tsk, tsk.

Abdullah III has the democratic right to oppose the trifurcation of the state that has become his dynasty's monopoly. We are not Pakistan to fetter that freedom of his. But may we have some logic, not rhetoric, for that opposition? And some explanations, if not solutions, for the half-century of woes of J&L?

Arvind Lavakare