abdullah 3

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The woes of Jammu and Ladakh, by Arvind Lavakare, www.rediff.com

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 --

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:

one flag and one constitution for the entire nation, including J&K, ending of

the discrimination against Jammu and Ladakh regions (Page 42 of RSS: A Vision

In Action, Sahitya Sindhu Prakashan, second edition, June 1998)

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). '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.) Half a century and more after these events, things have

hardly changed for the people of J&L in J&K. They still find Article 370

separating them from complete economic and emotional integration with the rest

of India; they still complain of discrimination against them by the rulers in

the valley. Nehru first and successive Congress party regimes in Delhi

thereafter have so appeased the Abdullah dynasty with its satraps of the

National Conference that the entire state is lorded over by the nawabs of the

teeny Kashmir valley ensconced in Srinagar. The governments of Morarji Desai, V

P Singh, Chandra Shekhar, Deve Gowda and Inder Gujral were all too brief in

tenure to make a difference, while the current NDA government is far too hemmed

in by circumstances to do what its BJP component knows needs to be done. 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. Abdullah III may pounce on the

last facet to reiterate his accusation that the demand for trifurcation is, in

fact, communal, because the Jammu region has long been perceived as being one

of Hindu majority. The 'secularists' will readily buy that accusation and fuel

it in the popular media they command. They will ignore, out of ignorance or

intent, the fact that Poonch district (area 1,674 sq km), Rajouri district

(area 2,630 sq km) and Doda district (area 11,691 sq km) are all part of the

Jammu region and have a Muslim population of 85, 55 and 61 per cent,

respectively. And, believe it or not, Vaidya says 20 Muslim leaders from those

districts who met him on the 20th of last month were firm and insistent on

their demand for statehood to Jammu. 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

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