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| Ignored Sikhs demand minority status | | Trouble is brewing | | Neha
JAMMU, Dec 20: The minority communities in Jammu and Kashmir are the most neglected lot. They are not exercising the rights which their counterparts across the nation have been enjoying under the Indian Constitution. They are saying it is because of Article 370 that their life has become a veritable hell on earth and that if they are to lead a dignified life in the state, this discriminatory and divisive Article 370 has to be repealed and Jammu and Kashmir brought at par with other states of the Union. This is the only solution to their long-pending problems, they have been saying, and very rightly. Indeed, Article 370 has benefited only a section of members of a particular Kashmir-based religious sect and its handful of supporters in Jammu and Ladakh.
Only the other day, the leadership of a number of Sikh organizations in one voice expressed themselves in favour of a dispensation that confers on their co-religionists the minority status so that they could enjoy all the rights and privileges which their counterparts in other pats of the country have been enjoying as minority groups since years. On Wednesday, Chairman of All-Party Sikh Coordination Committee Jagmohan Singh Raina said it is a matter of regret and deep concern that Jammu and Kashmir is not under the jurisdiction of the National Minorities Commission and that the Sikh community has been denied the minority status. "We have approached the Prime Minister and President of India on the issue, but with no result, as the State Government is biased against the Sikh community," he, among other things, said.
Another Sikh leader and Joint secretary of district Gurudwara Prabhandak Committee, Jammu, Manjit Singh, expressed almost identical views on the same day. He said the authorities must establish Minorities Commission in Jammu and Kashmir and asked the State Government and the centre not to ignore the reasonable and Constitutional demand of the Sikh community. Similarly, Virenderjit Singh, chairman of National Sikh Front, also took the authorities in the State and at the Centre to task on Wednesday and demanded not only minority status for the Sikh community but also the extension of the jurisdiction of the National Minorities Commission to Jammu and Kashmir so that the rights of his co-religionists are protected.
The Sikh community in Jammu and Kashmir is not the only community which have been demanding minority status. The internally-displaced Kashmiri Hindus and even the Hindu population of Jammu province, which constitute nearly 45 per cent of the state's population, have also been putting forth similar demands and expressing the view that had there been no Article 370, their plight in the state would not have been that miserable.
The authorities in the State and at the Centre must take cognizance of the views of the minority communities and refashion their whole approach towards them accordingly. Not to do so or to continue to cling to the old-fashioned policies would be only to force them to take recourse to unconstitutional methods. |
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