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| Kashmiri vote secular and Jammu's vote communal | | Dangerous formulations | | Rustam
Early Times Report
JAMMU, Jan 1: Was the Kashmiri vote, which was cast in the assembly elections in the Valley, a secular vote and a vote for nationalist parties and was the vote that was cast in Jammu province a communal vote?
The answer is yes when viewed in the light of some Delhi-based and Srinagar-based "secular" commentators, opinion makers and self-styled academicians have written, and continue to write, about the nature of Kashmiri vote and Jammu vote.
The "secular" writers have been striving hard to mislead make the people and create hatred between Jammu and Kashmir. They are giving them to understand by contemptuously dismissing the Jammu vote as patently communal and non-nationalistic and the Kashmiri vote highly secular and a vote for nationalism. They, for example, have been saying that there had been an unprecedented amount of communal polarization in the Jammu region which primarily explained BJP's victory in the Hindu-dominated seats of Jammu and that such polarization was undoubtedly the BJP's primary election strategy from day one. "BJP not only spoke about the need for having a 'Hindu Chief Minister' in J&K, but more importantly separated its Jammu agenda - which is its core constituency - from its election agenda in Kashmi," they have been saying, adding that all of this was to polarize the Hindu votes of Jammu in a meticulously pre-planned manner. It bears recalling that it was the Congress minister Sham Lal Sharma and not the BJP who had repeatedly spoken about the need for having a Hindu Chief Minister in J&K. Not just that, he had also on a number of occasions advocated the need for the state's three-way split. As for the BJP, it didn't even once talk about a Hindu Chief Minister in J&K. But these fake secularist opinion makers, commentators and writers would not put things in perspective for obvious reasons. They only preach falsehood and hatred.
As for the large voter turnout in Kashmir, these self-styled opinion-makers have been claiming that there was no such polarization of Muslim votes in Kashmir. "For that matter, there was not even one single party that was trying to 'polarize' the Muslim votes to get them for itself. The primary objective of the various political parties other than the BJP was to get the Kashmiris to vote in the first place by ensuring that the boycott calls did not keep the voters away from polling booths. The BJP, on the contrary, was not only banking on boycott calls and Kashmiri Pandit votes (who are Hindus). But to the BJP's disappointment, the Pandits did not bother voting in great numbers. Unlike in Jammu where the BJP benefitted from the communally polarized Hindu votes, not only was there no communal polarization in Kashmir but more importantly, the Muslims of Kashmir voted for more than one party - PDP, NC, Congress, PC, and Independents - none of which is a communal party peddling Muslim communal causes. In other words, the Muslim votes of Kashmir were ever more fragmented among the various secular parties rather than being polarized for any communal cause. And, clearly, the Kashmir Muslims did not vote for communal parties. Despite all its flaws, the Congress party continues to be secular while PDP is a Kashmiri nationalist party and the NC is a pan-J&K party. PC's Sajad Lone is also far from being communal," one of the "secular" opinion-makers has said while denouncing nature of Jammu's mandate.
He has not stop just there. He has further said: "The (Valley-based parties) are Kashmiri nationalist parties and it is important to realize that there is a clear distinction between religion-based communal politics and non-religious nationalism. That is, Kashmiri nationalism is not primarily Islamic in nature, even though Kashmiri leaders like Ali Shah Geelani would disagree with me on this, but religion happens to be just one of the factors informing Kashmiri nationalism. So if people vote for secular nationalist parties, how can they be called communal and be compared to BJP's unapologetically communal assertions and appeal?
In any case, Kashmir's political history is unique - which much of Jammu clearly does not share - and so its vote for Kashmiri nationalism, and those parties which still believe in that nationalism, needs to be understood in that historical context. Both (the Kashmir-based parties), the major mainstream political expressions of Kashmiri nationalism, have always sworn by secular principles and have consistently resisted mixing religion with Kashmiri nationalism". How could these fake secular self-styled and biased opinion makers and commentators question the mandate in Jammu for mainstream politics and development and describe it as communal and anti-national. It is the like of these opinion-makers who have created bad blood between Kashmir and Jammu and between communities. They are also responsible for the decline of the so-called secular parties like the Congress, the NC, the SP, the JDU, the BSP, the RLD, the DMK, the NCP and so on and so forth. Actually, they are he enemies of the minority communities in the country. |
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