| Kashmiri leaders need to review their stand on Articles 35A, 370 | | Bad news from Mussoorie | |
Early Times Report
Jammu, Feb 26: Things for people of Kashmir are turning hostile with each passing moment. They are facing the people's ire. The latest report is from Uttrakhand's Mussoorie, which must make the Kashmiri leaders sit up and review their stand on Article 370, which grants special status to the state, and Article 35-A, which bars non-J&K permanent residents from acquiring land in the state, settling in the state, obtaining government jobs in the state or availing state government's scholarship schemes.
Reports says that the local traders of Mussoorie are feeling totally alienated from traders from Kashmir and they have asked them to quit the town by February 28.
"A local traders' body in Mussoorie has asked Kashmiris, who sell garments from rented shops in the city to leave. Most of the shops have been rented out to them on an 11-month contract that ends on February 28, after which the Mussoorie Traders & Welfare Association wants the Kashmiris out,' the report said.
Rajat Aggarwal, the association president, has categorically said that "there were no two ways about it, hinting at communal disharmony" and that "The local traders in Mussoorie want the Kashmiri traders to leave".
Aggarwal has attributed the decision to 18 new Kashmiri traders renting stores in the town, selling shawls and embroidered women's suits. He has said it had happened over the past two years.
"For a small town like Mussoorie, 18 new Kashmiri traders is a huge number," Aggarwal has said, adding that "we have called a meeting with owners who have rented their shops to the Kashmiri traders to discuss the issue".
He has further said: Their directive is not meant for the five-seven Kashmiri trader families who have been in Mussoorie for over five decades.
"The old Kashmiri families are now a part of the town. They have never spread communal disharmony… We are not asking them to leave. It is these shops being rented by the new Kashmiri traders that are mushrooming in the town which the local traders want out," he has said.
The situation has turned so critical that Kashmiri traders have met local BJP MLA Joshi and requested him for help.
Tension over the Kashmiri traders had been brewing since June 18 last year when, after a Champions Trophy cricket final in which India lost to Pakistan, locals claimed to have heard some youths shouting "Pakistan zindabad" slogans. Two days later, Aggarwal had called a meeting which resolved that due to "the anti-national activity undertaken by local and Kashmiri youths on June 18", the Kashmiris who had rented shops would be removed from their premises by February 2018.
Perturbed over the ultimatum to quit Mussoorie, Fayaz Ahmed Malik, one of the Kashmiris running a garments shop, wrote a letter to MLA Joshi and Uttarakhand BJP president Ajay Bhatt, He sought "their intervention on behalf of traders like him". "Are we not a part of this country?, he asked. "If we are, then why are we being forced to leave Mussoorie?", Malik, who hails from J&K's Kupwara district, also wrote.
Politics of separatism practiced by leaders in Kashmir, Articles 35A and 370 and exodus of Hindus from Kashmir are responsible for the rise of hostile situation for the people of Kashmir living, studying and working in different parts of the country. Kashmiri leaders must sit up and do something concrete to win over the alienated majority community across the country. The best way for them would to bat for abrogation of Articles 35A and 370 so that the people from across the country enjoy all rights in J&K like people of Kashmir exercise all rights across the nation. Besides, they must shun politics of competitive communalism and secessionism and prove by their words and deeds that they are for the state's complete merger with India and respect all the Central laws. There is no other way: They have to adopt in letter and spirit the principle of reciprocity. |
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