| Mr Akhtar, Kashmir is not a college of ethnicities | | Politics of blackmail | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, Aug 10: The out-of-power PDP will not transform itself. Nor will it take into account the aspirations of the people of Jammu and Ladakh and national requirements in the border State of Jammu & Kashmir. It will continue to pursue the same old policy that blackmails, browbeats and threatens New Delhi and gives it to understand that in Jammu & Kashmir writ of New Delhi will not run and that New Delhi has to toe the line the Kashmiri leaders suggest and recommend.
This was the message sent out to New Delhi the other day by Naeem Akhtar, former minister in the Mehbooba Mufti-led PDP-BJP coalition government and government spokesperson. He warned New Delhi that any move on its part to reject the demand in Kashmir for "reconciliation" will end the possibility of restoration of peace in South Asia and India could witness more troubles in Kashmir. By reconciliation, the PDP means limited accession of the state with India.
"Scrapping of the special laws would close the last opening for reconciliation in Kashmir and therefore in South Asia. Handing out a final defeat to the people at the hands of their own country would come in a situation where even status quo could mean victory for them, so necessary for redeeming the 70-year-old jumla of winning hearts and minds of Kashmir," Naeeem Akhtar said while warning New Delhi of serious consequences.
This precisely had been the line of all those in Kashmir who led the successive governments in the state, including Sheikh Abdullah, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, Syed Mir Qasim, Farooq Abdullah, Mufti Sayeed, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti. All of them warned New Delhi one way or other and sought to obtain from New Delhi not only huge financial and employment packages but also political concessions based on communal considerations aimed at further driving the state away from the country's mainstream. They had been successful because New Delhi didn't call their bluff and the result was the common people in the state in general and Jammu and Ladakh in particular suffered owing to the politics of blackmail the rulers in Kashmir invariable indulged in to protect their own chairs and promote their own vested interests.
As if what Naeen Akhtar about reconciliation was not enough to mislead the powers-that-be in New Delhi, he made one more attempt to create an impression that the state was a college of ethnicities.
"The state is a college of ethnicities, all of which have flourished in a model that should guide other states," he said. His whole formulation was flawed and ill-conceived and politically motivated. He willfully suppressed two facts. One, the miniscule minority of Hindus, Dogras of Jammu, Punjabis and many Sikhs quit Kashmir in 1990 to escape the wrath of separatists and terrorists. They had started migrating from Kashmir in 1947 itself, when Nehru handed over the state power to Sheikh Abdullah, who adopted policies which triggered the process of migration from Kashmir. Two, Naeem Akhtar willfully suppressed the fact that it is Jammu, which was a college of ethnicities. It is Jammu which houses almost two million Hindu and Sikh refugees. They are refugees from Pakistan, PoJK, Kashmir, Chhamb and Reasi and other places of Jammu.
The PDP needs to retrospect to find if it is wrong or right. They cannot mislead the people any longer. The sooner they realize it, the better. |
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