| BJP's obsession with 'Kashmir, Kashmiris and Kashmiriyat' | | Where is Dogriyat, Ladakhiyat? | | Early Times Report
jAMMU, Sept 13: Jammu and Ladakh voted for BJP en-block in the Lok Sabha elections in 2014. They rejected outright the Congress, the NC and the PDP. The result was that the BJP not only got 32.5 per cent of the total votes polled - one per cent more than the national average - but also won all the three Lok Sabha seats from these two provinces. It won the lone Ladakh Lok Sabha seat for the first time, of course, with a slender margin of 39 votes. The BJP also contested Lok Sabha elections in Kashmir but had to bite dust. All its candidates lost their security deposit and the party could get only a paltry 50,000 votes, which included most of the Kashmiri Hindu votes. The PDP won all the three Kashmir Lok Sabha seats, with the Congress and the NC biting dust. Even Farooq Abdullah lost his election.
Six months later, the BJP contested the Assembly elections. Jammu gave 25 seats to it for the first time, but Kashmir and Ladakh rejected it. In Kashmir, all the BJP candidates, barring one, lost their security deposits.
The BJP, which also contested Autonomous Hill Council Development elections in Leh, got compensated for the loss it had suffered in the Assembly elections. The BJP won two-third seats in the Council, and captured it for the first time. In other words, the Ladakhis, like the people of Jammu, reposed their faith in the BJP.
Thus, it became absolutely clear that that the BJP in Jammu and Kashmir was a two-region party and that there was no taker in Kashmir for the BJP for reasons not really difficult to fathom.
Obviously, the people of Jammu and Ladakh hoped that the BJP would reverse the old Kashmir policy and follow a holistic approach toward the issues confronting all the three regions of the state, but it was not to be. Even after the collapse of the PDP-BJP coalition government on June 19 on the issue of Jammu and Ladakh and because of the fast-deteriorating situation in the Valley, the BJP continues to sing the "Kashmiriyat" song.
The BJP has said that the "Union Government is prepared to start unconditional talks with all stakeholders in Kashmir" and that it would work out a solution that is consistent with what he called Kashmiriyat.
"We (Narendra Modi Government) want to assure the country that we will come out with a permanent solution. And we will arrive at this permanent solution taking into consideration, Kashmir, Kashmiris and Kashmiriyat," a top BJP leader said in New Delhi the other day while reflecting on the Kashmir situation.
It is strange that the BJP got votes and seats from Jammu and Ladakh and has discarded the compassionate and all-embracing Dogriyat and peaceful Ladakhiyat. By adopting the line the BJP has adopted, it is established that it is only working for its defeat in these two regions. The people of Jammu and Ladakh can tolerate anything but not an affront to their self-respect which the BJP is causing by talking "Kashmir, Kashmiri and Kashmiriyat" and ignoring Jammu and Dogriyat and Ladakh and Ladakhiyat.
It is, however, heartening to note that top sources in the PMO are toying with the idea of trifurcating the state and creating three Union Territories of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh and that the Narendra Modi Government has refused to kneel before NC, PDP, Congress and CPI-M and other Kashmiri outfits and declared that panchayat and urban local bodies polls will be held as per schedule, come what may. This has electrified the political scene in Jammu and Ladakh. PM Narendra Modi would also do well to recognize Dogriyat and Ladakhiyat so that the estranged people of Jammu and Ladakh are conciliated and given a feeling that their aspirations will never be crushed to appease the anti-Jammu forces in Kashmir. |
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