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| Chenab Valley: The Game of Concocting Geography | | |
RUSTAM
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Mar 24: The office of Director General Police issued a routine press note about the visit of Kuldeep Khoda, present DG, recently to erstwhile Doda district of Jammu Province. There was nothing peculiar in the places, which were visited by the high-ranking official of the state police, which could be qualified as "Chenab Valley districts". Given the nature of politics in the state, this reference does not seem to be a mere slip of the tongue. Nowhere in the past has the area been described even indirectly as the Chenab Valley by the state administration. Nor is there any reference to the "Chenab Valley" in the State Constitution. That the highest office of the state police uses such a coinage has raised lot of speculations.
In recent years, there has been lot of politics being done around this new geographical entity of "Chenab Valley", which to the political leadership of Kashmir Valley means Muslim majority areas of Jammu. Both the Regional Autonomy Report of National Conference and the self-rule demand of the PDP have given this new geographical nomenclature a lot of importance. Both the reports are basically models of Dixon's formula and primarily see Jammu and Kashmir from a religious prism of a Greater Muslim sphere and a smaller Hindu sphere. So when a press note emanates from the office of none other than Director General of Police it has a meaning.
In recent months, particularly after Prime Minister of India publicly accepted that India had come very close to a final settlement with Pakistan during Musharraf regime, lot of political campaigning ensued in the area, particularly of the erstwhile Doda district and Rajouri and Poonch districts. The leadership of National Conference, the PDP and also rank and file of separatist leadership has camped in the area to convince the people in these areas about the benefits of Greater Kashmir, as also to provoke them to distance themselves from a mindset, which sees itself as a part of Jammu province and not Kashmir. The quality and content of this campaign has been almost similar and once in a while more vicious than the campaign launched by Muslim League to win the support of People living in North West Frontier province of undivided India so that they vote for Pakistan in the plebiscite.
When the Congress-PDP coalition created new districts in the state, breaking the bigger ones which included Doda as well, it had raised lot of hackles in the section of political leadership and the bureaucracy in the state which were in support of creating a greater Kashmir by de-linking the Muslim majority areas of Jammu and Ladakh. Since the NC government took over there has been a sustained effort at the administrative level to give an impression that the state government sees the whole Muslim majority area of Jammu region as one administrative unit. The new coinage of "Chenab Valley" in the administrative affairs has perhaps this motivation behind it.
The political importance given by the state government at the highest level to the construction of Mughal Road and Sinthon Top road has a political bearing more than its developmental implication. The constant public postures taken by the government and the political leadership of the valley in completing the construction work on these roads is aimed at reshaping the psychological profile of the people living in the Muslim majority areas of Jammu province so that they start getting tuned to the political reality of Grater Kashmir and accept it as a fiat accompli well before its actual creation.
The "Chenab Valley" nomenclature is an attempt to create a false consciousness of an identity, which doesn't exist. More than that, it is a concerted effort to camouflage the communal partition of Jammu but present it as a legitimate necessity driven by a purely geographical consideration. If the utterances of former Pakistan president on his proposals as well as the postulates of Kathwari Plan are closely analyzed, one comes to only one conclusion that both Musharraf and Kathwari were in search of a terminology to disguise the communal partition of Jammu and Kashmir.
Is there any geographical entity like Chenab Valley in the state? We know about the valley of Kashmir or for that matter Neelam valley in POK. A valley is a plane area surrounded by mountains from all sides. We have many smaller valleys in Kashmir province, like Sonamarg, Gulmarg and Khilanmarg. Chenab Valley has never existed in the wildest imagination of geographers or historians or planners of tourism in the state. There is only Chenab river. The entire erstwhile Doda district was hilly and mountainous. There exists no such valley as "Chenab Valley" anywhere in any of three districts created out of the erstwhile Doda district. We are seeing a unique example of not concoction of History but concoction of geography.
The office of the Director General has given credibility to the myth of Chenab valley, perhaps inadvertently. Or is it that somebody has slipped this term into the administrative usage on the calculation that Kuldeep Khoda, present DG Police, may not have the gumption to object or take proper action. This is a serious issue. Mistake needs to be rectified. |
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