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| Jazia on Amarnath pilgrims: Is J&K a secular polity? | | | EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, June 1: This was the opinion of the persons whom this correspondent interviewed to know what they actually thought about the issue that has created a fierce controversy in Jammu, with a number of socio-religious organizations holding press conferences almost everyday with a view to persuading the authorities to withdraw what they called "Jazia imposed on the Hindus."
It needs to be underlined that the opposition to Shri Amarnath Yatra started immediately after Mufti Mohammad Sayeed of the People's Democratic Party took over as Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. It was he who opposed the extension in the Yatra period on the spurious plea that such an extension would create security-related problems. Not just his, he also opposed the decision of the government to divert a small piece of land at Baltal to the SASB for creating additional facilities for the Yatris on the ground that the implementation of this decision would disturb the ecology of the area and pollute its environment.
It is, however, a different story that he had to bite dust every time. The Double-Bench of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court rejected all the pleas of his government and upheld the viewpoint of the SASB, then headed by Governor, Lt. Gen. S K Sinha, who as chairman of the Shrine Board had on occasions more than one put his foot down and defeated the Mufti's communal game-plan.
Again, it was he and his colleagues who created a storm in the Valley when the Congress-led coalition government implemented the High Court's directions and diverted the said piece of land to the Shrine Board on a temporary basis on May 26, 2008. This time, however, all the separatist leaders and their supporters in the Kashmir High Court Bar Association, Kashmir University, print and electronic media and "civil society" also took the plunge in a big way and put the whole of Kashmir Valley on fire.
They described the diversion of 800 kanal of land to the SASB as "cultural invasion" and "Hindu aggression" on Kashmir; as an attempt on the part of the Union Government and its representative in the State, the Governor, to "change the Kashmir's demography by creating Hindu enclaves" near and around the Amarnath Shrine on the pattern of "Israeli policy in Palestine." They, including the Kashmir-based opinion leaders and media persons, repeatedly said that the decision to divert Baltal land was designed to destroy the Kashmir's "fragile" ecology and "pollute" its "environment? Besides, they gave a communal orientation to a non-issue for gains political or otherwise. Their opposition to the official decision was a manifestation of their communal approach to an issue the Hindus held very dear.
As for the "secular" National Conference president and the then Member of Parliament Omar Abdullah, he declared on the floor of the Lok Sabha on July 22, 2008, that "I am a Muslim and I am an Indian…We will not give an inch of our land to the Shrine Board…The issue was that of land wrested from people. We fought for the land and will continue to fight for the land…" The attitude of another "secular" outfit CPI-M towards the land issue was no different. Its leader Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami, like all other Kashmiri leaders, separatists or otherwise, too did all that he could to make the State Government reverse the May 26 order so that the SASB could not create facilities for the Amarnath Yatris.
The fact is that all the Kashmiri leaders, without any exception, had joined hands against the government and vitiated the whole Amarnath Yatra. Their basic demands were two - reduction in the period of Yatra and withdrawal of the order under which a small piece of land at Baltal had been diverted to the Shrine Board. Paradoxically, N N Vohra, who took over as Governor of the state on June 25, 2008, also sided with the Kashmiri separatists and communalists by telling the State Government that the Shrine Board didn't need that piece of land. (To be continued)
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