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| Autonomy demand will lead to disintegration of J&K | | |
RUSTAM
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, July 23: The working committee of the ruling National Conference (NC) met yesterday at Srinagar for nearly seven hours. It met at a time when the Kashmir Valley is on the boil and the extremists and separatists in no mood to relent. It was obvious that the members of the working committee would discuss - apart from organizational matters, nature of governance and causes responsible for the growth of the cult of stone throwing - measures that could end violence in the Valley and help resumption of day-to-day activities. The working committee felt that two steps are needed to be taken immediately to defuse the potentially dangerous situation in the Valley - release of all those booked under various charges, including those involved in anti-government, anti-India and secessionist and violent activities, and restoration of greater autonomy.
It is clear that the NC leadership has willfully refused to learn lessons from the past mistakes and that it will go on playing with fire. The suggestion of the working committee that those booked under various charges, whom it regards political prisoners, should be released forthwith indicates that the members of the committee have not really gone into those causes or willfully overlooked and brushed aside those causes that led to the rise of a situation the Kashmir Valley has been in since June 20. Their suggestion is mind-boggling all the more because they have utterly failed to anticipate the grave evils that would follow on the release of the hardcore militants, extremists, subversives and those whose single-point agenda seems to be to ensure the collapse of the NC-led coalition government and dismember India. They completely overlooked the fact that the release of the criminals and those who have committed heinous crimes against the state government, the very institution of the state and the hapless humanity and attacked the security forces and symbols of the Indian sovereignty would create addition difficulties for the state government, which is already in deep trouble.
The causes that led to the rise of anarchy, lawlessness and heightening of anti-state government and anti-India activities were - apart from mal-administration, rampant corruption, bureaucratic arrogance, lack of contact between the ruler and the ruled, lack of transparency, uneven development, no accountability, dissensions within the party, not-so-cordial relations between the party president and the state chief minister (NC president and Chief minister have on occasions publicly differed with each other on several issues) and carelessness - were the politics of competitive communalism and separatism, as opposed to the politics of secularism, liberalism and democratic issues.
Neither the ruling NC nor the main opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP) ever tried to anticipate the dangerous ramifications of the kind of politics of one-upmanship both these parties had been taking recourse to since years to let down each other, paint each other black, corner each other and virtually identify themselves with the separatist outfits and what they stand for. Both these parties did all that they could to demolish each other and lower each other's position in the eyes of the Kashmiri Muslims. They did it in and outside the assembly and before the ever-alert media. The chief minister and the rabble-rouser and outspoken PDP president, instead of indulging in politics based on democratic and economic issues, indulged in a kind of politics that suited the Kashmiri extremists, separatists, communalists, and even Pakistan. It was not for nothing that Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi took on Indian foreign minister S M Krishna in Islamabad on the basis of the statements made by the J&K chief Minister.
The chief minister did realize some of his mistakes. He did say that certain "vested interests" were behind what happened in Kashmir and that he and his government knew who those "vested interests" were, but he did nothing to isolate and book them. If booked for sometime, they were treated with kid gloves and kept in beautiful rest houses/huts, located in the highly salubrious Chasma Shahi. He did try to act, but he acted when the damage had already been done and the whole of the administrative edifice collapsed for all practical purposes. And, when he acted, he also made certain controversial statements. For example, he again reiterated that "J&K is a political problem and it needs to be dealt with as such through external and internal dialogue" - something that suits the Kashmiri separatists and Pakistan.
The suggestion of the working committee that the "prisoners" should be released is one part of the story and it is not inspiring. On the contrary, it augurs bad for the people of the state and the Indian nation. The NC president has urged the government to "deal firmly with destabilizing forces". It has no meaning. How could his party talk of "firm action" and release of subversives at the same time. It is a contradiction of sorts. (To be continued)
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