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| Kashmir already over-developed, Delhi needs to focus on marginalized Jammu | | | RUSTAM
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Sep 1: It may appear unbelievable, but it is a hard fact that the Kashmiri Muslims constitute less than half per cent the country's population but get 10 to 12 per cent every year from the national budget. This writer is not saying so. BJP veteran and former BJP national president Murli Manohar Joshi said so in the Lok Sabha on August 26 while participating in the debate on J&K.
Participating in the two-day long debate on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, Joshi had said that "Kashmiris (read Muslims of Kashmir) are demanding secession from India and not jobs and development"; that (the Union) Government has pumped Rs 94,000 crore into the state that represents "merely one or two per cent of our population" (read less than half per cent population); that the "state is being ruled by a corrupt administration"; and that the "one or two per cent of population (is) getting 10-12 per cent from our (Indian) budget." Population of Kashmiri Muslims is approximately fifty lakh, even less than that.
It was not only Joshi who put things in perspective and took the Government of India to task for pursuing wrong policy towards Kashmir. Army veteran and former Governor of J&K Lt Gen (retd) S K Sinha also took almost a similar line a day later (August 27) while addressing the Army veterans' meeting in Delhi. He, among other things, said: "Economic development in the face of religious fanaticism has little impact. The highest per capita outlay of the Central Government is in Kashmir. It is 10 times more than many other States. People living below poverty line in Kashmir, has come down from 25% to 3.7% as against the national average of 26%. As for employment, 11% of Kashmir's population is in Government jobs as against the national average of 2%. If industries have not flourished in the State, it is because under Article 370, outsiders cannot acquire land there."
What Joshi and Sinha said in and outside the Parliament should not surprise anyone in the state or elsewhere in the country. For, what they said is too well known. What, however, significant was their concerted attempt to expose the flaws in the approach of the policy-planners to the issues confronting New Delhi in Kashmir. Both of them held New Delhi squarely responsible for the Indian troubles in Kashmir and for overfeeding the people there. Their main refrain was that the Union Government, instead of diagnosing the ailment in Kashmir and prescribing right medicine to cure the ailment, has been pumping into Kashmir billions and billions of hard-earn Indian rupees (taxpayers' money), but without achieving any breakthrough.
The meaning of what Joshi and Sinha said was as clear as crystal: By overfeeding the people of Kashmir, New Delhi is not only giving birth to more and more secessionists, but also strengthening the hands of separatists and communalists. And, what they said was what Kalhana wrote in his seminal Rajatarangini. He has written: "If you give them (Kashmiris) more than what they require they would turn Damras" (rebels).
Are the likes of Geelanis, Mirwaizs, Maliks, Shah, Muftis, Abdullahs and so on not rebels? The answer cannot be no. They are leading luxurious lives at the cost of the Indian taxpayers' money and, at the same time, demanding independence from India or an autonomous status for Kashmir. They have everything at their disposal - absolute political power, immense wealth, jobs and what not - and yet they are up in arms against India. They are not accountable to anyone in New Delhi; they are ruling over and exploiting the people of Jammu and Ladakh since October 1947; they are fleecing India and looting and fleecing the people of Jammu and Ladakh; they have reduced the people of these two regions to the status of third grade subjects, and yet they feel unsatisfied; yet they are feeling uncomfortable in India; yet they are despising India and everything Indian, minus the Indian rupees. They are the most prosperous people in the whole of the world in every sense and yet they are not prepared to lead a peaceful life and allow others to lead a peaceful and dignified life.
The fact of the matter is that the problem of the people of Kashmir is wholly psychological: They feel that they are a nation; they feel they have the natural right to secede and shape and mould their future as per the Shari laws, as opposed to the secular and liberal laws that govern the Indians; they constitute almost hundred per cent of Kashmir's population and yet feel insecure; they want the Government of India to apply the principle of protection and promotion of majority, as opposed to the application of the principle of protection of minorities, so that they could live in a watertight compartment and, at the same time, enjoy unbridled power to crush, enslave and exploit the non-Muslim minorities in the state. They need a blank cheque.
Despite the over-generous attitude of the Union Government; despite the fact that the Union Government has consistently given them more than what they require, the people of Kashmir and their leaders, without any exception, have always abused India, with the authorities in New Delhi, instead of reversing their failed policies, announcing more and more concessions all designed to further pamper and appease the already over-fed, over-pampered, over-appeased and obstinate and unrelenting Kashmiri leadership and its supporters. (To be continued) |
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