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| Jammu-Ladakh irrelevant, Geelani secular, PK communal, India oppressive | | | EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Sept 20: NDTV 24X7 telecasts every Saturday a programme, titled The Big Fight. It is mostly Bikram Chandra who anchors the programme. Though he works for the NDTV 24X7, he just couldn’t be compared with Barkha Dutt, who is out-and-out pro-separatist and anti-Indian establishment. Chandra is sober, sophisticated and anchors by and large in an objective manner. He, unlike Dutt, also puts questions which appear quite inconvenient to the biased and unreasonable panelists.
Last Saturday, Chandra organized a debate on Jammu and Kashmir. A lot of heat was generated during the debate. It all happened when the issue of Jammu and Ladakh was raised. The discussion became more and more bitter when someone raised the issue of the internally-displaced Kashmiri Hindus, who have been leading a wretched life in the refugee camps in Jammu and elsewhere since January-March 1990, when the separatists drove them out of their homes and hearts at gunpoint, leave alone a few Kashmiri Hindus who are economically quite well-off.
Among others who participated in the debate organized just on the eve of the all-party parliamentary delegation’s visit to the state included Sajjad Lone, the so-called freedom fighter and popular Kashmiri leader, who contested the last parliamentary election, could not lead even in one assembly segment and lost his security deposit; Gautam Navlakha, so-called human rights activist and the one who works with the Left-oriented Economic and Political Weekly and who actually works for the deadly Maoists/Naxalites and speaks on behalf of them and the Kashmiri separatists; Mehbooba Mufti of People’s Democratic Party and Mehboob Beg of National Conference. None from Jammu and Ladakh was there on the panel. There were persons on the panel who spoke from the Congress and the BJP. In fact, they, instead of taking on Sajjad and Gautam, took on each other. There was also one former army general, who did what he could to put things in perspective. There was also one Kashmiri Hindu on the panel. As expected, he was overawed, although he expressed unhappiness over what has been happening in Kashmir. However, there was one Kashmiri Hindu young girl in the audience who took on the likes of Sajjad and said: “We will not go to this Kashmir where communalism, separatism and intolerance reign supreme.”
Anyway, all the four panelists, three from Kashmir and one from Delhi Navlakha, who is a known mercenary and anarchist, almost spoke the same language and talked only about Kashmir, the so-called Kashmiri alienation and the alleged brutalities on the innocent Kashmiri Muslims and demanded action against the “perpetrators of these barbarities and cruelties”, independence, greater autonomy and self-rule. All the four spoke in one voice that “Jammu and Kashmir is a disputed case.”
Sajjad Lone and Gautam Navlakha even went to the extent of dismissing the people of Jammu and Ladakh, saying they are irrelevant because they are in minority. Sajjad advocated the need of organizing a plebiscite in the state to ascertain the views of the people on the future status of the state and shamelessly said that the view of the majority must be accepted. The upshot of the separatist, communalist and primitive Sajjad Lone was that the majority must not be allowed to hold the majority a hostage. Bikram Chandra retorted and exposed Sajjad. Chandra asked Sajjad: Will it not be appropriate to hold a plebiscite in the whole of the country to ascertain the views of the Indian nation on the political future of Jammu and Kashmir? Chandra’s counter left Sajjad clueless and faceless. The cornered and humiliated Sajjad tried to defend his regressive formulation but couldn’t. The Chandra’s question had changed the whole tone and tenor of the debate.
The plight of Gautam Navlakha, who has no right to speak on behalf of the people of the state, as he is the one who believes in the destruction and dismemberment of India and promotion of the cult of terror and separation, based on religious considerations, was no different. He shouted again and again; he tried to the hilt to silence his critics, but failed to carry conviction with anybody except Sajjad and others of his ilk. It appeared as if the defeated and clueless Navlakha would slap his critics. He was simply fighting and shouting.
What did Gautam Navlakha say: He, among several other provocative things, said: “The number of Kashmiri Hindus is very small. They cannot dictate terms to the majority community. They are responsible for the Kashmir’s agony. Panun Kashmir is a highly communal organization.” In fact, he dismissed the displaced Kashmiri Hindus with contempt and dubbed them as patently communal. When asked if Syed Ali Shah Geelani is secular, Navlakha shamelessly said yes he is. He said so in his own style and he said so when the tempers were running very high and what the panelists had been saying become somewhat inaudible.
The refrain of both Sajjad and Gautam was that those who are fighting against the Indian State and demanding independence are secular and those reposing their faith in India and the Indian Constitution and talking about the miserable plight of Jammu and Ladakh and displaced Kashmiri Hindus are communal. Such persons need to be countered and excommunicated. They can be countered only if those from Jammu and Ladakh confront them, as they alone know where the shoe is pinching; who only know what is the nature of the Kashmir problem and what is the nature of the ongoing movement in the Valley. Even otherwise, the participation of the ignored Jammu and Ladakh and the persecuted community of Kashmiri Hindus in such debates is imperative because they are the real factors in the state’s situation. They, and not the Kashmiri leaders, are the worst sufferers.
The all-party parliamentary delegation is there in Kashmir today. Let’s see what approach ultimately it adopts towards the separatist Kashmiri leadership, as also towards Jammu, Ladakh and displaced Kashmiri Hindus. Will it also dismiss Jammu and Ladakh as irrelevant or will it also overlook the aspirations and needs of the displaced Kashmiri Hindus? One has to wait for a day or two because things would become clear by then. |
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