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| Politics of paying tribute to Gulab Singh, harming Dogras | | | Neha
JAMMU, May 8: It is ridiculous. It is disgusting. It is just duplicity. It is politics of sheer opportunism self-seekers indulge in. How else should one interpret the desire of certain Jammu-based ministers to use or create an opportunity to pay tributes to the Dogra Maharajas, including Maharaja Gulab Singh, to hoodwink the Dogras and their unflinching support to the anti-Dogra decisions taken by the government of which they are the most vital part? Only the other day, one of the Jammu-based ministers paid tributes to Maharaja Gulab Singh in Jammu. It was an official function and an occasion for the said minister to remember Maharaja Gulab Singh and he made optimum use of the occasion. There was nothing wrong in it.
All the Jammu-based ministers must remember those who founded the state and brought laurels to the land of the Dogras. After all, it was Maharaja Gulab Singh who founded Jammu and Kashmir in March 1846 at a time when other princely states had crumbled before the British. It was the Dogra rulers who merged Gilgit-Baltistan and the entire Ladakh region with India in the middle of the 19 century. They would have even added Tibet to the Dogra Kingdom, had the vagaries of the nature not played havoc and prevented the march of the brave Dogras towards the land of the Lamas. They could found the state and merge the northern Areas with India because of their effective, skilful and inspiring leadership. They gave the Dogras an identity and established that the Dogras could be compared with any of the martial races in the world. Such was their contribution.
Bhim Singh, Chairman, J&K National Panthers Party, is right when he, like many other proud Dogras, condemns the NC-Congress government's authoritarian decision to revoke the Dogra Certificate order and terms the decision as illegal and discriminatory and says the decision "amounts to grave insult to more than 10 million Dogras who have written not only the history but also geography of India in the Himalayan range." He is also right when he says that Dogras spilled their blood and made supreme sacrifices for the unity and integrity of India. It was no wonder then that the British, the French, and even the Chinese historians had recognized the Dogras and their martial spirit.
The Dogras of Jammu would have appreciated if the Jammu-based ministers, belonging the Congress and the National Conference, put their foot down and defeated the anti-Dogra move of the Kashmiri leadership on April 28. That they did not do so and, instead, became a party to the anti-Dogra decision did establish that they are concerned more with power and pelf, that they have no regard whatever for the sensitivities of the Dogras, that they could go to any extent to fulfill their insatiable lust for power and money and that on occasions they pay lip service to the Dogra Maharajas in their desperate bid to identify themselves with the Dogras. That they pay lip service to the Dogra Maharajas could be seen from their utter failure to counter the likes of Mustafa Kamal who used the floor of the assembly to condemn the Dogra Maharajas during the last budget session.
If the Jammu-based ministers really wish to pay tributes to the Dogra Maharajas, they have no other option but to identify themselves with the Dogras and they can do so if they are prepared to sacrifice their office for the sake of their self-respect, as also for the sake of the self-respect of the community to which, they say, they also belong. They cannot remember the Dogra Maharajas and humiliate the Dogras at the same time. |
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