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| Indian Left & Jammu and Kashmir | | Perverted Thinking | | EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Sept 5: CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat visited Kashmir sometime back for an on-the-spot-assessment of the situation in the Valley. It was expected that he would express solidarity with communalists in Kashmir, share the views of those who create anarchy in the Valley and recommend maximum possible autonomy for Kashmir and he did that. He not only condemned the killings in the Valley and took to task the security forces for using bullets against the law breakers and anti-India elements, but also shamelessly asserted that Kashmir is a "special case." Earlier in Andhra Pradesh, he had said: "The people of Kashmir have to be assured that their identity and special status is expressed through a new political framework in which maximum autonomy is the bedrock."
What the CPI-M general secretary Karant said in Andhra Pradesh and Srinagar should not surprise anyone. For, the Indian Left, which had opposed the freedom struggle in the country at the behest of Moscow and which had also opposed tooth and nail the 1942 "Quit India Movement", had never considered Jammu and Kashmir as an integral part of India. The Indian Left, which gave unstinted support to the idea of British India being divided on communal lines so that Muslim Pakistan was created out of it, has always considered Jammu and Kashmir a disputed territory and consistently worked for the state's autonomy.
So much so, the Indian Left has never considered India as a nation state. It has always taken India to mean a congregation of more than 20 nations, with each nation having the right to secede from India. Even at the time of Independence, the Indian Left had supported the demand for the state's merger with Pakistan on the ground that Jammu and Kashmir was a Muslim-majority area. The Indian Left and the Kashmiri separatists and rank communalists have consistently hobnobbed with each other. Hence, the suggestion of Prakash Karat that Jammu and Kashmir be given possible autonomy needs to be viewed in this context. Its approach to the so-called Kashmir problem was communal in 1946-1947 and its approach to the Kashmir issue remains unchanged even today.
Remember, the Left and the radical Islamists do not believe in the concepts of State, Nation, Nationality, Sovereignty, Borders, Nationalism and Patriotism. The Left wants the whole of the world to become Left or Communist and the radical Islamists want to Islamize the whole of the world. The only difference between the two is that while the Left doesn't believe in religion and it wants to build up a stateless society on the basis of economic, the radical Islamists want to impose their religion on the non-believers across the world. Both believe in the concept of force.
In other words, both the ideologies run counter to what the Indian nation stands for. It is also significant to note that the Left, which consistently opposes the United States on the ground that it is a capitalistic country, supports the United States as far as the resolution of the so-called Kashmir problem is concerned. Both the Left and the American administration stand for the Kashmir's autonomy and both want India to grant major, major concessions to Pakistan. One can cite here any number of instances to show that both the Left and the United States are one as far as their attitude to Kashmir and Pakistan is concerned.
Anyway, the basic question is: Is the Prakash Karat's autonomy formulation/suggestion workable? The answer has to be a big NO for two fundamental reasons. One is that the kind of autonomy he talks about, if granted, would at once mean negation of the Indian Constitution. Will the Indian Parliament take an extreme step and undo all that it is constitutionally bound to protect at whatever cost? It will not take that extreme step. Moreover, will not the acceptance of what the protagonists of autonomy have been demanding lead to similar demands in other parts of the country, including the turbulent North-East and Punjab, and ultimately lead to the balkanization of India? Surely, it would lead to such demands and disintegrate India.
The other is that the people of Jammu and Ladakh and several religious and ethnic minorities in the state are against the kind of autonomy the protagonists of autonomy have been advocating within and outside the state. They are for their segregation from Kashmir, as also for their full integration into India. Those who think that they will be able to sell the idea of autonomy across the state are obviously living in a fool's paradise or in a world of the past. That shall never happen. The people of Jammu and Ladakh and the non-Kashmiri religious and ethnic minorities are nationalist to the core and they will compromise their position, notwithstanding New Delhi's indifferent attitude towards them.
Prakash Karat must revise his stand on Kashmir. If he really believes in secularism and democracy, he has no other option but to give up his controversial and communally-motivated autonomy formulation. He cannot outrage the nationalist sentiment of a vast majority of population in the state. Even otherwise, he has no right to advocate such pernicious concepts. The people of Jammu and Kashmir have never commended the Left politics. Yes, Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami won election in Kulgam, but that was an aberration, and not vote for the Left, which has been rejected across the world. |
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