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| Struggle in Jammu for justice & integration continues unabated | | NEHRU-MOOKERJEE & KASHMIR | | Rustam
JAMMU, Oct 10: Struggle in Jammu province for the state's complete integration into India and its empowerment started as early as in 1947, the year the state acceded to India. However, it was in 1952 that the movement gained a great momentum in the real sense of the term. Significantly, the one who gave this momentum was none other than Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, the Bengal tiger, who was none other than the once ministerial colleague of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. He not only challenged the monopoly of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah of the Valley-based and pro-limited accession National Conference, but also challenged the kind of politics he had been indulging in since the 1930s. So much so that the Bengal tiger staked his very precious life in his effort to (1) secure the integration of Jammu and Kashmir with the rest of India and (2) save the at-the-receiving-end-Dogras of Jammu province from Sheikh Abdullah's actions that were described by a former central intelligence chief as a "bid at ethnic cleansing."
It would be relevant to refer to the grave charge Mookerjee, founder of the Jana Sangh, levelled against Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah and what he said at Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh) on December 29, 1952 while addressing a meeting. He had said: "Mr Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah have jointly decided to carry on a ruthless policy of repression in Jammu (for the simple reason that the people of this province wanted complete integration into India and defeat the Sheikh's politics of communalism and separatism)…An impression is gaining ground that with our blood and money we are carving out a virtually autonomous state for Sheikh Abdullah…Jammu and Ladakh must be fully integrated with India according to the wishes of their people." Mookerjee categorically stated that "while he does not want the partition of Jammu and Kashmir, it has become a matter of Hobson's choice: Kashmir Valley could be made a separate state with all necessary subventions desired by the Sheikh and his advisers, but Jammu and Ladakh must not be sacrificed."
Mookerjee died on June 23, 1953, under suspicious circumstances while under house arrest in an abandoned cottage on a hill outside Srinagar, with no telephone or medical facility within miles, without Nehru meeting him there even once during his 40-day detention. His soul must surely be astir now with talk gaining ground about the revived call for a full-fledged separate Jammu state and a separate Ladakh enjoying the status of Union Territory.
It is an irony that things in the state have not changed even marginally since then. Rather, things have further deteriorated. The Kashmiri leadership continues to rake up emotive and divisive issues, all aimed at widening further the already rather wide gulf between the state and the Centre as well as giving a religious orientation to the state's polity, thus vitiating the socio-religious and political atmosphere in the state and forcing the people of Jammu and Ladakh to demand reorganization of the state on regional lines and religious and ethnic minorities to seek constitutional safeguards, including the right to life.
What is rather disturbing is the fact that the attitude of New Delhi towards Kashmiri leadership remains as positive and accommodating and towards Jammu and Kashmir remains as negative as it was during the time of Mookerjee. In fact, things have now climaxed to the point that the authorities in New Delhi are virtually thinking in terms of retreating from the state as if India is a colonial power and the state its colony. Not only this, if the attitude of Nehru and his government towards the nationalist Jammu and Ladakh was hostile, it's no different even today. There are elements in the New Delhi's corridors of power who openly advocate a solution that not only drives the state away from New Delhi but also throws in the lot of the people of Jammu and Ladakh with the extremist and sectarian leadership in Kashmir. So much so that our own Prime Minister has come out with a unique formulation: "Neighbours cannot be changed but borders can be rendered irrelevant; just a line on the map."
In other words, even the executive head of the country whose duty it is to defend the national unity and the country's sovereignty is conducting himself in a fashion that has led many, many persons to believe that the Prime Minister is out to barter away the paramount national interests in his desperate bid to please Pakistan and the regressive Kashmiri leadership. It's this attitude of New Delhi that has been keeping the people of Jammu awake even in the night. To be more precise, the struggle they started in 1952 under the inspiring, effective and skillful leadership of Mookerjee to achieve their twin objectives continues even today. What an irony! Those who are challenging the institution of the state and demanding autonomy/self-rule have been ruling the roost in the state and those who have been fighting for India in the state and demanding due share in the state's political and economic processes have been at the receiving end since decades. They are being dubbed as communalists, reactionary, and even anti-national. Such things can happen only in country, called India, Hindustan and Bharat. |
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