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| Will Jammu province be divided to set up Greater Kashmir? | | Interlocutors' Report | | Early Times Report
Jammu, Oct 14: A fortnight ago, two prominent citizens living in Jammu, one a Dogra intellectual and writer and another a displaced Kashmiri Hindu leader addressed a joint press conference delineating the parameters on which they would judge the final report of the three interlocutors appointed by the Government of India to find a "political solution" to the problems confronting the sensitive and militant and separatist-infested Jammu and Kashmir. The prominent citizens defined that the interlocutors report would have a negative bearing on the national interests if there is any reference in the final report which directly or indirectly accepts the separatist contention that accession of Jammu and Kashmir was conditional; or the report recommends that article 370 should be made as a permanent provision of the Indian Constitution or if the report directly or indirectly recommends division of Jammu province along its demographic contours. As the final report has already been submitted to the Government of India and newspapers have made references to it in their stories, it seems the general impression about the report is that it has not recommended any fundamental change in the present constitutional relationship of the state with the Union of India. It also seems that the report has recommended some mechanism to end discrimination with Jammu province and the trans-Himalayan Ladakh.
However, the reference to a "meaningful autonomy" to state as quoted by many observers to be the highlight of the report has raised many apprehensions. Does the state not have a meaningful autonomy at present? If it does not have, then what is the nature of the measures recommended by the interlocutors in their final report, which will make it really meaningful? Since the report has been kept under wraps by the government and there are rumours that there are confidential parts of the report which would never be shared with the general public, the apprehensions in the nationalist constituency in the state have started to multiply.
But what has become disconcerting for the responsible public opinion in Jammu is that there are recommendations in the report which seek to create multiple regional councils, particularly in Kashmir valley and Jammu province. While creating of regional councils in Kashmir will have minimal political implications, creation of multiple regional councils in Jammu province, which make Muslim majority areas of Doda and Rajauri-Poonch as separate core units for the new councils, is fraught with serious consequences. If it is so then it seems that the interlocutors have intervened and tried to carry forward what Prime Minister of India had assigned to Wajahat Habibullah, presently chairman of the Minorities Commission of India, during a crucial Working Group meeting on the Centre-state relations. Wajahat in his presentation apparently on Panchayati Raj devolution had recommended division of Jammu province into its hilly regions and plain region. This recommendation specifically sought the cover of a topographical divide in Jammu province to rationalize an administrative division coinciding with the demographic divide of Jammu province.
The concepts of creating three councils in Jammu region may be explained perhaps on the basis of ethnic parameters but that is just an canny excuse for recommending the separation of Muslim majority areas of Jammu province into separate units. If this is so, then it is a serious development with catastrophic implications. This would mean that the interlocutors have kept the course which was set by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former Pakistan president General Pervez Musharraf to carve out a Greater Muslim Kashmir as a first step towards a final settlement of the issues in Jammu and Kashmir between India and Pakistan. Many an observer opine that it cannot be so as the whole move has larger implications. But assuming it is so then it means that the report of interlocutors has unfolded Dixon's formula in a very calibrated and gradual way. As it is not sure when the people will see the actual contents of the final report, it seems the skepticism will only multiply in the coming days. |
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