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| Is this the way to keep J&K intact? | | Preaching Fake Secularism | | Neha
jammu, March 5: Senior Congress leader and former minister Abdul Gani Vakil on Sunday cautioned people against the "communal and divisive forces in the state" and said that "Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh have to stay together and people should understand the designs of such forces and strengthen secularism, unity and integrity of the state". He expressed these views in Jammu while addressing a meeting of Congress Seva Dal workers after returning from Bijnor, Western UP, where he campaigned for 10 days for Congress candidates seeking election to the assembly. He also urged the party workers to strengthen the Congress party in the state so that it is able to serve the people. "Sonia Gandhi has described politics as another name of service to people and all party men, including Ministers, have to work hard in order to address the problems of the people and come up to their expectations to further strengthen the party," he said. Fair enough.
However, the Congress leader did not pinpoint who were the communal and divisive forces in the state. He only said what the Kashmiri leaders have been saying in Jammu since decades with a view to controverting the influence of those who have been demanding the province's empowerment and a system that is genuinely secular, democratic, fair and impartial. It would have been better had he identified the communal and divisive forces in the state. One would hope that he would do so and put things in right perspective.
The Congress leader underlined the need of keeping the state intact and strengthening secularism. There was nothing wrong in it, but, unfortunately, he made these suggestions at a wrong place: Wrong place in the sense that it is Jammu province which is an oasis of secularism and that it is the people this province who made, and continue to make, supreme sacrifices for winning over those in Kashmir who have never considered the Valley as part of the national mainstream and who have been putting forth demands ranging from merger with Pakistan to independence to greater autonomy to economic independence to shared sovereignty to demilitarisation to porous borders and to what not on the ground that the state is not just a disputed territory but also Muslim-majority. Jammu province has cheerfully accommodated not just refugees of all varieties but many Muslims from Kashmir at its own cost.
As for Kashmir, everyone knows that the fanatics have cleansed the Valley of almost all non-Muslims. So intolerant and exclusivist they are. They and the Kashmiri leaders, who have been preaching and practices fake secularism and perpetrating injustice after injustice on the people of Jammu province, need to be taught and not the people of Jammu province. For, they have vitiated the whole atmosphere in the state and created an environment that has only forced the people in Jammu province to demand the state's trifurcation into Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh States or reorganisation of the state on purely regional basis.
It's not just that the Kashmiri leadership has left the people of Jammu province with no option but to demand segregation. New Delhi in general and the Congress party in particular are more than responsible for the rise of a situation in the state where the neglected and persecuted sections of society are putting forth demands ranging from statehood to Jammu to regional council/development board to trifurcation to Union Territory status to separate homeland and so on saying they just can't co-exist with Kashmiri leadership which, according to them is not just anti-Jammu and Kashmir-centric but also fundamentally communal, anti-democratic and regressive.
The Congress leader, who delivered a lecture on secularism in Jammu, needs to look all these facts in the face. It would be better if he hits the nail on the head and acknowledges that the problem lies in Kashmir and not in Jammu and that those who are demanding trifurcation of the state are those who have at no point of time during all these years of the independence got their legitimate due share in the state polity and economy. If he really wishes that the state must remain intact, then he and others in the Congress party have to make the state government behave so that it treats all the three regions equally at all levels, without any exception. |
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