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| Time for refugees to quit Jammu | | Perverted State, Communal Leadership | | Neha
JAMMU, Apr 5: The West Pakistan Refugees on Wednesday once again organized a massive march and brought the life to a standstill in Jammu city. Several hundreds refugees joined the march. They were shouting slogans against the NC-Congress coalition government and demanding citizenship rights. The rally was led by Labha Ram Gandhi, president West Pak Refugee Action Committee (WPRAC) and it culminated outside the Press Club of Jammu.
Addressing the protestors' rally, Gandhi bemoaned that the West Pakistan refugees do not enjoy even normal citizenship rights in Jammu and Kashmir even after 65 years of their stay in Jammu province and administered a threat that they would intensify agitation in the event of the authorities not conceding their demands before April 30. He threatened "rail rook andolan". He also announced that the abandoned and persecuted refugees would also organize a cycle rally that would cover as many as eight states, including Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Uttrakhand. "The rally would begin on May 1" and the objective of the rally would be to make people aware of their miserable plight as well as their demands and rights. Earlier in March, hundreds of refugees from West Pakistan had held a protest demonstration outside the Parliament and sat on dharna at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi. More than 50 buses carried these refugees to Delhi.
The fact of the matter is that these refugees have been organizing protest marches, demonstrations, hunger strikes and sit ins eve since 1947 when they migrated to Jammu in the aftermath of the communal partition of India. They have met with the authorities in Jammu and Kashmir and New Delhi umpteen times and narrated their woeful tales before them but without evoking any positive response from them. They have, in addition, confronted the police innumerable times and suffered in the process. In fact, they have done all that they could to persuade the authorities to take cognizance of their miserable plight and grant them normal citizenship rights, including the right to education, right to vote, right to property, right to government job, right to bank loan and right to lead a dignified life as free citizens of India, but with no result.
Their threat that they would take an extreme step and go in for "rail rook andolan" needs to be viewed in the light of the highly negative response their agitations, demonstrations, long marches, sit-ins, gehraos, hunger strikes and innumerable petitions have evoked from the authorities. If they believe that their threatened "rail rook andolan" and the proposed cycle rally would produce the desired results, then it can be safely said that they are still living in a fool's paradise.
The NC-Congress coalition government will not concede any of their demands because these formations subscribe to an ideology that is fundamentally communal, intolerant, regressive and exclusivist. The NC and the Congress belong to a school of thought that only panders to the communalists in Kashmir and that propagates that the grant of citizenship rights to the West Pakistan refugees would not only change the demography of the state and further alienate the Kashmiri Muslims but would also increase the representation of Jammu province in the legislative assembly. The Congress-dominated Union Government will also not concede any of their demands because it, like the NC-Congress coalition government in the state, believes that the grant of citizenship rights to the West Pakistan refugees would be construed as an attempt on the part of New Delhi to change the demographic profile of the state.
What, then, is the solution? The only solution is that the West Pakistan refugees should quit Jammu province and migrate to other parts of the country, especially Delhi, New Delhi and areas adjoining Delhi and New Delhi. Why should they stay put in Jammu which is part of a state that is not secular and democratic? Why should they stay put in Jammu province where even the original inhabitants have been crying for justice since 1947? Why should they stay put in Jammu province where even the original inhabitants are being denied their due share in the state's political and economic processes? Quit Jammu and enjoy the status refugees like Manmohan Singh and L K Advani enjoy in the country. |
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