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| Spurious Claim Is NC really a secular formation? | | | Rustam
JAMMU, Apr 19: Is National Conference (NC) really a secular formation? Yes, says Kamal, who is additional general secretary of the NC and brother of NC president Farooq Abdullah and uncle of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah.
To substantiate his assertion he says had the NC been not secular, his father Sheikh Abdullah would not have inducted Kashyap Bandhu, Sham Lal Saraf, Jia Lal Kilm and Sardar Budh Singh in his Council of Ministers and Shiv Narayan Fotedar would not have been made Chairman Legislative Council. He says so while referring to the first inning of Sheikh Abdullah.
To make his point he further says that when his father again took over as State Chief Minister in 1975 he inducted in his Council of Ministers Devi Dass Thakur and Sonam Narbo. He says that his father gave adequate representation to Hindus in 1977 as well and that his brother Farooq Abdullah also gave a secular orientation to the Council of Ministers by inducting in it Hindus and other non-Muslims. It is, however, a different story that he has nothing to say about the present NC-led dispensation which doesn't have even one Kashmiri Hindu or even one Sikh or even one woman member in the Council of Ministers headed by Omar Abdullah. He also doesn't refer to the exclusion of member of Scheduled Caste Community from the present Council of Ministers as far as the NC's quota is concerned.
Accepted for the sake of argument that the induction of a few non-Muslims in the Council of Ministers during the times of Sheikh Abdullah and Farooq Abdullah was an indication that the NC leadership believed in secularism, although it can also be said that the father and the son did no favour to the non-Muslim communities who were given representation in the Council of Ministers. The non-Muslim communities constituted, and continue to constitute, more than 40 per cent of the State's population and, hence, they deserved representation in the Council of Ministers.
The induction in or exclusion of non-Muslims from the Council of Ministers is one of the many issues that should be considered while reflecting on the nature of polity. One of the real issues which should be considered while reflecting on the nature of political system is the ideology of the party that is at the helm. It is the ideology and socio-religious and politico-administrative policies of the party which need to be considered while making observation or observations on the nature of the leadership of the party and the party itself.
It can be said without any hesitation that Mustafa Kamal has only fooled himself and the people by asserting that he belongs to a formation that is secular, that "upholds the traditions of secularism and communal harmony in the State" and that has "sacrificed many party-men to uphold this tradition". A party which stands for pre-1953 position for the State on the ground that it is Muslim-majority or a party that seeks a dispensation outside the political and constitutional organization of India saying it represents people who are different from all other Indians just cannot claim that it is secular. Similarly, a party that has all along perpetrated injustice after injustice on the Hindu-majority Jammu province and
Buddhist-majority Ladakh region and consistently given a preferential and differential treatment to the Muslim-majority Kashmir just cannot claim that its character is secular and democratic. Likewise, a parry that has always sung the Pakistani song and advocated that the future of Jammu and Kashmir has yet to be determined or a party that claims on the floor of the Assembly that Jammu and Kashmir only acceded and not merged with India cannot even think that it is secular.
One can catalogue here scores and scores of instances to show that the NC has consistently subverted the polity in order to give it a communal orientation in order to pander to a particular section of society which is fundamentally communal, reactionary, backward-looking and essentially anti-non-Muslims, but the space constraint doesn't allow this writer to catalogue here all the instances. Suffice it to say that the custodians and owners of the NC dub as communalists and anti-Kashmir all those in Jammu and Ladakh who demand the State's full merger with India, application of the Indian Constitution to the State in full (barring anti-democratic Article 370), empowerment and reorganization of the State, equitable development of all the three regions, stringent action against the anti-India elements in Kashmir and retention of the AFSPA, and all those who eulogize the Indian Army and paramilitary forces and oppose such demands as return to pre-1953 position.
The truth, in short, is that the NC is not only communal but it is also essentially Kashmir-centric and one particular religious segment-centric. It does exploit the followers of a particular religion who inhabit certain areas of Jammu province for vote-bank politics, but it never treats them equally with their Kashmir-based co-religionists. Take, for example, the manner in which it has treated the Jammu province-based Muslim MLAs belonging to the NC. There is only one Jammu-based NC MLA who has been given berth in the Council of Ministers and the rest belongs to the Valley. |
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