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| Interlocutors recommend special status under Article 370 | | Anti-Jammu & Ladakh Report | | Rustam
Jammu, May 9: "A focus on diversity must not…detract attention from the imperative need to preserve the unity and integrity of the State (of Jammu & Kashmir) and to uphold the special place it enjoys in the Indian Union under Article 370. To argue otherwise would entail horrendous dangers. This special status needs to be finessed to ensure…that the State is vested with all the powers it requires to address the aspirations of all its regions and communities - including, in the first place, its political aspirations".
Who has said so? It is none other than the former Interlocutor for Jammu & Kashmir Dilip Padgaonkar. Actually, he has written an article titled "For A New Narrative On Jammu & Kashmir" and it is in this write-up that he has given his fullest possible support to those in Kashmir who stand for special status for the State under Article 370. The article appeared in a leading English language national daily on May 4. And what Padgaonkar has written only vindicated those who had repeatedly expressed the View that the Congress-dominated UPA Government-appointed Interlocutors - Dilip Padgaonkar, Radha Kumar and MM Ansari - would make common cause with Kashmiri communalists and separatists and strongly recommend special status for Jammu & Kashmir under the unsettling, divisive, anti-democratic and communal Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. It is clear that the Interlocutors had ignored the fact that those who drafted, finalized and approved the Indian Constitution in 1949 had clearly and unequivocally said that Article 370 was a temporary provision and that it would be removed from the statute book in course of time.
Article 370, everyone knows, confers a special status on the State. The Union Government cannot bring Jammu & Kashmir under the ambit of any Central law or any Central institution without the concurrence of the State Government. This is what Article 370 provides for Jammu & Kashmir is the only State in the Union which has a separate Constitution and a separate flag. It is also the only State in the Union that enjoys residuary powers, including the power of taxation. The Kashmiri ruling elite has consistently exploited Article 370 in order to hold the State aloof from the mainstream and tell the international community that Jammu & Kashmir is disputed territory whose political status has yet to be determined.
The Congress-dominated Indian Constituent Assembly had incorporated Article 370 in the draft of Indian Constitution on October 19, 1949 to pander to the Kashmiri communalists and autonomists and to meet their separatist urges much against the wishes of the people of Jammu province and Ladakh region. The people of these two ethnically, culturally and politically distinct regions had then subsequently and repeatedly opined that Article 370 would enable the Kashmiri leadership to play communal politics and widen gulf between the State and New Delhi and jeopardize their general political, social and economic rights and interests. In fact, they had endorsed the view of a Muslim member of the Indian Constituent Assembly Maulana Hasrat Mohani that the "grant of special status to Kashmir on the score of religion would enable it to become independent".
Ironically, the Indian Constituent Assembly rejected outrightly the sane counsel of Mohani, which was also coupled with an unambiguous warning. Article 370 was the immediate fall-out of the understanding between the then Indian Prime Minister and Minister of Kashmir Affairs and the National Conference leaders, especially Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, who had turned towards the Indian Prime Minister after the Pakistani President and Prime Minister rejected outrightly his demand seeking autonomous status for the State within the newly-created Pakistani Dominion out of India. It is an established fact that Sheikh Abdullah was not for the State's accession to India and that it was the mortal fear of physical liquidation at the hands of the Pakistani leadership that had forced him to ask the Indian Prime Minister to accept the Maharaja Hari Singh's offer of accession, despite the fact that he had no locus standi in the matter and despite the fact that the Maharaja alone had the power to take a decision on the State's political future in terms of law on the subject.
It would not be out of place to mention here that there was perfect understanding between the Indian Prime Minister and the then National Conference President and both were rabidly anti-Maharaja for no reason whatever. It was to teach the Dogra Maharaja a lesson that the Indian Prime Minister put all eggs in the latter's basket. In fact, the Indian Prime Minister not only conspired against the Maharaja and the Dogras in order to ensure the transfer of state power from Jammu, the original capital of the State, to Srinagar but also, in collaboration with the National President, created an environment that forced him to quit his own State and die in Mumbai in distress as a broken-hearted person.
It is time for the integrationists and victims of the Kashmiri Muslim identity politics to come on one platform and create an environment that forces New Delhi to reject the interlocutors' Valley-centric and out-and-out anti-Jammu and anti-Ladakh report. |
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