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| Joshi in Jammu to speak on interlocutors' report | | Vajpayee & Kashmir | | EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, June 22: A report from New Delhi the other day suggested that the "BJP is envisioning a bigger role for itself in addressing the issues related to Kashmir albeit under the purview of the Indian Constitution". The report, in fact, among other things said: "The ray of hope for the party to play a bigger role in Kashmir has its genesis in the fact that the NDA government under Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was able to strike a chord with the people in the Valley and elsewhere in the state. 'In fact, this is the takeoff point for us. We found out during our six visits to the state that people still remember the positives of the Vajpayee government and its favorable disposition towards Kashmir. If it could happen at that time, why could not the same feeling be carried forward now? And that is the main point of reference' for the group," former BJP president Rajnath Singh, who heads the BJP Parliamentary Study Group for Jammu & Kashmir, was quoted as saying.
Why do people of Kashmir admire Vajpayee? They admire him because he had once said in Kashmir that
Article 370 shall ever remain part of the Indian Constitution"; because he started the so-called peace process with Pakistan overlooking the Pakistan-sponsored terror attack on the Indian Parliament; because he had been trying to strike a truce over Kashmir with Pakistan; because the deal he was trying to strike provided for maximum possible autonomy for Kashmir and its adjoining areas, demilitarization, porous borders and division of Jammu province along Chenab river on purely communal lines; and because he had promised a solution to the so-called Kashmir problem with the parameters of "insaniyat". "insaniyat ke daire mein" he had said.
It is important to note that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is only trying to give a concrete shape to what Vajpayee had proposed to "befriend" Pakistan and "win the hearts and minds of the alienated Kashmiri Muslims". It was Vajpayee who had once said "borders can be changed but neighbours cannot be". This is what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been saying almost on a daily basis. It is also important to note that the Vajpayee line had caused a sort of furore in Jammu and elsewhere with many expressing the view that "Vajpayee wanted Noble Peace Prize by cultivating Pakistan and Kashmiri separatists by compromising the Indian position on Jammu & Kashmir". Almost similar is the view of the people of Jammu about Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
It is in this backdrop that former BJP president and former HRD Minister Dr Murli Manhoar Joshi is visiting Jammu to take part in the BJP-sponsored programme to be organized tomorrow, as also to speak in the RSS-sponsored seminar on the interlocutors' report. He will be the main speaker in the seminar to be held at Jammu Club. It is obvious that Dr Joshi would remember the contribution of Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerjee to the process of the state's integration with India and the supreme sacrifice that he made for the national cause in Kashmir. Mookerjee died in Kashmir in 1953 in mysterious circumstances. There is a view that his untimely death was the fall-out of a "conspiracy". It would be only appropriate to mention here three things. One, Mookerjee was a bitter critic of Article 370 and of those in Kashmir who had been demanding special status for Kashmir on the score of religion. Two, Mookerjee had stated a number of times that if the Kashmiri leadership continued to demand autonomy, he and his party, Jana Sangh, would demand segregation of Jammu province and trans-Himalayan Ladakh from Kashmir. In fact, he repeatedly said the insistence on autonomy demand would culminate in the division of the state with Jammu and Ladakh getting a dispensation independent of Kashmir under the Indian Constitution, minus the separatist Article 370. Three, it was because of his supreme sacrifice that the obnoxious permit system was abolished and the people of the state given full freedom to visit any part of the country. The abolition of the permit system also enabled rest of the Indians to visit the state as and when they liked. His was indeed a very splendid contribution.
Dr Joshi is a great orator. He is also a great parliamentarian. He is known for his plain-speaking. Let's see what he says when he speaks on the interlocutors' report as well as the great contribution of the great son of India Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerjee. The people of Jammu and Ladakh would appreciate him in case he declares that the present BJP leadership doesn't approve of the Vajpayee line on Kashmir and that the BJP will endorse only that line that not only integrates the state fully with India but also empowers Jammu and Ladakh to administer their own affairs themselves independent of Kashmir.
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