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| In Delhi BJP hails "Kashmiriyat" | | Interlocutors' Report | | ET Report
JAMMU, July 22: BJP leadership fooled itself and misled those who participated in the seminar on interlocutors' report organized by India Foundation at India International Centre on Saturday in which Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley was the main speaker. Dilip Padgaonkar, besides former Union Minister Arif Mohammad Khan and a Jammu-based BJP leader, also spoke. BJP national spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman moderated the programme. India Foundation is an NGO founded by the Sangh Parivar.
A report from New Delhi suggests that the speakers were critical of the recommendations and suggestions as made by the interlocutors as well as the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government. Jaitley held Nehru and Pakistan responsible for all the troubles in Jammu & Kashmir and said that he was not opposed to the idea of common people of Kashmir being given concessions and that what he opposed to was the idea of concessions being given to the separatists like Syed Ali Shah Geelani "for whom their politics survives only if Kashmir remains tense". He was also critical of the manner in which the report of the Working Group on Centre-State relations was prepared and submitted. As expected, Padgaonkar defended the report and the recommendations it contains. He had to because he doesn't represent the interests of the country to which he belongs. He represents the interests of those who wish to break India into smithereens and segregate not only Kashmir but the entire State of Jammu & Kashmir from India so that they could establish Islamic rule in the segregated state. The report from New Delhi nowhere suggests that the speakers took on Padgaonkar in the manner they should have. It was the retired Army officials who took on the interlocutors for their approach towards the Army and AFSPA.
However, it was one of the BJP speakers who spoke very high of "Kashmiriyat" overlooking the fact that this term was coined by a Jammu-based columnist after 1975 to make policy-planners in New Delhi and others to believe that Sheikh Abdullah was a secularist of secularists, that the NC stood for an all-inclusive approach, that Kashmir was an oasis of peace and brotherhood and that it stood for "composite culture". The BJP speaker said, "Kashmir stands for composite culture and it can't be restored without the return of Kashmiri Pandits to the Valley".
No one is opposed to the use of term "Kashmiriyat" and why should one oppose it? It has been in use for almost four decades now and it will be used by many in Kashmir and their supporters outside the Valley, especially by certain elements in the Indian think-tanks. But one has to be candid while speaking on Kashmir and the kind of politics a particular section of Kashmiri society, which is deeply influenced by those who migrated from Central Asia to the Valley centuries ago, has been practicing since more than eight centuries now. It is this brand of politics, which is based on exclusivist ideology, which has converted the 100 percent Hindu Kashmir into an almost hundred per cent Muslim Kashmir. It was during the reign of Sultan Sikandar, iconoclast, that the process of migration of Kashmiri Hindus started and it was in early 1990 that the process got completed with all, barring a couple of thousands of Kashmiri Hindus, quitting the Valley on a permanent basis and becoming refugees in their own country. The Jammu Dogras who were quite numerous in Kashmir between 1846 and 1947 also abandoned Kashmir immediately after the state's accession because the religio-political atmosphere in the Valley was such. The Ladakhis were conspicuous by their absence in Kashmir before 1947 and the situation remained unchanged even after 1947. The rest is history.
The fact of the matter is that all, barring the followers of a particular religious sect, have been ruling the roost since decades with all others getting a shabby treatment. Even the Gujjar, "Pahari" and Shiite Muslims constitute a neglected lot in the Kashmir Valley. Significantly, the Gujjars and "Paharis" belong to the same religious sect. Their disadvantage is that they are ethnically non-Kashmiri. Only sometime back, Geelani had dismissed the Gujjars as "non-Muslims".
The BJP leader would do well to first read the history of Kashmir and then speak. He would also do well to study what exactly the composite culture means. |
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