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| Does NC really symbolise aspirations of Jammu? | | Questionable Assertion | | Neha
Jammu, Aug 29: Does National Conference (NC) really symbolise the aspirations of the people of Jammu Pradesh and trans-Himalayan Ladakh? What are the aspirations of the NC leadership and what does it stand for? What are the aspirations of the people of Jammu Pradesh and Cold-Desert Ladakh? Do they share the views of the NC? These are some of the questions which one has to raise in the wake of the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah's August 28 Rajpora (Pulwama) public statement that the NC "symbolises aspirations of the people of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh".
Omar Abdullah is a man on the spot and executive head of the State. One would have appreciated him had he recognised the ground realities in the State and said that there existed bitterness and animosity of an extreme nature between the regions and that the State of Jammu and Kashmir is nothing but an unnatural formation like the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Pakistan was, it needs to be underlined, carved out of the areas where there was no demand for Pakistan. That's the reason it is engulfed by unrest with Sind, Baluchistan and North West Frontier Province posing a live challenge to the unity and integrity of this country, which came into being on August 14, 1947. This State is destined to disintegrate sooner than later.
Identical is the story of the formation of the State of Jammu and Kashmir. It came into being in March 1846 by a quirk of history. Kashmir was merged with Jammu Kingdom against the wishes of Kashmiri religious leadership and that was the reason Kashmiri leadership engineered movement after movement against Jammu. The anti-Jammu movement in Kashmir culminated in "Quit Kashmir Movement" in 1947. The fact of the matter is that almost all the Muslim leaders in Kashmir opposed tooth and nail the Treaty of Amritsar, March 1846, under which the State of Jammu and Kashmir came into being. They said again and again that the British Government sold the life, honour and dignity of Kashmiris to the Dogras for a sum of Rs 75 lakh. The history of Kashmir between March 1846 and October 1947 is the history of anti-Jammu struggle and separation and nothing else. Now they are demanding separation from India.
After 1947, it was the turn of Jammu and Ladakh to do what the Kashmiri leadership did during all those years of the Kashmir's merger with the Jammu Kingdom. Jammu and Ladakh raised a banner of revolt against the Kashmiri leadership immediately after the State acceded to India on October 1947. In November 1947, the people of Ladakh under the leadership of the Head Lama of Ladakh demanded separation of Kashmir and merger with Jammu Pradesh or with Punjab of which Himachal Pradesh was then a part. The Ladakhis told the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that their socio-cultural and political aspirations were different from those of the Kashmiri leadership, and, hence, they could not live under the Kashmiri-dominated administration. They were opposed to the idea of the State getting a special status on the ground that it was a Muslim-majority. The attitude of the Ladakhis remains the same even today. They have already got themselves segregated from the State in a way and not content with the formation of Autonomous Hill Development Council for the region, they have been struggling for UT status for it. Not only the Buddhists, but even the Muslims of Ladakh stand for UT status for their region. They say they want to shape their destiny in India and under the Indian Constitution.
Like Ladakh, Jammu also demanded separation from Kashmir in 1947, saying what the Ladakhi leadership had said while demanding merger of their region with Jammu Pradesh or Punjab. In other words, the people of Jammu also opposed the demand in Kashmir for autonomy or for a special status. In fact, Jammu witnessed movement after movement against the Kashmiri leadership and demanded from time to time a separate dispensation. It fought against Kashmir in 1952-1953, 1966-1967, 1975, 1979-1980, 1998, 2008 and the fight continues unabated even today. Even the interlocutors in their otherwise highly controversial report on Jammu & Kashmir candidly acknowledged that the people of Jammu and Ladakh are intensely pro-India and that they have no love for the Kashmiri leadership.
The fact of the matter is that the history of Jammu and Ladakh after the State's accession to India is the history of struggle against Kashmiri domination and for their complete merger with India. Even a naive would acknowledge that neither the people of Jammu Pradesh nor the people of Ladakh endorse the Kashmiri leadership's divisive demands ranging from autonomy to self-rule to independence to merger with Pakistan. These are the hard facts which one needs to appreciate. The truth, in short, is that the NC doesn't symbolise even the aspirations of all the Kashmiri Muslims. It represents only a minority view. |
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