Distressing signs from J&K

The Kashmir Vale has won yet again. And Jammu remains jinxed as always. The Congress giving away the J&K chief ministerial post to Anantnag-based Peoples Democratic Party, despite being favoured by the arithmetic of the results of the assembly election, is a baffling decision. It's a decision that is likely to lead to consequences other than merely intensifying the movement for a separate Jammu state, which formed part of the RSS demand for J&K's trifurcation in June this year.

The initial discontent reported in the Congress party's Jammu camp against Sonia Gandhi's so-called sacrifice and so-called statesmanship seems a sign of things to come. If the Sangh can weave this discontent into something tangible, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's coalition government could soon have trouble on its hands, what with its common minimum programme having enough to attract the wrath of the 28-member National Conference that would be only too happy to tease and torment the coalition every step of its way.

Let it be stated straightaway that the demand for a separate Jammu state by the RSS in June this year was not really a new demand. It can be traced to the late forties and early fifties when the Praja Parishad party in J&K resented the fact that the Indian Constitution was not applicable in its entirety to J&K because of the wishes of the National Conference's Sheikh Abdullah aided by Jawaharlal Nehru's inexplicable blind support to him.

The resentment had begun when none of the four members from J&K, nominated on India's Constituent Assembly by the state's yuvraj (crown prince) on the advice of Sheikh Abdullah, was from Jammu. Further, the Praja Parishad was insistent that Jammu and Ladakh had wanted full integration with the Dominion of India without Article 370. In a public speech in Kanpur on December 29, 1952, Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, president of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (precursor of the Bharatiya Janata Party) had said: "If Sheikh Abdullah is adamant, Jammu and Ladakh must not be sacrificed, but the Kashmir Valley may be a separate state within the Indian Union receiving all necessary subventions and being created constitutionally in such manner as Sheikh Abdullah and his advisers may wish for."

It was not to be. And so, for 50 years, Jammu has had fewer seats than the valley in the J&K assembly though in terms of land area and number of voters it has warranted the same number as, if not more than, the valley. (In the latest election, Jammu had 37 seats, Ladakh four, and the valley, 46). Jammu has suffered in other spheres of the state as well: allocation of financial aid, education facilities, and employment in government.

With the PDP's 16 MLAs being all from the valley, it can hardly be expected to have a soft corner for Jammu, or Ladakh for that matter, especially when the Mufti is on record that the PDP deserved the CM's post because the various problems of the state emanate from the valley. The new coalition's multi-point common minimum programme is in keeping with that hypothesis, its reference to equal treatment for all three major regions of the state being so casual as to arouse doubts about sincerity in that direction.

The most serious drawback of this CMP is its over-emphasis on political aspects to the almost total neglect of the need for the state's economic resurgence and the urgency to root out the widespread corruption --- the two evils that had characterised the Abdullah government. These two evils had been clearly revealed in the pre-election press reports from various parts of the state (Now for some governance please. But the PDP doesn't seem to have read those reports.

It has, instead, chosen largely to mollify the militants in the state and pass it off as "the healing touch". Scrapping the applicability of POTA in the state, release of detainees after "screening", finishing off the Special Operations Group of the state police, increasing the aid to families of slain terrorists by another Rs 100,000, making the state take over the education of militants' children --- these are measures, really, that constitute a reward for terrorism.

Similarly, this policy intention to talk to various groups in the state, including militants and the Hurriyat Conference, is totally irrelevant as a solution of the state's adversaries. Just what will these talks achieve? If, for instance, the Hurriyat reiterates its demand for a plebiscite, what does Mufti Mohammad Sayeed do about it? Will he endorse that demand? Will he expect the Government of India to act on it?

Clearly, the Mufti has, at best, a foggy idea of what the problems of a state called J&K are, of what the solutions are to those problems. The MORI poll of some months ago and the very recent Asian Age-Nielsen poll have not had any impact on his thinking. He still seems to nurture the belief that most of the J&K people, rather than a minuscule minority, want to secede from the Union of India and are therefore the cause of the turmoil in the state. And that what the Kashmir valley wants is what the rest of the state wants. Sad.

Sadder still is why the Congress has agreed to all this as the platform for governance. Sonia Gandhi had more than once lambasted the NDA government that it had no Kashmir policy. Now, having got the chance to show its mettle, she has instead revealed that she too has no policy on the subject.

It's either that or an enactment of the saying that "discretion is the better part of valour". By taking the rear seat and instead allowing the PDP to occupy the hot seat, and by riding along with the core of the PDP's poll agenda, Sonia Gandhi has chosen the "heads I win, tails you lose" formula. If the PDP fails in its allotted first use of the batting crease in Srinagar, the Congress can always claim to have been only the non-striker. And if, by chance, it succeeds in whatever it is trying to achieve, the Congress can share the hurrah to boast about when the 2004 general elections come.

It's a dangerous game either way, which the Congress president has chosen to play with the people of Jammu, with those of Ladakh, and with all those in the whole of Jammu & Kashmir, including the thousands of Kashmiri Pandits who're no longer in that state.

Tailpiece: The missus says that that only reason why Madam didn't choose to bat first in the J&K Test was because she wanted to punish Ghulam Nabi Azad for strutting about in the two weeks after V-Day as though he were Virendra Sehwag. Considering her past, that's not an entirely implausible theory, is it? Sonia analysts are free to give us a final take on that.

ALSO READ:
The Jammu and Kashmir Election

Arvind Lavakare