J&K cannot be allowed to drift into a pre Article 370 revocation era

The dark reality of Kashmir politics is best known to Kashmiri Pandits who have learnt it the hard way. Unfortunately. And there are no two ways about it. Go back about three decades and that is where the learnings have come from. 

A warning or a prediction regarding Kashmir coming from a Kashmiri Pandit (KP) is ill-advised to be overlooked. After all who knows it better than those who were at the receiving end of radical Islamic terror in Kashmir in the late 80s and the early 90s as well as many times over after that. 

After the draconian Article 370 was repealed in August last year and subsequently Kashmir’s “mainstream” political leaders from the National Conference (NC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) with known separatist tendencies were placed under detention, KP commentators and activists were among the first to caution that a new theatre could begin following the release of those Kashmiri politicians.

The exact same thing happened! The absurd theatre began when former Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister and senior NC leader Omar Abdullah walked out of detention in March this year after nearly eight months. It reached some sort of a climax with his father Farooq Abdullah’s series of anti-India remarks in recent weeks, the biggest of them being the latest in which he called on the Chinese administration to challenge India’s sovereignty. 

However, this theatre barely surprises anyone. After all the NC and the PDP never had India in their hearts, which contributed majorly to the failure in creating a conducive atmosphere for a safe and dignified return of Kashmiri Pandits to their homeland. It is an aspect of the post-90s Kashmir history that the pseudo-secularists and leftist-liberals must educate themselves about in order to understand how a systematic campaign was run for years to deny Hindus their rights in Kashmir. 

But narrowing down on what has been happening in Kashmir’s separatist political circles lately, it is clear that desperation has led to the mask falling off and an outright secessionist attitude has been put on display. The unadulterated hatred for India is more evident than ever. As an observer, it is interesting to understand whether this is because the Abdullahs and the Muftis along with their campaigners want to salvage whatever little relevance they are left with and so they are trying their best to stay in the headlines, or because they believe that running an anti-India tirade will lead to their political revival in Kashmir, or both. 

Farooq Abdullah’s consistent rant in recent weeks demanding the restoration of Article 370 will not deter Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s far-sighted vision and plan about Kashmir but cannot be overlooked either. 

After all the threats are coming from no less than the former Chief Minister of J&K, a former Union Minister and a current Member of the Parliament. This man has sworn by the Constitution of India and fought all his elections under the Indian flag. As an MP, he is under oath to maintain his allegiance to the Indian republic. But he and many others of his kind continue to openly challenge the undisputable fact that Kashmir is an integral part of India. 

The threats have now transformed into an overt appeal to our aggressive western neighbour China to help the separatists break Kashmir away from India. Moreover, Abdullah has also displayed the audacity to state that Beijing had not approved of India’s constitutionally taken decision of scrapping the discriminatory article. 

Abdullah has, therefore effectively, called on a foreign power to challenge India’s territorial sovereignty, which in the simplest of terms amounts to nothing but an act of treason. 

But the question really is: how will the Government of India (GOI) ensure that Kashmir does not drift into the same situation that existed for decades before August last year given that the spoilers are out in the open again? 

On August 4, 2019, a day before the Modi government announced the revocation of Article 370 and bifurcated the erstwhile state of J&K into two union territories of J&K and Ladakh, the India-hating political parties of Kashmir huddled together at Farooq Abdullah’s Gupkar Road residence in Srinagar. In the joint statement - which came to be known as the Gupkar declaration - issued by the separatist parties, they expressed resentment and promised protest against any decision by GOI to scrap the ludicrous law. 

Following the release of the PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti on October 13, the disgruntled politicians held a meeting last week to declare that they were going to join their forces to bring back the special status of J&K. 

This alliance for the Gupkar Declaration is at best a photo opportunity to pose as though they have anything credible to offer in terms of separating Kashmir from the Indian union. The parties have tried to use one of the older tricks from the book, expecting a dramatic turnaround to the situation and other fortunes. 

However, nationalists have reposed their faith in the Modi-Shah combine to ensure that there is no revival of anti-India rhetoric in the valley but at the moment it appears that separatists have found a fresh mojo although Farooq Abdullah was recently grilled by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with a multi-crore scam in the J&K Cricket Association during 2002-11, something which the NC has claimed to be an act of political vendetta by the GOI against their patron. 

But it is pertinent to mention that the mood in the country is for the Modi government to pursue a zero-tolerance policy against anything that challenges India’s national interest. The mood is to see J&K treading on the path of development rather than getting embroiled in another phase of political and social turbulence. An antagonistic upsurge, no matter how big or small, against the idea of a unified India is the last thing the nationalist Kashmiris want. It took years and years of longing to finally realise the dream of a fully Indian Kashmir. It must be treasured and nurtured now while protecting it from malevolent forces. 

For more than 60 years, the Abdullahs and the Muftis have followed the dual policy of India-bashing in Kashmir and fake show of India-loyalty in New Delhi while exploiting the sentiments of the local Kashmiri Muslim population and arousing alienating emotions in them vis-a-vis India. Amid fading political clout, evoking passions and promising the return of Article 370 is their only recourse in the current scenario. 

The GOI must act tough and send a strong message to all the anti-national voices in Kashmir who, in the name of dissent and self-determination, are striving to keep alive their perennial agenda of Islamisation of Kashmir while shamelessly wanting to reap the benefits of being a part of the Indian union. 

This is the time when the Modi government must prioritise working expeditiously on creating a conducive environment in the valley so that the Kashmiri Pandits become convinced of a safe and dignified return to their homeland. There can be no better way than that to marginalise the separatist voices and eventually push them into oblivion. Kashmir deserves it. India deserves it. 

 

image source : kashmirreader.com