Dangerous portents in Kashmir

A G Noorani

The RSS will not be appeased. Its agenda is trifurcation of Jammu & Kashmir, making Jammu a separate State and Ladakh a Union territory. It bears mention that of the six districts of Jammu only two and a half have a Hindu majority.

Recent events in Kashmir have been most unfortunate. Exchanges of charges between New Delhi and Islamabad were par for the course. India has studiously refrained from commenting on internal developments in Pakistan. On its part Pakistan has been careful not to let the exchanges get out of hand. It is, however, extremely important to assess the tragic course of events within the State of Jammu & Kashmir objectively.

The eruption of a major divide between the provinces of Jammu & Kashmir on religious, communal lines took New Delhi by surprise. It was not directed from the Centre. Local factors held sway. If the Government of India can be faulted for neglect it is on the score of its refusal to heed advice from many quarters to terminate State Governor Lt Gen S K Sinha’s tenancy of the Raj Bhavan in Srinagar. His backers at the Centre ensured that. This is the worrying fact of the episode.

When in the mid-eighties Prime Minister Indira Gandhi superseded him in the appointment of the Chief of Army Staff, many, this writer included, protested. He lost little time in the campaign he waged and the company he kept in raising doubts in one’s mind that she had good cause for the unprecedented step.

In the good South Asian tradition of a new Government correcting the “wrongs” of its predecessor Foreign Minister I K Gujral appointed him as Ambassador to Nepal in 1990. He was next ensconced as Governor of Assam and finally of Jammu & Kashmir. The man has done very well for himself in retirement. He has held government jobs for 18 years, from 1990 to 2008. Having fought in the Kashmir war in 1947 as a junior officer Sinha was out to leave a permanent imprint of his communal outlook in the State. The Amarnath Yatra came in handy.
Traditionally the offerings at the Amarnath Cave in the Western Himalayas are shared betweens two monastic families, one of which is Muslim. They are heirs of the Muslim shepherd who discovered it over a century ago. There is one traditional route from
Srinagar to Pahalgam onwards. There is a smaller but dangerous route from Srinagar via Sonamarg to Baltal.

In 1996 there was a blizzard which exacted a toll of over 200 lives. The government of India appointed Nitish Sengupta, a civil servant to conduct a probe. He recommended that the duration of the pilgrimage be one and a half months and on a ceiling of 100,000 for the annual pilgrimage.

No sooner S K Sinha became Governor in 2003 than he began demanding increase in the duration of the pilgrimage and in the numbers. The Report was flouted. To cut a long story short he, as ex-officio head of the Statutory Board in charge of the pilgrimage, locked horns with Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed of the PDP which was in coalition with the Congress. In 2005 it was the Congress’ turn to provide the chief minister. Its nominee was Ghulam Nabi Azad, a crony of Sanjay Gandhi who managed to latch on to Rajiv Gandhi.

A Kashmiri who never once fought elections to the Lok Sabha from his own State, he played ball with Sinha. Probably they had common patrons at the Centre. A foolish order was made last May “diverting” forest land to the Amarnath Board at Baltal, the route none needed take if the ceiling on numbers is respected. The Army pronounced it dangerous. The “allotment” of land was made on terms that the Kashmiris resented. The new Governor, N N Vohra rescinded the order.

Now it was Jammu’s turn to protest except that its protest was an organised one — by the RSS and its political wing the BJP. On August 31, the State government signed an accord with the Jammu body spearheading the protests on terms far worse than those of the May order. The Amarnath Board was given “exclusive” rights on 800 kanals of land at Baltal. Meanwhile the
Hurriyat leaders had been put in prison. Curfew was imposed on many towns. The press was treated disgracefully.

The RSS will not be appeased. Its agenda is trifurcation of Jammu & Kashmir, making Jammu a separate State and Ladakh a Union territory. It bears mention that of the six districts of Jammu only two and a half have a Hindu majority. The partition was Maharaja Hari Singh’s plan which his son Karan Singh relentlessly advocates. Home Minister L K Advani gingerly mooted the idea on June 7, 2000 in Leh, the capital of Ladakh. On June 30, 2002 the RSS’ All India Workers’ Conclave at Kurukshetra adopted a resolution which asserts “The people of
Jammu think that the solution of their problems lies in the separate statehood for Jammu region”. It supports “the demand for UT status for Ladakh region”. This is the agenda which is being promoted in Jammu now.

Jammu will be split evenly. Three of its six districts, now broken up into ten, have Muslim majorities — Poonch (91.92%); Rajauri (60.23%) and Doda (57.92%). Two tehsils in Udhampur Gul Arynas and Gulab Garh have a Muslim majority. Farooq Abdullah once warned that these areas will not live with Jammu; the massacres would be worse than those of 1947 and “India
will be left with two and a half districts while the so-called Greater Kashmir will go on a platter to Pakistan eventually”. (Greater Kashmir; October 3 and December 11, 2000).

Mirwaiz Maulvi Umar Farooq also said “if the Dogras of Jammu’s two and a half districts want to secede from the State, we won’t oppose it either”. (Indian Express; 10 August 2008).
With elections to the State Assembly only months away, a dangerous situation has been created in Jammu & Kashmir.