Friday, March 29, 2024

Is this the Way Forward in Jammu Kashmir

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Sanjay Dixit
Sanjay Dixit
Sanjay Dixit is a senior IAS of Rajasthan cadre and former secretary of the Rajasthan Cricket Association. He has written extensively on agriculture, strategic matters and social issues. Dixit did his graduation in Marine Engineering and sailed with the Merchant Navy for 4 years before joining the IAS in 1986. He is Chairman of a popular Forum The Jaipur Dialogues. Follow him on Twitter @ Sanjay_Dixit

The transition of J&K to twin Union Territory (UT) status was surprisingly smooth. It only goes to show that the assumptions and presumptions on which the entire state philosophy was based were remiss and reprobate. That jihad could be bought over is a historical folly that was attempted by many in the past, but each one came to grief. The only way to fight Islamic jihad is to crush it. Yet, this does not seem to have been factored into the recent talks that the Union of India held with 14 leaders of political parties in J&K.

Spain provides the only successful model of reversing jihad. India provides a good model of long successful resistance, but the reversal model has not yet been developed and attempted.

However, the recent move of the Government of India to even contemplate full Statehood to this UT needs to be thought through very carefully for the following reasons:

It would be folly to think that the same methods of democracy under a full statehood would be the panacea to the ills of J&K that actually brought it to the brink of secession. Ladakh has become secure because it has made a clean break from the Kashmir Valley. There is a thinking that full statehood may be given to J&K at an early date. Nothing would be more disastrous.

There is another line of thinking that the Government of India could seed new parties by rehashing the old actors such as Altaf Bukhari. One only needs to look at past experience to conclude that no Valley-based politician can ignore the Islamic forces of the Valley. From all accounts, the public in the Valley is quite happy with the change that the UT status has brought to the Valley. The separatist sentiment has been nearly killed by full integration, levels of corruption are down, violence is at a very low ebb, and development is picking up. As such, there is no hurry to go to full statehood.

The UT of J&K has the provision of an elected assembly. That should be elected first after the delimitation is over. The Lt Governor’s control over the full state apparatus, as provided in the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, is critical in J&K. Jammu has been discriminated against by the Valley Muslims ever since the time of Sheikh Abdullah, who never made any secret of his dislike of the Dogras and Kashmiri Pandits.

The next step should be to grant full state status to Jammu. The ‘Medina Strategy’ of Pakistan visualises the capture of Jammu through Islamisation as the first step of the Ghazwa-e-Hind strategy. The Valley politicians have been willing hostages to this Pakistan ploy. Even after the J&K High Court allowed a petition against large-scale state-sponsored encroachment and regularisation of land by Muslims in Jammu under the Roshni Act, even the LG’s govt. is unwilling to implement it and has instead gone for  a review. Jammu, therefore, needs to be ring-fenced. It was, therefore, surprising that neither Jammu nor Kashmiri Pandits found a place on the High Table of talks, even though these are the groups that have the highest investment in a nationalistic govt. in J&K and in India.

The intent of the demographic change is only too stark. It is, therefore, of paramount importance that Jammu be completely insulated from the Islamic politics of the Valley. Kashmiri and Dogri are spoken by 56% and 30% population of J&K respectively. They should have been the State languages but Urdu was made the State language even though Urdu is spoken by just 0.16% of the population. This bore shades of Pakistan where it is the language of Islamic imperialism. The Government of J&K has now given the status of State language to four languages—Urdu, Kashmiri, Dogri, and Hindi.

Though most leaders have been released as the situation becomes normal in the Kashmir Valley, their past should never be forgotten. Their dalliance with Pakistan and Islamic terror is well known. They have used democracy, never practised it. Democracy has only gifted J&K with two or three super-rich dynasties, which would have eked out a middle- class existence in any other set-up.

To sum up, J&K has been rescued with great foresight, perspicacity and courage. It is time for our planners, intelligence community, and strategic thinkers to put their heads together and ensure that they do not commit the same mistakes committed in the past. It is also time to strategise ahead internationally. NATO forces led by the US are withdrawing from Afghanistan. The Pakistan Army and the Pakistan-based terror machine is viewing this as a victory for jihad-fi-sabilillah. The Indian move on the chessboard was timely. One has to be fully prepared for a full-blown assault on Kashmir by the Pakistan terror machine with high morale and motivation.

A defensive war can never be won. The undeclared war with Pakistan has to incorporate an offensive strategy. Break-up of Pakistan is not desired by the West, including the US. However, this break-up is a desirable strategy from the Indian point of view.

India has to get out of the stranglehold of the secular theocracy and must treat demographic security as an essential part of its ‘security doctrine’. The country’s integrity comes ahead of everything else, and even the Constitution recognises it. The Constitution itself provides that parts of it can be made inoperative in national emergencies, the ‘liberal’ noise notwithstanding. This is the ultimate proof that national integrity and sovereignty ranks ahead of even the Constitution. This should be drilled into every Indian citizen.

India has also to set right the Leftist stranglehold on the academia and its history-writing. Left is no friend of India’s. It cannot be allowed to use democracy to keep subverting democracy. All necessary measures must be taken to recognise and set this right. It would be fitting to recall Dr Ambedkar in the matter of appeasing and giving concessions to an aggressor: ‘It seems to me that Congress has failed to realise two things. The first thing which the Congress has failed to realise is that there is a difference between appeasement and settlement and that the difference is an essential one. Appeasement means buying off the aggressor by conniving at his acts of murder, rape, arson and loot against innocent persons who happen for the moment to be the victims of his displeasure. On the other hand, settlement means laying down the bounds which neither party to it can transgress. Appeasement sets no limits to the demands and aspirations of the aggressor. Settlement does. The second thing the Congress has failed to realise is that the policy of concession has increased Muslim aggressiveness, and what is worse, Muslims interpret these concessions as a sign of defeatism on the part of the Hindus and the absence of the will to resist. This policy of appeasement will involve the Hindus in the same fearful situation in which the Allies found themselves as a result of the policy of appeasement, which they adopted towards Hitler.’

It is very important to caution the BJP leadership not to fall into the trap of Nehruism, which seems to be thriving even under the BJP government in spite of ritual denunciations of the persona of Nehru. One cannot trust the very enablers of jihadi violence with a ‘New Deal’ because they have every motivation to turn it into the same old deal.

 

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