Toying with peace in Kashmir

It was unfortunate that a controversy arose over hoisting the national flag at Lal Chowk in Srinagar on Republic Day this year. Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India. There should be no restrictions on hoisting the tricolour anywhere in the state. However, in view of the prevailing situation, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) decision to undertake a yatra to hoist the tricolour at Lal Chowk was not very prudent. Its opponents dubbed this as provocative and derailing peace. It stood isolated on this issue from all political parties, including its alliance partner in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
If the yatra had been undertaken in another manner, things may have been different. It was started from Kolkata on the birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda, who had undertaken a journey to different parts of India to emphasise national unity. In keeping with that noble precedent, and also the name of the yatra (Ekta Yatra), it would have been better if several yatras had been flagged off to different parts of India — Srinagar and Itanagar in the north, Imphal in the east, Kanyakumari in the south and Bhuj in the west. Separatists in Kashmir and their sympathisers would have raised objections, and this would have only exposed them. They, rather than the BJP, may have found themselves isolated.
Delhi has been bending backwards to appease the separatists in Kashmir. Millions of non-Muslim refugees from West Pakistan came to India in the wake of Partition. They were immediately given all the privileges of an Indian citizen. Two of them became Prime Minister and one a deputy prime minister. Thirty thousand of these hapless refugees arrived in Jammu. Their further arrival was stopped.
Today, they number over one lakh and continue to be denied full citizenship rights. They cannot vote in state elections, or acquire immovable property, or get government jobs, or get their children admitted to technical education institutions in J&K. On the other hand, in 1950, in the wake of the Chinese occupation of Tibet, a few hundred Tibetan Muslims sought refuge in Kashmir. They were given full citizenship rights. Today, 570 of them are in the voters’ lists of Zadribal and 160 in Idgah Assembly constituencies of Srinagar. Jammu region, with a 56-lakh population, has two members of Parliament (MP) and 37 members of the legislative Assembly (MLA), but Kashmir Valley, with a 50-lakh population, has three MPs and 46 MLAs. This blatantly unfair arrangement has continued for long. Delimitation of constituencies has been stalled indefinitely. Kashmiri Pandits were subjected to ethnic cleansing from the Valley and about 100 temples were destroyed or vandalised. They live in atrocious conditions in refugee camps outside the Valley. Beyond paying lip service to them, nothing concrete has been done for their return to the Valley or their rehabilitation. Three private universities have come up in Kashmir — the Islamic University at Anantnag, El Hadis University in Badgam and Sheikhul Alam Institute, a deemed University, in Srinagar. A proposal to set up Shardapeeth University, reviving the ancient university of Kashmir, as has been done in the case of Nalanda in Bihar, was scuttled. No assistance from the government was sought. Funds and land had been arranged. It was to be a technical university with 40 per cent seats reserved for Kashmiri Pandits, 10 per cent for Kashmiri Muslims, and the remaining 50 per cent open to all, on the basis of merit. It was a first step towards the return and rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits. On September 10, 2010, the day of Id, the Pakistan flag was put up at Lal Chowk in Srinagar and remained there for several hours. The state government did not take any action.
Much earlier, on August 14, Pakistan’s independence day, the Pakistani flag was hoisted over the house of a former People’s Democratic Party (PDP) minister at Gandarbal. Separatist leaders from Kashmir, in tow with some misguided so-called intellectuals, have been openly preaching sedition in Delhi, Kolkata and Chandigarh. No action was taken against them on the plea of freedom of speech. Our democracy is based on the British pattern. John Amery, the son of Leo Amery, Churchill’s wartime secretary of state for India and Burma, broadcast Nazi propaganda on Berlin radio during the Second World War. He was tried for treason and hanged.
The government cannot be faulted for stopping the yatra, or arresting individuals, if it apprehended breach of peace. However, over-reacting and using excessive force cannot be justified. Hijacking a train carrying yatris and diverting it surreptitiously was illegal and immoral. Even the British government did not resort to such mean measures to foil Gandhiji’s Dandi March. Keeping two leaders of the Opposition in Parliament waiting for hours on the airport tarmac, denying them entry into the terminal, and then dumping them in the middle of the night across the state border was an abominable act. In 1940, when the Congress launched individual Satyagraha during the Second World War, a printed ordnance was issued overnight for arresting Congress leaders. My father, then Senior Superintendent of Police, Patna, went to the house of Dr Rajendra Prasad early in the morning to arrest him. Rajendra Babu enquired if he could have his bath before being taken to jail. “Most certainly, Sir. I will wait and read the newspapers. You can also have breakfast and I would like to have the honour of joining you at breakfast”, was my father’s reply. They ate breakfast together and then my father drove him in his car to jail. Many years later, when Dr Prasad was the president of the Constituent Assembly, he recounted this incident to me.
Three or four yatris managed to get close to Lal Chowk in Srinagar to hoist the national flag. They were immediately arrested by the police and beaten up, with one of them suffering a fracture. Yasin Malik, approaching Lal Chowk with his green flag, was also apprehended but served hot tea, in line with the chicken biryani served to terrorists holed up in Hazratbal a few years earlier.
After his flip-flop over the “Shopian rape story” in 2009 and total mishandling of the stone-pelting agitation for three months in 2010, Omar Abdullah became the most unpopular figure in the Valley. He appears to have gone into overdrive to regain lost ground. He declared in the Assembly that Kashmir had acceded and not merged with India, like Junagadh and Hyderabad. Mention of the latter two states had an obvious malicious intent. He also expressed resentment at Kashmir being called an integral part of India. He took the oath of office to uphold the Constitution. Article 3 of the Kashmir Constitution categorically states that Kashmir is, and shall remain, an integral part of India. And now, with support from mentors in Delhi, he resorted to uncalled for measures against the Ekta Yatra.
The yatra controversy was, no doubt, avoidable. The yatris failed to hoist the tricolour at Lal Chowk. Yet, if public opinion can force the government of India to shed its Munich-type approach of mollycoddling separatists, much will have been achieved for the nation.

The author, a retired lieutenant-general, was Vice-Chief of Army Staff and has served as governor of Assam and Jammu and Kashmir