Sir,
Kudos to Manu Khajuria and all the praise to this paper for raising an issue which is silently ignoring the name of Jammu from the State name of Jammu and Kashmir leading to a type of invisible discrimination against the people of the region.
Rightly said, “Every person living in the state of Jammu and Kashmir is not a Kashmiri” and similarly “Any issue concerning the State of Jammu and Kashmir is not necessarily a Kashmir Issue only” as is being projected by the National and International media. For any happening in the State of Jammu and Kashmir, the people of all the three regions i.e. Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh suffer equally. Recent ban on internet in the state was projected by the media as “Internet Ban in the Valley” whereas it caused an equal extent of inconvenience to the people living in all the three regions of Jammu and Kashmir.
It is very unfortunate that the elite and powerful media (both print as well as electronic) which over the period of time have assumed the role of knowledge disseminator to the common and illiterate masses, has started naming any issue of the State of Jammu and Kashmir as Kashmir issue, thus stimulating and setting in motion a slow process of change of the geographical name of the state being done in a particular design. Since Kashmir has become a problem child, the National and International media are both giving selective treatment to it by highlighting the Valley centric issues and ignoring Jammu and Ladakh leading to a feeling of frustration, anguish and discrimination in the mind of the people of these two regions. When some wrong is continuously repeated, it leads people to believe as something true. So, it is the right time to correct the falsehood that is being brazenly propagated by some vested interests.
Let us not forget that Kashmir is a province with comparatively much lesser area than other regions which along with Jammu and Ladakh makes State of Jammu and Kashmir and all the three regions are required to be given equal attention without any discrimination and any dialogue on Jammu and Kashmir will have to involve proportionate representation of all regions.
Yours etc…
Dr Mahesh Dutt Bali
Channi Himmat, Jammu
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