Ramesh Sabharwal
August 5, 2019 for me, like many others in Jammu province, was a day of thanks-giving, joy and celebrations. It was on this epoch-making day that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his trusted colleague Home Minister Amit Shah undo the grave wrongs committed by the Congress and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. They integrated the state fully into India by removing — with the full concurrence of the Parliament — from the Indian statue book Article 370, which had given a separate status to the state on the score of religion, and illegal Article 35A, which was discriminatory and humiliating. It was a long wait. It took 70 years and it happened in our lifetime.
It was, as I said, a day of thanks-giving for people like us who had been associated with “Ek Nissan, Ek Pradhan and Ek Vidhan” movement from childhood/since 1952. The memories of what the then Sheikh Abdullah Government did to us in the GGM Science College, Jammu, are still too fresh to be forgotten. We had opposed and defeated the ill-conceived move of the Sheikh administration to hoist National Conference flag within the college premises and we had to spend sometime in the unlivable Central Jail, Jammu. All these pleasant memories linger in our minds even today. We also cannot forget the senseless reign of brutalities unleashed by the Sheikh Abdullah Government on the innocent school and college students, including girl students. Similarly, we remember even today the rustication from the College of two Students of the Student National Association (SNA) and what it culminated into. It culminated into not just in 29-long hunger-strike in Jammu against the anti-democratic and oppressive Sheikh Abdullah Government supported to the hilt by the Congress Government at the Centre, but also into the Praja Parishad agitation in 1952-53 under the effective and skillful leadership of Pt Prem Nath Dogra, popularly known as “Sher-e-Duggar”.
The Narendra Modi Government not just abrogated Article 370, Article 35A and Jammu & Kashmir Constitution but also reorganized the state by creating out of it two Union Territories – UT of Jammu & Kashmir and UT of Ladakh. We as the founders of the Jammu and Kashmir Nationalist Front (2000) and Jammu
State Morcha had worked for the state’s reorganization as per the RSS’ 2002 Kurukshtra Resolution. In 2002, the Jammu State Morcha won one seat on the statehood-to-Jammu plank.
I vividly remember what PM Manmohan Singh on August 15, 2004 said about the state from the ramparts of the Red Fort. He had clarified and said: “Kashmir doesn’t mean the whole state. The State consisted of three regions – Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh”. It would not be an overstatement if someone may say that the clarification of Manmohan Singh was a recognition of what we as members of the Jammu Kashmir Nationalist Front and Jammu State Morcha did over the years to put things in perspective and counter the false narrative that Kashmir meant the whole state.
By creating two UTs out of the state and abolishing Articles 370 and 35A, the Narendra Modi Government dispended the long-awaited justice to the people of the state, nay the nation as a whole, and fulfilled the 66-year-old dream of the founder president of Bharatiya Jana Sangh and the Lion of Bengal, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who had made supreme sacrifice in Kashmir on June 23, 1953 by laying down his precious life. It was not just that the nation lost Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee. 15 other integrationists from across Jammu province, including Chamb, Hiranagar, Ramban and Sunderbani, had also laid down their lives for the cause of the nation in the sensitive border State of Jammu and Kashmir.
Indeed, what the Prime Minister and the Home Minister did on August 5 was an eventful day in many respects. But more than that, that day, they told the international community that India was a sovereign country in the true sense of the term and it had the required will, the required capacity and the required ability to tackle security-related problems, menace of terror, politics of separatism based on religious fanaticism and take the enemy nations, including Pakistan, head on. The steps the Narendra Modi Government took between June 2018 and August 5 and after August 5 established for the first time in 72 years that India finally got a government that it needed so badly.
Now that the Narendra Modi Government has fulfilled the nation’s most cherished desire, it’s time to reflect on the baneful influence of Article 370, Article 35A and separate Jammu & Kashmir Constitution on the state polity in general and Jammu and Ladakh in particular as well as on the national security and the country’s territorial integrity. Both these Articles plus the separate Constitution had only promoted communalism, separatism and the menace of corruption in the Kashmir Valley, granted unbridled legislative, executive and financial powers to the Kashmir-based ruling elite and led to the rise of a situation under which Jammu and Ladakh were considered as Kashmir’s two colonies where the life of the people was not one of political, social, cultural and economic aspirations but one of slavery, servitude and penury.
Vested interests in Kashmir and the so-called intellectuals used to term Article 370 a bridge between Jammu & Kashmir and the rest of the country suggesting that the state would secede from India the day Article 370 was removed. Article 370 was not a bridge; it was a wall of hatred created by the Congress, which never considered Jammu & Kashmir an integral part of India and which handed over to Pakistan 33% of territories of the state on a platter on December 31, 1949 much to the chagrin of the nation and the advancing Indian army. Article 370 was nothing but an instrument of subversion which separatists in Kashmir, Pakistan and mercenaries or the so-called trouble-shooters or track-two operatives or human rights activists and certain media persons used to exploit and fleece India and misguide the international community and public opinion.
It’s a matter of great satisfaction that the Narendra Modi Government dismantled this bridge of hatred, as also dismantled the Republic of Jammu & Kashmir with the whole of the world endorsing the New Delhi’s view that whatever it did on August 5 was its sovereign decision and internal matter and no one would be allowed to interfere in the country’s sovereign affairs. It’s interesting to note that persons like Omar Abdullah who on the floor of the assembly raised the issue of merger of J&K State with India and Dr Karan Singh in the Upper House of Parliament in his own style endorsed the said statement would have now received the appropriate answer.
All in all, it can be said that the Narendra Modi Government changed the course of history of India on August 5.
If the abrogation of Article 370 bridged the wide gulf between Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh and the rest of the country and brought the state under the ambit of the Indian Constitution, the abrogation of Article 35A established gender equality in the state, established parity between the people of the state and the rest of the Indians and granted citizenship rights to West Pakistan refugees and Valmiki and Gorkha Samaj. It would be only prudent to say that India entered a new era that day and a new chapter opened in the history of relations between Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh and New Delhi – an era of full of hope, integration, development and just and fair administration.
(The author is a noted social activist)
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