Sir,
Apropos the article -‘Jammu state is a chimera’ by Ansh Chowdhari dated 14 Nov 2024 in your esteemed daily of ‘Daily Excelsior’ .
Having gone through this article thread bare I am dismayed that the author has taken a very myopic and a defeatist view point of the issue at hand —i.e Jammu should not be made a separate state and remain an adjunct of Kashmir.
By proffering the view that Jammu doesn’t have a viable leadership both at the center and the local level is just self-deprecation . Well if Jammu doesn’t have a viable leadership , then is it not the right time to build one? Or do we look across the Pir Pnjal as a saving grace to provide one , which Kashmiri leadership has deliberately denied us? Who says that the demand for a separate Jammu state is just a figment of imagination of few self-centered locals who want to grind their own axe.
Have the Dogras of today’s generation gone weak in mind and spirit to look for assistance elsewhere? If the Dogras under Maharaja Gulab Singh could carve out a separate homeland for themselves keeping both the British and their perfidy cum calumny at bay, I think the Dogras of today have to flip the pages of their own history to draw inspiration and march with their heads held high and strike their own destiny with all the force at their command.
Col SS Lalotra
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