Excelsior Special Correspondent
The doyen of journalists and public figures in Jammu and Kashmir, Om Prakash Saraf, completes 93 years of an eventful and exemplary life today (May 3). It is, perhaps, because of men like him that thinkers have remarked that age is a cliché and “an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind it doesn’t matter.” He still follows a hectic routine every day. He prepares his morning cup of tea himself and makes it a point to visit relatives and friends who are in pain or grieving. He keeps in touch with the latest news developments and is up-to-date about everybody who is anybody not only in Jammu and Kashmir but on earth. His younger relatives, now spread all over the world, may forget their birthdays but he remembers them and without fail conveys his greetings much to their pleasant surprise. Young scholars and researchers visit him and although he informs them he declines formal interviews as has been his wont. He speaks of and for others but not of or for himself.
His few political contemporaries or near-contemporaries are around and those who have come all the way to his home in the labyrinth old Jammu city to visit him in recent years have been former Chief Minister G.M. Shah (just before his death) and Tehreek-e-Hurriyat chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani. A Gandhian to the core, he remains a firm believer in democracy and secularism and, as is well known, has fearlessly contested elections on both sides of the Pir Panjal range. His 1962 election as a candidate of the Praja Socialist Party – he was the founder-chairman of the party which was the first all-India party to have a state unit in 1954 – from Srinagar’s Amirakadal constituency is still talked about in serious and knowledgeable political circles as one man’s attempt to fight corrupt, brutal and unscrupulous political power.
The late People’s Conference leader Mr Abdul Ghani Lone once recalled in an interview that he was in the same bus in which Mr Saraf travelled from Jammu to Srinagar to file his nomination. “At once I grew in admiration of the man who was going all the way to fight our battle.” Mr Devi Dass Thakur, former Governor and himself a leading light of the PSP, straightaway asked Mr Saraf what would he have done had the police not heeded his warning to withdraw itself from sabotaging his public meeting at the historic Lal Chowk during that election. Pat came the reply: “They would have known.” That Jawaharlal Nehru himself became nervous is a well-known fact and by the time he came to know of the damage done to the Indian cause by his puppet regime it was too late; his belated corrective measures made the confusion worse confounded.
Mr Saraf rejected all attempts to buy his silence and support through offers of ministerial berths and a Rajya Sabha seat. He remains a living symbol of hope in a system steeped in corruption, flattery and falsehood. Much to our delight Mr Saraf does drop in once in a while in the office of the Daily Excelsior listening and answering queries of young journalists. As a tribute to this living legend of the State we reproduce an article “Birth of P.S.P. in Kashmir” he had written way back in 1959 throwing light on the formation of the PSP and the treatment the pro-India opposition faced in the State.
His observations have turned out to be prophetic. He left the PSP in 1964 but has always remained active in journalism and public life and was only recently a key speaker at a function to facilitate journalist Ved Bhasin and former Chief Secretary Noor Mohammad.
Birth of P.S.P. in Kashmir
The problem of emotional and spiritual integration of the Jammu and Kashmir State with the Indian Union is undoubtedly one of the few vital problems confronting the nation ever since independence. That we, of the PSP in Jammu and Kashmir, as part and parcel of an all-India party, stand for it was in fact the main reason for our setting up a Party unit five years ago. Ours remains so far the only organization in the State which is bound by the ideology and constitution of an Indian party.
All along since 1947, it had been and perhaps still continues to be the policy of the Government of India not to encourage the formation of any secular, democratic opposition in the State. They have always advised us to restrict our struggle within the National Conference. On the other hand, the National Conference, which had been our united front till 1947 was, in our view, no longer a fit instrument for bringing about the necessary social change. Like the Indian Socialists who left the Indian National Congress, the Socialists in Jammu and Kashmir left the National Conference. First, separate parties came into being in Jammu and Srinagar; and later, these merged to form the PSP in the State in November, 1954.
Our contention had been that the presence of a pro-India opposition as against a pro-India Government will always be helpful to the cause of people of Kashmir as much as for Indian democracy. Let not every Kashmiri who is anti-Government be labeled as anti-State. The need for it further increased when the communal, reactionary elements in the Valley and in Jammu succeeded, as it appeared, in creating a gulf between the people and the forces really working for the accession of the State with India. Let not the Government party alone become the monopoly of pro-India elements. The failure of the one-party State experiment to check the communal and reactionary forces should have opened our eyes.
That it did not and does not is our grievance. Asoka Mehta, who inaugurated our Party unit, was beaten in broad daylight in an open street and some other leaders met with the same fate. It had been the privilege of our State Party executive that all of its members had been assaulted by the ruling party goondas at one place or the other at different times. The saddest part of it all was to be dubbed by Prime Minister Nehru himself in the course of his speeches in the Parliament in 1955, first as a Hindu communal body and, then after some weeks, as a Muslim communal body. Obviously he had been misinformed by interested authorities. At both times I failed to get an opportunity to bring to his notice personally the right perspective. I, however, had once an occasion to explain my case to Dhebarbhai, the then Congress chief, on the eve of his visit to Srinagar. It was, nevertheless, a hopeless experience.
I can well understand unqualified support the Congress leaders gave to the National Conference at the party level but the common national cause will not be served if every opposition to the State is dubbed by the Government of India, and even the Indian National Congress, as hostile to India. The absence of a powerful progressive opposition, perhaps more than anything else, was responsible for giving a new lease of life to narrow regional forces represented by the Praja Parishad in Jammu and the Political Conference in 1953. Prime Minister Nehru’s uncharitable attacks on the Kashmir PSP, soon after its inception, had actually resulted in popular anti-Government sentiments being exploited full by the regional elements.
Unfortunately Hindus and Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir are broadly separated regionally and linguistically also. This triple communal, linguistic and regional division is probably the greatest hindrance in the way of establishing cordial relations between the people of Jammu and Kashmir themselves. It equally affects the relationship of Kashmir with the rest of India. In such a situation I feel it is imperative for leaders of the ruling party in India to tolerate at least, if not encourage, the functioning of a healthy democratic socialist opposition throughout the State. Also, unless the State Government chooses to behave like a healthy democratic Government permitting an opposition to function in the State, it will continue to be responsible for communal, regional and linguistic rivalries endangering the very integrity of the State and the relationship between India and Kashmir. You may have to doubtfully look at “irrevocable accession” and then resort to “finalise” it over and over again.
It will be wrong to shut our eyes to a number of pro-Pakistan Muslims who will always be there, so long as Pakistan is there to whip up sentiments and some Hindus are there to react to it in an aggressive manner. No doubt, Prime Minister Nehru has ruled out the possibility of a plebiscite in the State in the existing context of the world situation which obviously, however, is not in our hands entirely; yet, the need for an Indo-Pak agreement on Kashmir will be there, always. I do not know to what extent the people of Kashmir will be ultimately required to play a useful part in any agreement with Pakistan. But in pursuance of India’s role that it is seeking to play today quite rightly, in the world politics, a policy of respecting the local wishes is as conducive to the cause of amity between India and Pakistan at present as it will surely be in the future for an amicable settlement of outstanding disputes between the two countries.
I leave it to the Government of India to frame its Kashmir policy. But speaking as a public worker, I believe I will have done some service to the cause of peace, democracy and socialism if I, as a PSP worker, succeed in making a section of pro-Pak Muslims in the State give up their fanaticism and instead desire genuine India-Pak friendship and in convincing Indians that those who oppose the Bakshi regime are not all pro-Pakistanis or constitute a danger to the security of the State. I am pretty certain Bakshi’s policy of “gun or gold” has done more harm than good to India.
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