Recent terrorist attacks in Jammu highlight the necessity for a having deeper emotional connect with the people and addressing their concerns
This is a `Stop Press’ moment for Jammu and Kashmir after the significant and benefiting legislation of the abrogation of Article 370 – a step towards demystifying and demolishing the `special status’ of Jammu and Kashmir which was a hydra-headed invitation to the West to make a spectacle of India’s extreme problems of terrorism as it was and is being transported from Pakistan- and India’s Foreign Minister Dr. Jai Shankar has often enlightened us on our Nation’s self-interest. I say the `Stop Press’ moment because there has been a spike in terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir, especially in Jammu and has brought under the lens the local support for Pakistan terrorists.So what does the `Stop Press’ moment signify? In this `stop press’ moment, we need to dig deep – the abrogation of Article 370- will not integrate into the body-politic on its own – it has to be integrated as a living experience to attain validation in the Being and Soul of Jammu and Kashmir and its people.
The definition of the people of Jammu and Kashmir is ’ Indians’ where Indians from the rest of the country also become an active agency.
This calls for a few hardcore resolute living and active steps- the foremost being understanding the minds of the people of Jammu and Kashmir – a lot has been done – but we need to engage with this relentlessly and break the ice to pierce their `special status’, `isolation’ and `exclusivity’ which has not done them any good except for dragging them into the mindless narrative of asking for `autonomy’ and realizing it the hard way that Pakistan has always worked out of bounds, and still does so, to `keep’ them in a perpetual zone of conflict. This brings us to a preparation for working towards democratic strengthening and consolidation of institutional structures in consonance with the reality of Jammu and Kashmir as the Government of India wants to see it after the abrogation of Article 370. Needless to say, all those developmental questions that are normally addressed in any State or Union Territory of India need to be addressed, foremost being economic egalitarianism.
The Congress Party must keep its mouth shut and let the present govt. led by the Prime Minister Modi do its work in Jammu and Kashmir with the infrastructure and development, as Union Minister Nitin Gadkari would have it. The Congress has through the years mutilated all the Federal aspects of the Constitution of India to politically force a Centralised hegemony.
The present Govt. does not intend to treat Kashmir as a communal cauldron and a battleground for Hindutva and rightly so, therefore it is building infrastructure there. The whole idea of the abrogation of Art. 370 would bear fruit if religious and ethnic exclusiveness were not exploited negatively but used towards international trade and commerce in the best cultural parlance. In the same breath I would say that the Muslim majority could suggest itself to confine its international commitments to religious brotherhood and political proximities within the respectful questioning bounds and press freedom, this press freedom not being an absolute right but subject to the upholding of the Sovereignty and Integrity of India and its Dignity as envisaged in the Constitution of India.
As far as the question of `Kashmiriyat’ is concerned, nobody is stopping or stalling this journey as long as it is within the legitimacy of the Constitutional provisions and the artistic license that it provides. And there may be questions of class and caste here that cannot be ignored if we are to sound and purport real. We will never forget the Indian Army, the soldiers who never fail us in the treacherous terrains of Jammu Kashmir, Ladhak & Siachen in the said region.
We give them the space in our hearts for they do not hide behind any `political’ discourses and tricks and are the first agency of the Social Contract that a Nation State is based on. Their relentless invincibility and risk-taking bravado have no given path to tread but every day is a new challenge. Let all our actions as envisioned in the above paras be a tribute to the soldiers of the Indian Army and it is on us to do our duty now and here.
(The writer is a lawyer; views are personal)
