The People’s Democratic Party claims that its doctrine of self-rule will bring peace to the State and resolve India-Pakistan tensions. In reality, it is a blueprint for the Balkanisation of the country
People’s Democratic Party leaders, including Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and his daughter Mehbooba Mufti, have unleashed a no-holds-barred propaganda blitz to solicit New Delhi and the people’s support in favour of their self-rule doctrine. They are seeking to convince everyone that self-rule doctrine has the potential of defusing tensions between India and Pakistan, and ending the ongoing violence in Kashmir. Additionally, they are also arguing that the doctrine will resolve regional tensions in the State of Jammu & Kashmir as it has an in-built mechanism that prevents any one region from exploiting others .
But the self-rule doctrine is fundamentally bad, reactionary, retrograde and highly injurious to the vital interests of India and its people in Jammu & Kashmir. It is nothing but a replica of the two-nation theory that resulted in the partition of India in 1947 and consumed millions of lives.
The self rule doctrine, like the greater autonomy doctrine of the National Conference, is another charter of bondage for the people of Jammu and ladakh. It also means recognition of communalism and extremism and great concessions to terrorists. Moreover, it also allows Pakistan to share equal sovereign powers with India in Jammu & Kashmir, thereby negating all that the Indian nation did in the past 65 years to integrate the State into the Union. The doctrine is a blueprint for the Balkanisation of India.
It will lead to the emergence of a system under which New Delhi will have no power whatsoever in the State of Jammu & Kashmir. Self-rule, like greater autonomy, will mark a return to the medieval ages known for barbarism and oppression, religious intolerance and conversions, and the destruction of Indian symbols of civilisation. This is no exaggeration.
The implications of self-rule suggest that there is no fundamental difference between what PDP leaders are advocating and what Islamabad is seeking to achieve. On November 12, 2006, at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, former Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, who was then leading a delegation to the US, said: “Conceptually, the challenge in Jammu & Kashmir is to integrate the region without disturbing the extent of sovereign authority over delimited territorial space. There is no need to negate the significance of the line of Control as territorial divisions, but it is imperative to negate its acquired and imputed manifestation of state competition for power, prestige, or an imagined historical identity. The idea is to retain the former and change the latter. Therein lies the key to the solution of Jammu & Kashmir dispute.” The meaning is clear. How ridiculous, provocative, dangerous and unsettling is this formulation of the Mufti!
Mr Sayeed did not stop here. He added: “The operational challenge in Jammu & Kashmir is to establish innovative institutional arrangements that have a political, economic and security character. The two countries — India and Pakistan — have to resolve the very difficult problem of ‘domestic’ integration within a split international political and economic structure. Our basic premise is that the search for solution to the issue of Jammu & Kashmir is the search for an inter-nation State, but still has a supra-national basis. To put issue in analytical terms, we have to find ways and means of ‘sharing sovereignty’ (with Pakistan)”.
He further said: “At a practical level, it should be obvious that the Jammu & Kashmir issue cannot be solved exclusively on an inter-State level (within India or within Pakistan). It requires a combination of intra-State (across India and Pakistan) and inter-State (within Jammu & Kashmir and cross-line of Control) measures.”
The resolution on self-rule adopted by the PDP executive committee, under Mr Sayeed, in Jammu on February 11, 2007, also says the same thing and demands withdrawal of the Indian Constitution from Jammu & Kashmir. In this regard, the resolution said: “PDP recognises that the people of the State (read: Kashmiri Sunnis), unlike other States, which acceded with the Union of India, were assured and promised internal sovereignty and self-rule by allowing the State to have its own Constituent Assembly, its own Constitution and flag and a vast degree of self-governance (read: semi-independence). This was reflected in Article 370 of the Constitution of India. Unfortunately, this Article, which was meant to be a bridge between the Union of India and the State of Jammu & Kashmir, has been used as one way window to undermine the internal sovereignty of the State.”
The message of the PDP leaders is loud and clear. It wants a dispensation that is outside the Indian constitutional framework, with India and Pakistan sharing sovereignty in Jammu & Kashmir, plus the State’s demilitarisation. This is unacceptable. All right-thinking people and New Delhi must combat the pernicious self-rule doctrine.
(The writer is former Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Jammu)