Besides establishing a comprehensive defeat for the Congress, the ladakhi verdict will serve to convince the international community that an overwhelming majority of population in J&K is against the ongoing secessionist and violent movement in parts of the Kashmir valley
People of leh district of the strategic trans-Himalayan ladakh region went to the poll on October 17 to elect the fifth ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, which consists of 26 elected members and four nominated members. Over 65 per cent of the electorate exercised its franchise. The elections authorities announced the results on October 23. The verdict was on expected lines.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, which had created a history of sorts in the 2014 general election by winning, for the first time, the lone ladakh lok Sabha seat, created another history by winning handsomely 18 out of the 25 council seats it contested. The BJP dislodged the Congress, which controlled the powerful lAHDC, leh, for 15 long years without a break. In 2010, the BJP had one only four seats. The point is that the BJP was a marginal political player in ladakh before May 2014.
The victory of the BJP in the council elections was significant because, only in the December 2014 Assembly election, it had suffered a massive defeat in the region at the hands of the Congress. The Congress broke all previous records by winning three of the four seats it contested. The fourth seats went to an independent candidate. The BJP defeat had baffled all political pundits and its bitter critics.
The Congress, which, like the BJP, also contested election in 25 council segments, could win only five seats. In 2010, it had won a whopping 21 seats, notwithstanding the fact that it had been in power in leh district since 2000. The first lAHDC, leh, was controlled by the ladakh Union Territory Front, which enjoyed the support of the ladakhi Buddhist Association and the ladakhi Muslim Association.
Political observers say that it was anti-incumbency which resulted in the humiliating defeat of the Congress. They are partly right and partly wrong. Of course, anti-incumbency was an important factor in the election, but the causes of the Congress’s defeat were deeper. And one of the causes of widespread resentment in leh district against the Congress was that the leader of the Congress legislature Party and former Cabinet Minister Nawang Rigzin Jora, a ladakh Buddhist himself, had deviated from the path he used to follow before December 2014. In fact, he had become the mouthpiece of separatist-friendly Kashmiri leadership. His role in and outside the Assembly after the PDP-BJP formed the coalition Government in J&K last March alienated ladakhis from the Congress.
The stand that the Congress took on the political status of Jammu & Kashmir vis-à-vis India or the unstinted support it gave to the 1974 Indira Gandhi-Sheikh Abdullah accord was a negation of what the people of ladakh stood for, fought for and rendered supreme sacrifices for. The 1974 accord provides for a review of the Central laws applicable to the State since August 1953 and withdrawal of such Central laws as are considered harmful to the State’s special status.
The people of ladakh in general and those of leh in particular, have consistently fought against the Kashmiri leadership’s divisive ideology and Kashmir domination over the State’s polity. They have all through demanded and continue to demand their complete merger with India. They vouch for a separate dispensation, invested with a Union Territory status under the Indian Constitution, sans Article 370 that holds Jammu & Kashmir aloof from India, creates doubts in the minds of the international community about the political status of the State and empowers the Kashmiri leadership to exercise unbridled and veto powers in domains of legislature and executive.
The fact of the matter is that the people of this region are ardent believers in the concept of national unity and the country’s territorial integrity and have full faith in the Indian political and constitutional organisation. The comprehensive defeat of the Congress in the council elections needs to be viewed in this context.
The ladakh verdict is politically significant in another ways too. The people of ladakh rejected outright the pro-greater autonomy National Conference and the pro-self-rule Peoples Democratic Party. Both the Kashmir-based parties stand for a limited accession of the State with India and also want New Delhi to take on board Pakistan and Kashmiri separatists to resolve the other resolved Jammu & Kashmir issue.
The PDP and the NC had fielded eight candidates each to test the political waters in the cold desert region. While the PDP failed to open its account, the NC could win only two seats. The PDP and the NC had fielded candidates mostly in the segments where the Muslims were somewhat more numerous hoping their divisive politics would help them make some in-roads in the region, but the people of ladakh, including the majority Buddhists and the minority Shiite Muslims, reposed full faith in the BJP and five Congress candidates, who won because of some local factors and their personal reputation and popularity.
The defeat of the Congress, the PDP and the NC was a clear and loud message from ladakh that it has no place for divisive politics or hate and break-India regressive politics. But more than that, the people of ladakh, like the people of Jammu province, who had decimated the Congress, the NC and the PDP in the 2014 lok Sabha and Assembly elections and voted overwhelmingly for the BJP, told the Kashmiri separatists that they will never succeed in forcing down their throat their regressive ideology. The BJP had won both the lok Sabha seats and 26 out of 37 Assembly seats in the 2014 general election and Assembly election with a huge margin.
The ladakhi verdict can be legitimately construed as a glorious victory of the Indian stand on Jammu & Kashmir that nearly 90 per cent of the State’s land area is free from the menace of secessionism and communal politics and the problem that the nation faces in Kashmir is the brainchild of members of the Sunni sect.
The Kashmiri-speaking ethnic Sunnis constitute nearly 25 per cent of the State’s total population and approximately 70 per cent of the Kashmir valley’s population, but they have been dominating and controlling almost all the nation-building departments, financial, political and administrative institutions and recruitment agencies since October 1947, when Jammu & Kashmir acceded to India as per the constitutional law on the subject. Besides, they have been controlling and leading not just all the mainstream, separatist, religious and business organisations but also dominating and controlling the crucial Press.
The ladakhi verdict will go a long way in convincing the international community that an overwhelming majority of population in Jammu & Kashmir is against the ongoing secessionist and violent movement in certain parts of the Kashmir valley. It is hoped that the authorities in New Delhi will call the Pakistani bluff and isolate those in Kashmir who masquerade as “true representatives” of the people of Jammu, Kashmir and ladakh. It is time to strengthen the very vast nationalist constituency in the sensitive border State.
(The writer is former Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Jammu)