Reorganisation: Protecting Secular Identities

By Dr. Ajay Chrungoo

The mindset behind the critique on reorganisation (trifurcation or quadri-partition) needs to be understood. Our formal interaction with the Regional Autonomy Committee, before its chairman was unceremoniously removed is revealing in this context. The only definitive question which we were asked repeatedly and which became the theme of the debate was. “If Panun Kashmir demand of carving out a Union Territory, North and East of river Jhelum for rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits is conceded where will the Muslims who live in this area go?”

We clarified that the Panun Kashmir demand in fact wanted a dispensation within Kashmir valley where the ‘Constitution of India’ applies in letter and spirit without any reservations and fetters. Where does the question of Muslims having to leave the area arise in this proposition? “But Muslims will not live in such a dispensation,” we are again asked. We counterpoised the proposition. In 1947 India chose to remain secular while Pakistan became a chosen place for Muslims. There were Muslims who remained in India and there were Muslims who chose to move to Pakistan. The Regional Autonomy Committee chose to interpret the argument as our support for the transfer of population. The real question as to why living under the free flow of Indian Constitution is visualized as not compatible with the aspirations of Kashmiri Muslims is never asked by anybody who defends the special status of the state and opposes re-organisation.

Perhaps for the fear that answer may invariably lead to the conclusion that so-called unfulfilled aspirations are ‘essentially’ communal in content and divorced from the ‘secular nation building vision’ of India. The inevitable consequences of such a conclusion is that the solution of Kashmir lies in the policy which envisages the secularisation of social milieu of Muslims and not fortification of Muslim identity.

“Liberal-left’ avoids any discourse which will confront them with the reality that the crises in Kashmir has its roots in the flawed secular vision applied to the state besides the geo-politics in the region. This vision treats the support to accession with India as the only yardstick on which secular behaviour of the polity should be judged. It treats those forms of Muslim communal politics which avoid questioning the accession of state with India as essentially secular. It builds compulsions for the nation state to patronise such varieties of Muslim communalism.

The actual fall out is the building of a symbiotic relationship between Muslim identity politics which does not question accession and operates with the patronage of the state and the Muslim identity politics which is frankly secessionist in its expression and operates with the help of international vested interest. This symbiotic relationship has formed the substratum for subversive process in the state.

‘Left Liberal’ mind is not oblivious of such a fallout but continues to support the paradigm for furthering its own ideological agenda. It views India as a collection of nationalities yet to be reconciled. It seeks to redefine the principles of Indian Federalism for this reconciliation. And it visualises the Muslim sub-nationalism with its support structures and damaging potential as the most potent instrumentality which can force the change upon India.

The opposition to the principle of re-organisation of Jammu and Kashmir state emanates not from the concern for secularism but because the re-organisation of Jammu and Kashmir would decisively weaken Muslim identity politics and render separatism full of stakes for the future. It will also reverse the genocidal processes unleashed on the Hindu-Sikh minorities in the state. Arguments that re-organisation of the state is ‘cutting the pie with communal knife are basically endeavours to keep the pie brimming with communal poison.

The process of fortification of Muslim communalism did not end with granting the state of Jammu and Kashmir with a ‘special status’. It heralded the beginning of the campaign for a ‘Greater Muslim Kashmir’. Participatory democracy was decisively destroyed in Kashmir valley. All such legislative constituencies, which had potential of throwing up of a mandate against the dominant politics, were broken and reshaped. Carving out of districts and legislative constituencies on communal consideration in Jammu was the beginning of the assault on the secular identity of Jammu. Creating Kargil as a separate district in Ladakh spread the ambit of communal assault to the entire state. That lesser voters are required to determine the assembly or parliamentary constituencies in Muslim majority Kashmir valley than in other two provinces only underlined communal aggression subjecting the people of entire state to the hegemony of Muslim communalism.

Retrieving the situation in Jammu and Kashmir requires confronting Muslim communalism in all its forms.

It requires decisive steps to protect secular identities in the existing state from the militarized communal aggression. It also requires a decisive bluff to all machinations which have provided a cover to the communal processes in the state. Re-organisation of the state through  quadri-partition will ensure all these imperatives.

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