PAST SHOWS WAY TO THE FUTURE
The Congress leadership of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi is playing with fire by showing complacency towards the separatist tendencies in Kashmir valley and pampering the so-called mainstream politicians whose track record is dubious
Notwithstanding the fact that the Nehru-Gandhi family complicated matters for the nation in Jammu & Kashmir by according it a special status on purely religious grounds in October 1947, and handing over the State power to the votaries of plebiscite in February 1975, it did take a few corrective measures also to rectify some of the mistakes and salvage the situation. Jawaharlal Nehru, who had conspired against Jammu and got political power transferred to the Kashmir-based pro-autonomy National Conference leader, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, had the latter dethroned and arrested on August 9, 1953, on charge of sedition. Sheikh Abdullah remained behind bars for 11 years and became irrelevant for all practical purposes.
Similarly, Indira Gandhi, who had brought back to power the deflated Sheikh Abdullah in 1975 after bringing down her own party’s Government, withdrew support to his regime in 1977 on similar grounds. She said since Sheikh Abdullah had become a threat to national security, it had become imperative to remove him from the sensitive office of Chief Minister. In 1975, Sheikh Abdullah disbanded his Plebiscite Front and revived the National Conference. Indira Gandhi got dismissed the Government of Sheikh Abdullah’s son, Farooq Abdullah, in 1984. She defended her action saying Farooq Abdullah too had become a threat to national security.
Between August 1953 and 1984, a number of definite and progressive steps were taken by the Nehru-Gandhi family and others like Lal Bahadur Shastri to integrate Jammu & Kashmir with India, politically and constitutionally. The process was smooth. There was no coercion. As many as 260 out of 395 Articles of the Indian Constitution were extended to the State with the concurrence of the State Government. Ninety four out of 97 Entries in the Union List were applied to the State. Twenty six out of 47 Entries in the Concurrent List were also applied to the State. Not just this, seven out of 12 Schedules of the Constitution of India were made applicable to the State in letter and spirit.
In between, the State witnessed three very significant developments in 1965. That year, the National Conference merged its identity with the Congress and the first ever Congress Government came into being in the State with Ghulam Mohammad Sadiq as Chief Minister. Besides, the same year, the offices of Sadr-e-Riyasat (Head of State) and Wazir-e-Azam (Head of Government) were abolished and the offices of Governor and Chief Minister introduced to bring Jammu & Kashmir at par with other States of the Union. Other developments that integrated the State into India included the extension of the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, the Comptroller and Auditor-General and the Election Commission, abolition of the obnoxious permit (read visa) system, repeal of Section 75 of the Jammu & Kashmir Constitutional Act of 1939 under which the Council of Ministers, and not the Jammu & Kashmir High Court of Judicature, was the final interpreter of the Constitution, and repeal of the highly draconian Jammu & Kashmir State Press and Publication Act, 1932, under which the Council of Ministers could seize any Press on the ground that it had published or carried a seditious (read anti-Government) article.
All these political and constitutional reforms helped the people of the State and democratised the polity to an extent. It was hoped that the process of integration, which was started with the arrest of Sheikh Abdullah, would go on unabated and the remaining Articles, Entries in the Union List and Concurrent List and Schedules would be introduced in the State. But it was not to be. Rajiv Gandhi, who succeeded Indira Gandhi after her assassination, instead of maintaining a distance from Farooq Abdullah, befriended him and concluded a power-sharing truce with him — a development that culminated in the deadly secessionist movement in 1987 in the wake of wholesale rigging in the Assembly election held the same year, and which continues to bloody and convulse the State’s political scene at regular intervals. Ever since then, the Congress has been hobnobbing with anti-Indian Constitution forces and overtly and covertly promoting fissiparous tendencies.
However, it is Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi who have crossed all lines in their desperate bid to further divide Indian society on communal lines for Muslim votes, and tell the remaining 85 per cent Indian electorate that it has no place whatsoever in their scheme of things. It is Ms Gandhi, and not Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has been ruling the roost and, hence, all the latter’s actions are her actions and all the statements made by her men and women in the Government and the party on Jammu & Kashmir and against BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and the party as whole, are her statements. The fact of the matter is that Ms Gandhi has turned completely regressive.
She has let loose Union Minister for External Affairs Salman Khurshid, Water Resources Minister Harish Rawat, Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari, AICC general secretary Digvijaya Singh, former Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee president Rita Bahuguna Joshi, spokesperson Sanjay Jha, JKPCC chief Saifuddin Soz, to mention only a few, to make outrageous statements to reassure the reactionary elements in the minority community that the Congress would not allow anyone to talk about Article 370 under which Jammu & Kashmir enjoys a special status in the Union, and tell the National Conference and other political and separatist groups in the Valley that the party shares their perverted views.
Each one of these Congress leaders has condemned Mr Modi and dubbed him as a communalist. Each one of them, like the Kashmiri leaders, including Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, has described Article 370 as a bridge between the State and New Delhi, and sought to create an impression that an abrogation of this Article would provoke communal explosions across the country, facilitate the State’s separation from India and result in the country’s balkanisation.
It must remain a matter of grave concern that the Congress has taken a stand that doesn’t augur well for the national unity and inter-communal relations. It negates the basic tenets of the Constitution. Indeed, the Congress has disowned Nehru and Indira Gandhi for Muslim votes.
Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley is absolutely right when he says that “an ill-informed debate had earlier linked the issue of Article 370 to a secular versus non-secular debate” and that “my own study on the subject has revealed a very interesting dimension as to how Article 370 can turn into an instrument of oppression and discrimination against Indian citizens”.
(The writer is former Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Jammu)