Mischievous statement
On February 1, National Conference (NC) Vice President Omar Abdullah said: “The government and the BJP talk about one nation, one election, their report is ready, and if they really believe it, then they should start by conducting Assembly elections in J&K, along with the Lok Sabha elections. But if they don’t believe what they are saying, then what can we say, betraying people is their old habit” [1]. The former J&K Chief Minister (CM) and votary of Article 370, which created Islamic Republic of J&K on the soil of Bharat in October 1949, and protagonist of Article 35A, which empowered the radical Muslim leadership in Kashmir to declare all the non-Kashmiris, without any exception, persona-non-grata in J&K, made this silly and mischievous statement while speaking to reporters in Srinagar after he arrived from Umrah in Saudi Arabia.
Earlier on July 27, 2020, the UK-born Omar Abdullah, an ardent believer in the concept of two-nation, separate constitution and separate flag, had said: “I am very clear that while J&K remains a Union Territory I will not be contesting any Assembly elections. Having been a member of the most empowered Assembly in the land and that, too, as the leader of that assembly for six years, I simply cannot and will not be a member of a house that has been disempowered the way ours has”[2]. Not just this. On December 15, 2022, he also declared that “We will see to it whenever elections take place. But I have been saying this, we will not beg for these elections”[3].
NC’s concept of One Nation is atrocious, divisive
The Kashmir-based NC, which left no stone unturned between October 1947 and 2014 to create a high wall of hatred between Kashmiri Muslims and the rest of the countrymen; dismember Bharat; give Islamist orientation to everything in J&K; reduce the Hindus, the Buddhists, the Jains and the Sikhs to the status of slaves unworthy of any socio-cultural and politico-economic rights; and erode the distinct identity of Jammu province and Ladakh region, has no moral and political right to talk about one nation, one election, or to ask the Narendra Modi government to hold Assembly elections in J&K, along with general elections.
It is hardly necessary to reflect on what the Abdullahs and ilk in Kashmir did during that dark period as everything is in the public domain. As a matter of fact, what they did in J&K and to Bharat during that period of secessionism, based on religious fanaticism, forced the Modi government on August 5-6, 2019 to undo the wrongs as committed by the Abdullahs and ilk in collaboration with Nehrus, Gandhis and other ultra-secularists in and outside the South and North Blocks. Hence, I will focus only on what the Abdullahs, including Sheikh Abdullah, Farooq Abdullah, and Omar Abdullah, did after 1975 to further widen the already rather wide constitutional gulf between J&K and the rest of the country.
Forty-second Amendment Act, 1976
Take, for example, the attitude of the NC towards the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976, which was passed under pressure from the unseated PM Indira Gandhi by the Lok Sabha on November 2, 1976, and by the Rajya Sabha on November 11, 1976, when the entire Opposition was in jail and the media had no freedom. The amendment, among other things, extended the life of the Lok Sabha and assemblies from five to six years and added to the Preamble of the Constitution “Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic”.
What did the Sheikh Abdullah-led NC-Congress government do? It also amended the J&K Constitution of 1957 on February 17, 1977, and extended the term of the J&K Assembly from five to six years, but did not add the words socialist and secular to the Preamble of the J&K Constitution[4]. In other words, the NC government applied the 42nd amendment in a wrong way. It must call the bluff of the Abdullahs and indicate their hatred for one nation, one law doctrine, notwithstanding the fact that Indira Gandhi had hurt Bharat and jeopardized the socio-cultural and politico-economic rights and interest of the Sanatanis by incorporating the destroy-Bharat terms like socialism and secularism in the Preamble of the Constitution during the Emergency Days.
Morarji Desai’s regime and 42nd Amendment
In 1977, the angry and outraged nation inflicted a crushing defeat on Indira Gandhi and her Congress and brought to power the ragtag Janata Party government under Morarji Desai. The Desai government amended the 42nd Amendment. The amendment, inter-alia, reduced the term of the Lok Sabha and the assemblies from six to five years, but, at the same time, shocked the nation by not removing the words socialist and secular from the Preamble of the Constitution.
Did the Sheikh Abdullah government incorporate the words socialist and secular in the Preamble of the J&K Constitution, or reduce the term of the J&K Assembly from six to five years? The answer is a big NO. It neither incorporated socialist and secular in the Preamble of the J&K Constitution nor did it amend the Constitution of J&K (Sixteenth Amendment) Act, 1977 to reduce the term of the assembly from six to five years. This should further indicate its contempt for one nation, one law concept.
Central Laws Review Committee
The same year (1977), the Sheikh Abdullah government appointed a three-member Cabinet Sub-Committee under the 1975 Indira-Sheikh subversive Accord to review the central laws applied to J&K after August 9, 1953. The upshot of the whole argument of Sheikh Abdullah, his government, and the NC was that the central laws as introduced in J&K after August 9, 1953, had eroded the state’s special status and also eroded the Kashmiri Muslim identity. It is, however, a different matter that Deputy Chief Minister D D Thakur, who headed the Cabinet Sub-Committee, disappointed the Sheikh as his report, among other things, had said: “The needles of the clock cannot be turned back and the central laws had only benefitted J&K and its people.” However, notwithstanding what the Thakur Committee report said, the fact remains that the Sheikh did make a concerted move to bring J&K out of the purview of the central laws and institutions. And, this should again indicate the Abdullahs’ hatred for the central laws, or one nation, one law doctrine.
6 year-264-day-long Governor/ President rule
Omar Abdullah’s statement that the Modi government has been betraying J&K by not holding Assembly elections is nothing but a silly attempt to mislead and suppress the truth. The truth is that Farooq Abdullah, in alliance with Rajiv Gandhi and the Congress, rigged wholesale the 1987 Assembly elections to capture the state power and put the Kashmiri Muslims on the road to separation. Not only this, but to escape the wrath of the Kashmiri Muslims, CM Farooq Abdullah not only created a situation that caused wholesale migration of Kashmiri Hindus, Jammu Dogras, and almost all the Punjabis on January 19, 1990, but also fled away to the UK. The result was that J&K remained under the Governor/President’s Rule for six years and 264 days (January 19, 1990-October 9, 1996). In between, Farooq Abdullah’s NC boycotted the 1996 general elections with the Congress winning all six Lok Sabha seats – three in Kashmir, two in Jammu, and one in Ladakh.
The sky is the limit and return of Farooq Abdullah
Farooq Abdullah returned to Kashmir just before the 1996 Assembly elections to become CM. He returned only after the then PM P V Narasimha Rao made a highly unsettling statement on November 4, 1995, at Burkina Faso that the “sky is the limit” as far as autonomy for J&K was concerned.
It would be only desirable to quote verbatim a comprehensive report in this regard which appeared on February 6, 2022. Such an exercise would help put things in perspective. The report read: “On November 4, 1995, Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao was in faraway Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. But almost throughout the day, his mind was in New Delhi, where perhaps the most important Cabinet meeting of his tenure was taking place. The Union Cabinet was to take a decision to hold elections in J&K after a gap of over nine years. The meeting itself was a mere formality. The decision to hold elections had been taken by Rao before he left for his foreign tour. Even the amendments to be made in the J&K Representation of the People Act had been carefully gone into. But Rao was still worried: NC leader Farooq Abdullah had still not categorically stated whether his party would participate in the polls. Abdullah, who had been insisting on the restoration of the pre-1953 status, had met the Prime Minister just before he left for the tour and had said that he could not go back to the people unless at least a categorical assurance of autonomy was given. ‘I cannot go back empty-handed,’ had been Abdullah’s refrain.”
The report further said: “The Prime Minister had a telephonic conversation with Abdullah on November 4, and finally decided to provide him with a face-saving statement. The statement, specially recorded in Burkina Faso, was even telecast on Doordarshan. ‘From a long distance away from home, I am addressing an appeal through this statement to the people of J&K, at a time which could well turn their destiny once again in a glorious manner, so as to make that lovely land a peer to paradise—jannatnishaan, as it has been called for centuries,”
“What followed must have surprised the most avid Kashmir watchers. Rao had not only endorsed the provision of the 1975 Sheikh Abdullah-Indira Gandhi accord, allowing the state government to review and ask for the repeal of all laws made between 1953 and 1975, but even said the Centre had no objection to the use of the title of wazir-e-azam for the chief minister, and sadar-e-riyasat for the governor if an elected state legislature so desired,” the report further read.
The report also said: “This was going beyond even the 1975 accord. For the last clause of the accord, the draft of which was signed by Indira Gandhi’s principal secretary G. Parthasa-rathy, and Sheikh Abdullah’s lieutenant Mirza Mohammad Afzal Beg, had clearly pointed to the difference in this score. No agreement was possible on the question of nomenclature…and the matter is therefore remitted to the principals”.
“On the surface, Rao’s package is a major victory for Farooq Abdullah. But doubts remain on whether he will contest the polls. Indeed, there are no firm indications yet whether Rao’s bold gamble will pay off. ‘It’s not enough,’ Abdullah told his confidants, even as he left for Srinagar on November 5. While there is no arguing against the fact that neither Abdullah nor his NC command the same following in the embattled Valley as they once did, the credibility of the polls will be in a shambles if only ‘Delhi parties’ like the Congress and the BJP participate in it. But even with the clearing of the decks for elections, the one question that continues to haunt most minds in the strife-torn Valley is whether at all the polls will be free, fair, and, what they are most concerned about, peaceful. There has admittedly been a decrease in major strikes by the various militant groups operating in Kashmir and parts of the Jammu region. The J&K Liberation Front, the most popular in the Valley in terms of its ideological appeal, has become a divided house and lacks the firepower it had in the early 90s. And the pro-Pakistan Hizbul Mujahideen and the Harkat-ul-Ansar have been somewhat dormant of late. But the fear — among both the security forces and the people — is that they have been saving their ammunition for the expected polls. They will in the next few days try and unleash a fresh wave of violence in a bid to derail the poll process. Sources in the military wings of various militant groups speak of plans to form a joint front to sabotage the polls. The separatist All Party Hurriyat Conference, despite all its internal differences, is united in its opposition to the polls. It will not only issue a boycott call but totally endorse the steps any of the tanzeems (constituent organizations) may take against the planned polls. Government sources in the Union Home Ministry, however, say they expect the presence of new anti-Jamaat and anti-Hizbul forces like Kukka Parray’s Ikhwan-ul-Muslimoon, the Militants Mukhalif Army and the Muslim Mujahideen to help make the going smoother,” the comprehensive and highly informative report further said.
The report further read: “Kukka Parray has already gone on record to say that his gunmen would not oppose the elections and state Congress chief Ghulam Rasool Kar has even said that Sarir Khan of the Muslim Mujahideen could be the Congress candidate in Chandusa. As far as the state administration is concerned, it has got what it asked for. For the last few months, Governor K.V. Krishna Rao had been campaigning relentlessly for the elections with dark hints that he would quit if polls were not held. He had already started preparations in anticipation of the Union Cabinet’s nod which was finally received on November 4. In fact, as far back as this May, the Election Commission had appointed returning officers to all the 87 assembly constituencies in the state. But the authorities also realize the arduousness of the task ahead. Non-cooperation from the Kashmiri bureaucracy is one of the problems they will have to contend with. The first rumblings have already been felt. A meeting of the returning officers had to be convened and they had to be briefed about their responsibilities. The bulk of the Kashmiri bureaucrats refused to carry out these duties. That the authorities were fully aware of the problems was evident even before the formal decision to go ahead with the polls was taken. The government had already amended the J&K Representation of the People Act to stipulate that the death of candidates in any constituency would not lead to countermanding of elections”.
“In the November 4 Cabinet meeting, a number of other amendments were decided upon ‘to provide for various contingencies’. Taking cognizance of the booth-capturing ability of the militant groups, one of the amendments stipulates that the election to a constituency can be declared void if that happens. Some of the amendments are clearly aimed at winning the support of the migrant Kashmiri population, mostly the Kashmiri pandits. One of these relates to the setting up of polling stations outside the area of a constituency and to provide for postal ballots. The move is also bound to increase the polling percentage. So it’s back to the campaign trail in Kashmir. No one can say at this juncture who will win power in the embattled state. If the National Conference decides to contest, the fight will be basically between the National Conference and the Congress. The BJP has areas of influence in the Jammu region but can expect virtually nothing in the Valley, which has the bulk of the seats in the 87-member Assembly. Thus, it has little chance of grabbing power. The one sure contender for power is, of course, the Congress. There are already hopes in the party that Kar will mark a turnaround in Kashmir just as Beant Singh had in Punjab. But then Kashmir is not Punjab, is it?”. “The die is cast: Rao cedes ground to Farooq, but will his gamble pay off?”[5].
The “sky is the limit” Burkina Faso declaration further complicated matters for the nation in Kashmir. “No single statement has done as much damage for the Valley and those four words became the benchmark for negotiations with secessionist mobs for successive central governments,” said one report in a leading English daily[6]. The report only hit the nail on the head.
The 1999 State Autonomy Committee Report
What did Farooq Abdullah do after becoming CM? He appointed the State Autonomy Committee. It was initially headed by Congress leader and former Sadar-e-Riyasat Karan Singh. After his resignation, Farooq Abdullah himself became its chairman. The report, which urged PM Vajpayee to withdraw all the central laws and institutions from J&K, was made public in Jammu in April 1999. The J&K Assembly adopted it on June 26, 2000, and again asked the Vajpayee Government to restore the pre-1953 politico-constitutional status or grant semi-independent status to J&K.
It’s a matter of great satisfaction that the Vajpayee Government rejected outright Farooq Abdullah’s atrocious demand. In fact, while rejecting as unacceptable the demand of Farooq Abdullah Government, the Vajpayee’s Cabinet, inter-alia, said: “The Cabinet feels that the acceptance of this resolution would set the clock back and reverse the natural process of harmonizing the aspirations of the people of J&K with the integrity of the nation. Most of the recommendations contained in the report of the State Autonomy Committee seek to reverse the application of constitutional provisions to the State of J&K which may not only adversely affect the interests of the people of the state but would also be tantamount to removal of some of the essential safeguards enshrined in our constitution”[7].
All this should call the bluff of Omar Abdullah and establish that the NC’s concept of one nation, one law is communal and divisive and that it could go to any extent to drive J&K away from the country’s mainstream.
Sinister agenda
The suggestion of Omar Abdullah — who as CM misused the floor of the assembly on March 25, 2013, and questioned the very political status of J&K vis-à-vis Bharat and who repeatedly sought a dispensation outside the country’s political and constitutional organization on the score of religion — that the Modi Government must apply the one nation, one election doctrine to J&K is as nasty as it is mischievous, ill-motivated and ill-designed.
On March 25, Omar Abdullah — who consistently opposes the new domicile laws and considers the Hindu-Sikh refugees from Pakistan living in Jammu since 1947-48 as aliens and wants them to quit Jammu and who, in collaboration with the Sonia Gandhi-controlled UPA Government, settled 1000s of Rohingyas and Bangladeshis in and after 2008 at strategic locations in and around Jammu City and along the International Border — had taunted and ridiculed the nation. Among other things, he had said: “By repeating the word of ‘Atoot Ang’ (integral part) time and again, you cannot change the status of political issue (read religious issue) of J&K. To change the scenario you have to win over the hearts of people of J&K…and care for their (separatist) hopes and (religious) aspirations”[8][9][10].
What exactly is the agenda of Omar Abdullah, who in July 2008 said on the floor of the Lok Sabha that “we will not give an inch of land to Shri Amarnath Shrine Board”? Let me quote certain portions verbatim from his December 13, 2022 Srinagar statement. He, inter-alia, said: “The NC will repeal the controversial Public Safety Act (PSA) if it forms the government in the Union Territory after the assembly elections…The abrogation of Article 370 will be an issue in the assembly elections in J&K, which will be held for the first time after the Centre’s August 2019 move…It is obvious that this election will not be contested merely on bijli, sadak, and pani (electricity, roads, and water). Whatever has happened since August 5, 2019, will be an issue in the elections…NC Government will ensure that the land and the resources of J&K are reserved for locals only”[11].
The whole truth is that the ultimate objective of the NC, like other Muslim parties in Kashmir, including the Congress, the People’s Democratic Party, the People’s Conference, and the Gupkar gang, is a dispensation that is of Islamists, by Islamists and for Islamists and that ensures the collapse of everything Bharatiya in J&K. In other words, Omar Abdullah and ilk vouches for assembly elections not for fighting for developmental, democratic, and economic issues, but for achieving their sinister goal: separation from J&K from Bharat and annihilation of minorities.
The way out
What, then, is the way out? The only way out to break the backbone of Kashmir jihad is the conversion of Jammu province into a full-fledged state and conversion of Kashmir into a Chandigarh-type UT so that the control over land and forests in Kashmir and Home, Finance, Revenue, and Law Departments and office of the Advocate General remains with the Union Government. If the Narendra Modi Government really wishes to stem the rot, it has to further reorganize the UT taking into consideration the paramount national interest and the interests of Jammu province and those of the internally displaced and persecuted Kashmiri Hindus. And there are reasons to believe that the Modi Government will take forward the process of nation-building reforms.
Note:
1. Text in Blue points to additional data on the topic.
2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.
References:
[1] Hold Assembly, LS polls in J&K together: Omar – Feb 2, 2024, Daily Excelsior
[2] Omar Abdullah writes: While Jammu and Kashmir remains UT, I will not contest Assembly elections – Jul 28, 2020, Indian Express
[3] NC will not beg for polls, will be ready whenever they are held: Omar – Dec 16, 2022, Daily Excelsior
[4] The Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir – JKDAT
[5] The Die Is Cast – Feb 6, 2022, Outlook Web Desk
[6] Why is the govt supping with the devils? – Aug 26, 2008, The Economic Times
[7] Vajpayee Cabinet said this while rejecting National Conference’s Greater Autonomy demand – Aug 15, 2022, The Dispatch
[8] Accession to India was on three subjects: Omar – Mar 26, 2013, Early Times
[9] Rohingya as a threat to country’s security is a post-2014 development: Omar Abdullah – Sep 18, 2017, HT
[10] Omar Abdullah: ‘Govt Tried to Gag Me, Was Asked to Sign a Bond Forcing Me to Stay Silent’ – Jul 30, 2020, The Wire
[9] Omar Abdullah says will repeal PSA if NC comes to power in J&K; terms India-China face-off unfortunate – Dec 13, 2022, Daily Excelsior
