No chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir so far has ever survived the rage on the streets of Jammu. A hard fact of the region’s history is that angry Jammu has not even spared the tallest leader Sheikh Abdullah, who was ousted from power after the Praja Parishad agitation hit the streets in 1953. This was then followed by the dismissal of his son Dr. Farooq Abdullah in 1984 and then Ghulam Nabi Azad in 2008, who got entangled in the Amarnath land row. The anger is so great that there is a perception that Indian public conscience can absorb as many strikes, agitations or violent deaths in the Kashmir Valley, but not in Jammu. Both the regions of the State, divided by mighty Pir Panchal mountains, have remained poles apart, not only in terms of demography but divergent in political aspirations as well.

COMMERCIAL BREAK
SCROLL TO CONTINUE READING

Jammu has always viewed the peak of Kashmir’s freedom movement led by Sheikh Abdullah as an attempt to oust a Hindu Dogra ruler. The Jammu Dogra dynasty ruled the state between 1846-1947. The Jammu region which has a 64 per cent Hindu population is also a mosaic geographically. Its two regions – the Chinab Valley and Pir Panchal have Muslims in majority. Overall it inhabits 29 per cent Muslims, 23 per cent Brahmins, 20 per cent Scheduled Caste (SCs) 12 per cent Rajputs and nearly 7 per cent Sikhs.

Perhaps the strange part of this history weighed on the mind of the late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed when he spurned offers from the National Conference (NC) and the Congress and chose to tie up with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to form the government in the State. Ironically, during the run up to the elections, his party People’s Democratic Party (PDP) had sought votes to keep the BJP out of power.

A week before taking over reins in 2015, in a free-wheeling interview at his residence in Jammu, Sayeed told this writer that he had a gigantic task of combining the ‘North and the South Poles.’ He described it an opportunity for the BJP as well to understand and respect the sentiments of Kashmiris. In the 2014 elections, the BJP had swept Jammu’s Hindu belt and also got a few seats from the Chinab Valley as well. Mufti went on to analyse that his tying up with the Congress or the National Conference (NC) could have inculcated a sense of disempowerment or political isolation of Jammu region, which would have brought more serious consequences than working with the party with divergent ideology.

But three years down the road, the poles remain as distant as they were prior to 2014. While militancy takes a new turn in Kashmir Valley, communal tensions are brewing in the Jammu region over a variety of issues. At the heart of the brutal gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua was the sign of tensions building up over some time followed by an anti-encroachment drive against the Gujjar population — who are mostly Muslims.

Members of the Gujjar-Bakarwal nomadic tribe (of which the young girl was a part of) and supporting groups, called this a ‘selective’ and an ‘orchestrated’ campaign against the nomads. This was manifested in uprooting them from the lands which they have been inhabiting for decades.

Unlike the rest of the country, the Forest Rights Act (FRA) has not been implemented in Jammu and Kashmir since it was adopted by Parliament way back in 2006.  The predominantly Muslim nomadic Bakarwal tribe, which mostly rears dairy animals, move to the highlands in the Kashmir valley, during summer, and in winters they are in the plains of Jammu, mostly on forest land. In addition, there is no state forest law that gives title deeds to tribal communities which means the nomads have no legal claim to using forest land that they have been using for years as grazing areas or to harvest minor forest produce, making them ‘encroachers’ in the eyes of forest bureaucracy.

To seek recourse, the Gujjar-Bakarwal community, which constitute around 11 per cent of the state’s population and are notified as Scheduled Tribes, has been demanding for the implementation of FRA. But, not only the current PDP-BJP combine the NC-Congress combine, has also dithered on extending forest rights to these tribes. Instead, both of them have taken out extensive eviction drives against the nomads, deepening the fault-lines in Jammu.

Gujjar activists alleged that there was a ‘clear anti-Muslim bias’ behind the drive as hutments and community centres belonging to the Hindu community and even their religious structures, which have come up illegally on the Ranbir Canal frame and elsewhere including on forest land in Jammu, Kathua, Samba and Rajouri districts, were not being touched.

For political players, the young child’s gang-rape and murder has become an object for furthering communal polarisation, which cannot be undone by simple candle light marches and signature campaigns. The issue of communalisation is the root of the entire problem and this reality must be grappled with.  The Congress’ ambiguity and silence on the issue once again reveals the party’s similar temptation to play second fiddle to the Hindutva discourse rather than countering it. The Congress offered its support to the Bar Association on the occasion of the bandh, even though it sited some ambiguous reasons, like calling the ongoing situation a failure of the PDP-BJP coalition, while endorsing the strike. While the party high command at the national level brought out candlelight marches, the local Congress unit was hobnobbing with groups. To make matters worse for the party, Kashmir-based Congress leaders have contradicted their Jammu counterparts. Is there any method to this madness, or is this simply a case of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds in order to seek political mileage from both ends?

There is a need to reduce animosity between the two regions and give them a sense of empowerment by decentralising power to different regions.  A system of regional councils could play a great role in the overall empowerment as they have done successfully in Kargil and Leh. Both these councils have been quite successful in meeting regional aspirations. There is a need to extend this experiment to other regions and sub-regions. It may be useful to set up at least six more councils, three each in Jammu and Kashmir regions.

The author is Editor, Strategic Affairs, DNA. Views expressed are personal