Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Two tales of two cities

The state response to public fury in Kashmir as well as in Jammu has been ideological rather than constitutional.
By Riyaz Masroor
Thanks to the state’s complicity in an avowedly anti-Muslim rioting across Jammu, the ‘iron curtain’ the successive governments in J&K had drawn around the frontiers of J&K’s Muslim regions over past decades is falling away. And with this the incipient feelings of aversion to Pakistan have once again cocooned into a stigmatic shell. Interestingly the state’s ideological response to the land row at Baltal has rekindled separatist Muslim aspirations in Pir Panjal (Rajouri, Poonch, Gool Gulab Garh, Arnas) and Chenab (Doda, Bhani, Bhadarwah, Kishtiwar, Rambhan, Banihal) regions.

Jammu is also Kashmir!
Poonch-based Muslim United Welfare Forum has loudly expressed these aspirations. “We demand that Rajouri, Poonch and Doda should be merged with Kashmir because these areas are similar to it (Kashmir) culturally, religiously and geographically,” the Forum spokesman said in a statement on August 5.
The statement carried a subtle caveat as well. “Before the Muslims are asked to leave form Bishnah, Bhatandi and Jammu, let those refugees leave Poonch who have occupied the Muslim properties since 1947.”
Earlier, Muslim veterans of Poonch, Rajouri and Doda convened an all-party session in Rajouri on August 4 in which Muslims from all sects and social strata participated. The session, according to a news report in Urdu daily Kashmir Uzma, concluded on the consensus that people of these regions would forge a “political accession” with Kashmir Valley and would extend active support to Kashmiris’ struggle for freedom.
Then there were reports of skirmishes between Hindu rioters and Sikh citizens in Poonch. On August 4 a group of rightwing Hindu activists stormed a locality in central Poonch and pulled down the life-size portraits of some Sikh soldiers who had participated in India’s 1971 war to slice Bangladesh off Pakistan. Local newsgathering agency News Today reported on August 5 that the Hindu activists demolished Brigadier Preetam Singh’s statue by the Hindu rioters. This evoked reaction from Sikh residents who later clashed with the rioters. From Indian point of view, Sikh reaction should have been appreciated because it was manifestation of respect for a war hero who had laid down his life while ‘punishing’ Pakistan in Bangladesh. But in contrast the reports from Jammu suggest the worst degree of state’s culpability in the crimes the rioters are perpetrating against the minorities, both Muslims as well as Sikhs.

Litany of Woes
On July 1 when the controversial order about the transfer of 99 acres of land to SASB near Baltal was revoked by G N Azad’s minority cabinet, Jammu began to simmer. The rightwing BJP and its allies termed it Governor N N Vohra’s ‘surrender’ before ‘Islamists’. But the significant aspect of Jammu’s reaction to this ‘surrender’ is that there was no spontaneous reaction in winter capital, although the BJP activists would stage intermittent demonstrations under a coalition of political and religious groups Amarnath Yatra Sangharsh Samiti (AYSM).
On July 23, three weeks after government revoked the order, Kuldeep Kumar, a 33-year-old shopkeeper from Talab Tuloo showed up in a gathering the AYSM had sponsored at Parade ground. Kumar, who according to Jammu’s leading daily Excelsior had allegedly consumed some poisonous substance at home before reaching the venue, was badly under debt. He had reportedly raised a loan to set up his business and was upset over his inability to liquidate the loan money in view of the mounting interests. He is right now projected as the ‘first martyr’ of Jammu’s ‘Jihad’ against J&K Muslims.
The government has already ordered an inquiry into the incident. But the investigators would be hard-pressed to probe the death without the mandatory autopsy report. In fact, the Police despite hard efforts could not conduct the autopsy on Kumar’s body as the ferocious agitators had snatched the body.
As against the standing facts, Kumar’s death was mischievously reported as a “protestor’s suicide during agitation” and the Police received constant brickbats for ‘mishandling’ the issue. Several Police officials including a senior officer were transferred. Emboldened, the sponsors went out to whip up passions across Jammu’s Hindu heartland setting a chain reaction in Bishna (Kuldeep’s native Town), Kathua, Akhnoor, Udhampur and other areas. The rioters grew so much used to defy the curve and army deployment that the JKLF leader Muhammad Yasin Malik termed the curfew as a “friendly match” between the army and the rioters.
While the rioters put the entire region upside down and vandalized public property, the authorities appeared to have given enough leeway to the rioters after the Kumar’s death. The administration marked its first ‘action’ against the rioting only on July 26 when some Sangh leaders and office bearers of the Samiti were arrested and later released. While the agitation was visibly spawning into a vengeful racist campaign against Muslims and reports of harassment of Muslims, as also burning down of Gujjar dwellings in Samba, R S Pura and Marh, were pouring in, the administration wasted another four days and opened a dialogue with the sponsors of the agitation only on July 30 . The talks proved futile, the crisis deepened.
The BJP ideologues including Uma Bharti, Ratimbara Sadhwi and Swami Dinesh Bharti (Swami Dinesh openly called for Muslim massacres) had reached Jammu to boost the rioters’ ‘morale’. In an incident, reported widely in Jammu press, a mob chased away the Police contingent that had held a Samiti leader Chandra Prakash Ganga under house arrest at his residence near Sarore and got him released. The violent mobs tried to force their entry into Raj Bhawan but could not breach the Iron Gate. The mob stormed the Police headquarters and torched a police lorry. By now the closure of Lakhanpur entry point had been enforced and a complete economic blockade was in place, leaving the Valley in the lurch. The rioters not only chased the officers and cops of Jammu and Kashmir Police but also, at times, attempted to snatch the weapons from the Inspector rank officials.
On August 1, when according to IGP Jammu, the army had taken over the most sensitive Samba Town to prevent mob violence, frenzied fanatics set ablaze almost entire government infrastructure including the Dak Banglow and Tehsil office. The army somehow saved the deputy commissioner’s office. During a protest rally at Samba, the rioters held hostage the deputy commissioner Sourabh Baghat. An Excelsior report said on August 1 that Baghat was rescued by Army. The situation was more like a total anarchy and the army had to take full control of DC office and other vital installations. It was during this frenzy, which was marked by prolonged clashes between Police, CRPF, Army and the rightwing activists, that two persons who were amongst the rioters were hit by bullets and died on spot. The Police maintained that their death was actually the outcome of an inter-gang rivalry. But the administration removed the local SSP Vijay Kumar and asked SSP Prabhat Singh to take charge. However Mr Singh again fell in the trap of rioters on August 4 when fearing that the mob would lynch his cops he ordered fire in self defense. The firing killed two rioters and injured eight others. Police would have certainly expected a mob backlash but it is yet to be explained how two Gujjar cops of JKP were hacked to death in Jhorian village of Akhnoor.
Ideology overtakes constitution
You need not be a rocket scientist to compare the administrative response to public anger in Jammu and Srinagar. Can any protestor dare to look at Raj Bhawan in Srinagar? Is it possible to defy curfew in Kashmir even if only CRPF troops dot the streets? How many ‘suspects’ would be arrested if a police officer or deputy commissioner is held hostage? Can a Kashmiri mob however furious lynch two cops amidst army’s flag March and curfew orders?
The death of the 19-year-old Asif Me’raj of Maisuma is an unambiguous answer to these questions. This poor dropout, who was working with a local car dealer, Highland Automobiles, was killed when JKP cops fired a volley of tear-smoke canisters toward a group of protestors, who were demonstrating against the harassment of Muslims at Maisuma.
Asif is actually the eighth death ever since the protests broke out in Kashmir on June 23 (the strike and protests lasted only 9 days). Earlier six persons died during Police action while a girl of Maisuma, already ailing from Bronchial infection, died of suffocation after the Police barraged the area with dozens of smoke shells.
Calculate the costs
In the colonial times even the brute monarchs would detest the discrimination between the subjects. The state response to public fury in Kashmir as well as in Jammu has been ideological rather than constitutional. In Kashmir an unwritten policy appears to infuse among troopers and cops a sense of being deployed in ‘enemy territory’ while in Jammu the same policy gives them a feeling that they are in a ‘friendly territory’, which has to be used against the ‘enemies’. At both places, the constitution is put to shame. If it is not really happy with the concept of Muslim Kashmir, New Delhi should calculate the costs of anarchy that usually follows the defiling of constitution. feedback on riyaz.masroor@yahoo.com

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