The continuous civil strife in Jammu and Kashmir which has brought economic and business activity in this northern state (pop.10.07 million) to a standstill for over a month, is beginning to infect the body politic of India. Civil insurrection in the Muslim majority Kashmir Valley protesting the innocuous decision to grant 100 acres of land to the Amarnathji Shrine Board which supervises and facilitates the annual three-month pilgrimage of Hindu devotees to the Amarnathji shrine in Kashmir has provoked a communally surcharged backlash in Jammu. The Congress-PDP government of J&K can hardly be faulted for ceding 100 acres of land in the state, which sprawls across 222,236 sq.km, to the Amarnathji board to build transit facilities to ease the pilgrims’ progress to the shrine.
Yet the fact that this tiny concession to Hindu pilgrims from mainland India has provoked a huge public outcry in the Kashmir Valley, is indicative of the disconnect of irredeemable Islamist Muslims of the valley with the basic, nation-building structure of the Constitution of India. On July 1 the state government was forced to rescind the land transfer to the shrine board. The argument advanced by the sub-nationalist political parties in Kashmir under the banner of the All Party Hurriyat Conference, is that given the special status of Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution of India, non-residents of the valley are not permitted to own or purchase real estate in the Kashmir district.
Unsurprisingly, this argument has outraged the Hindu majority in the neighbouring district of Jammu, and provided ideal troubled waters for Hindu militant organisations of the sangh parivar such as the VHP and RSS in which to fish. Since mid-August several all-party meetings convened by the Union government to resolve the Shri Amarnathji Shrine issue have proved unfruitful and on August18, a 60,000 strong assembly defied prohibitory orders in the valley and marched to the offices of the United Nations peace force in Kashmir, demanding the right of self-determination for the Kashmiri people.
Against this backdrop of Kashmir’s incorrigible religious intolerance and bearing in mind that in 1949 the then prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, had solemnly promised the United Nations a plebiscite in Kashmir to enable the people of the valley to determine their political future, the time has come to make good this promise. If despite huge subsidies and government largesse poured into the socio-economic development of Kashmir, its population still cries for the right to self-determination and plebiscite in the valley, it is high time this demand is conceded.
The low-intensity war which secular democratic India has fought in Kashmir for over six decades with separatist groups and their tutors and mentors in Pakistan, has bled this country dry. Apprehensions of the secular fabric of India being torn apart if the peripheral Kashmir Valley is permitted to secede from the Indian Union are unwarranted and exaggerated. Over 15 republics seceded from the Soviet Union two decades ago, and the heavens haven’t fallen. On the contrary, contemporary Russia is better off without them.