A common person in Kashmir  today is not jubilant over the arrival of summer as elsewhere because  additional  seeds to what already exist of unrest have been sown with the  promulgation  of the order  for the issuance of the Dogra Certificate  to the residents of Jammu province irrespective of their religion, language and ethnicity. Dogra Certificate is ostensibly given  to help people from Jammu to get jobs in central paramilitary forces wherever  “relaxation in height and chest measurement is permissible” and for no other purpose as has been  further clarified by the minister Raman Bhalla Ostensibly there is no insidious motive behind it, but a closer look at the intention of the certificate reveals a sinister design behind it. It seems to be the handiwork of those forces who have been overemphasizing and simultaneously intensifying  through subtle machinations the mild social diversity in the valley of Kashmir to fracture and heterogenize its broadly homogenous identity. Because the question is how shall it work out on the ground.
Firstly by giving the certificate to a particular community for jobs which does not otherwise come under any reserved category is discriminatory, unjust and racist, to say the least.
Second, despite being community specific, the certificate is available to other communities in the region too, “irrespective of his or her ethnicity, religion, cultural background and mother tongue” which on the face of it is supposed to appease other groups in Jammu province like Paharis, Guggars, Muslims Rajputs and the refugees from Pak but is actually negating their primary identities and homogenizing them under one umbrella of dogra certificate as Dogras. Here is the rub the hidden agenda is to project all people living in the Jammu province, Pirpanchal  and Chenab valley as one homogenous identity to strengthen Dogra nationalism in the state. For the sake of jobs  even  some clans from Kashmir can apply for this certificate which will enhance the numbers of dogras on the paper. What provides  further ammunition to the divisive agenda   is the government's willingness to issue a similar certificate to people  living  in the  Kashmir valley and  Ladakh.
  After failing to create a battle of  different discourses  in the valley to destabilize the broadly monolithic resistance narrative of Kashmir demonstrated in the last year uprising, political engineers sitting in Delhi and Jammu  have now  stumbled on a homogenizing discourse in Jammu to scuttle the justified  claims of the majority community in the state. While the government of the day is apparently trying to plug all the loopholes to prevent the repeat of the last year’s  unrest, hawks in the establishment are hell-bent on  sowing the seeds of dissension in one way or the other to deepen the cleavage between regions and to reduce the majority character of the state in favor of a regressive Identinarian  politics not only to block the road of a just settlement of Kashmir issue but to drown the Kashmiri’s cry for rights and justice in the waters of Dogra nationalism.

Lastupdate on : Thu, 14 Apr 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Fri, 15 Apr 2011 00:00:00 IST