BJP’s Three Nation Theory

I have never considered creation of Pakistan as an achievement of Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Given the state of Muslims in South Asia post partition one could even at the cost of ruffling feathers call it the Muslim leadership’s failure. That the sixty crore Muslims of the region divided by the partition should now be at each other’s throat rather than the back proves how valid Maulana Azad’s opposition to partition was. But that is history which can neither be discarded nor wished away.

How would Maulana Azad feel today should however be the moot point? Not only him but persons like me who have just been part of an alliance with the BJP would empathize with Jinnah rather than Azad. Not because I have lost hope in the resistance of Muslims and the liberal Hindus who fortunately continue to be in majority, but I feel threatened by the history blindness and sheer stupidity of the Sangh who have captured the main institutions of the country and hold the key to the future of a quarter of humanity. Their arrogance has reached such a level that they can boast that, “the governor of J&K is carrying out BJP’s agenda” and it goes almost unnoticed.

   

While BJP has left little to imagination about its project for the country, which is a work in progress, it has shed the last fig leaf of pretense about its plans for J&K. It is simply isolating Kashmir and other Muslim majority areas to hold them under the jackboot and empower non Muslim pockets to control the Muslim territory. That is the message from Ladakh. It is following a three nation theory.

A recent meeting chaired by the governor about development projects and its official account leaves nothing unsaid. It mentions Ujh Hydel project that will irrigate north India up to Rajasthan with water from Kathua, Jammu Akhnoor Road (not Poonch road project, of which it was supposed to be a part), Jammu Ring Road, Sudh Mahadev Kishtwar Road. It does not even for political correctness mention in a meeting attended also by union minister of surface transport, the pathetic condition of road to Kashmir that is closed for about a month yet again, like always. No mention either of Vailoo tunnel that is sanctioned under Prime Minister’s program, Srinagar Ring Road or the Galander Qazigund Highway. It however leapfrogs to Z Morh and Zojilla tunnels which again have turned out to be phony. About Jammu projects it emphasizes that they would be started this month and processes would be fast tracked. The governor however, was most mercifully quoted as have ordered ‘immediate clearance of link roads’ a week after the snowfall.

This is however only the fine print of the larger plan. Ladakh’s one lakh Budhists can’t live under the same roof with 70 lakh Muslims of Kashmir, even notionally after the creation of Hill Development Council that is more empowered than the state itself. Fair enough in a highly polarized India where in ultimate analysis it is one’s religion that has come to determine not just the identity but eligibility for going to jail for divorce or seeking a political asylum unless one is a Tarek Fattah. But now Leh cannot live with its twin Kargil too. That micro planning is new to Kashmir management, to say the least. But two points arising out of it are of interest.

Does the inability of Leh Budhists to live with Muslims of Kashmir or Kargil not reflect the crux of Kashmir problem and in fact the entire minority-majority conundrum? If the highly empowered Leh residents, very good people at heart, feted by Prime Ministers as part of their national duty are not ready to live with a politically decimated Muslim population of Kashmir how could one expect the latter to find peace and security in an ocean of Hindus in which they are not even a drop. How do Muslims in India find comfort amidst a strident Hindutva if you are creating a wedge even between the two most peaceful district neighbors in the remotest corner of the country?

Second, in its stupid agenda designed by the likes of Dr Jitendra Singh, Ravinder Raina and implemented by the Raj Bhavan there is an apparently unintended fall out. That is the dismantling of walls between different sections of Muslim majority of the state. For decades the strategic community of this country created a discourse that Kashmir issue was actually the adjustment problem of a section of sunni Muslims confined rotationally to five police stations of Srinagar, pockets of North Kashmir or South Kashmir, depending on which place was on fire that day. It was a given that Shias, Gujjars, Bakarwals, Paharis fitted into the description of good Muslim and therefore Hindustanis. But four years into political predominance, BJP has helped in destroying that myth by going after every Muslim from Ghani Kohli, their own minister to the last Shia in Kargil. It has actually delivered a consolidated Muslim nation of one crore from Kargil to Kathua within the boundaries of J&K. If Muslim consolidation was unintentional, it’s a cause of worry for its architects and no efforts at creating new political parties will destroy it. But if it is planned it could be an in house Afghanistan, a necessary evil that will need to be defeated every day to consolidate the Hindu right in the country through its toady media.

 Whatever happened to his own Pakistan, but Mohammad Ali Jinnah has a reason to feel vindicated in his grave. While his philosophy is questioned by many even in his own country he must be smiling over Ladakh, Jammu, Kashmir as BJP and its representative in Raj Bhavan here pay tribute to his experience and honesty of intention with every move they make, from creating divisions to building roads. And Gandhi has a reason to die every minute whether his picture is shot at or not.  

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