Where have all the secularists gone? Even if you grant that Kashmiri students of the Srinagar-based National Institute of Technology had the right to celebrate, yes, celebrate, the defeat of India at the hands of the West Indies in the T20 World Cup semi-final the other day, would you deny other students the right to protest and chant Jai to India?
In their zeal to blame the Modi Sarkar for everything and anything, these critics were frothing at the mouth with uncontrollable rage a few days back at the entry of the police in the JNU campus even though they were seeking aazadi from India and hailing Afzal Guru’s martyrdom.
Would they not say a word in condemnation at the brutal manner in which the police beat up students whose only fault seemed to be that they chanted ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ in response to ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ slogans raised by the Kashmiri students. Video pictures of the wanton police action leave no doubt as to where their sympathies lay. It is tragic that secularists privilege blind hostility towards the BJP over the need to protect the larger national interest.
When the entire nation needs to close ranks and condemn in unison, the brazen display of traitorous behavior by a section of the people, a viscerally anti-BJP section within the media and outside insists on providing them emotional succour by inevitably discovering some good in their anti-national conduct.
Given that students will be students, wasn’t it provocation enough for non-Kashmiris that some of the NIT students burst crackers and did a celebratory jig in the hostel while raising anti-India and pro-Pakistan slogans? Yes, we know where patience and tolerance of such betrayal has led us in Kashmir. Follies committed by an image-obsessed post-Partition government have cost India immensely.
India has bled in Kashmir and in the north-east due to Nehru’s multiple blunders. Righting those wrongs is proving to be an insurmountable task but secularists refuse to appreciate that in the absence of unity and determination normalcy can never be restored in Kashmir. Point-scoring against the Modi Sarkar should be secondary to the need to deny any quarter to the pro-Pakistani thugs who have fattened themselves on generous hand-outs from the Indian taxpayers.
If the illegally occupied Kashmir under Pakistan today has a minuscule Kashmiri minority it is because Pakistan put its national interest above Kashmiri sub-nationalism. A romanticised vision of Kashmir led Nehru and his legatees to persist with the most pernici0us decision to bar people from the rest of the country to settle in Kashmir.
We are conscious that the self-styled defenders of liberalism-secularism are bound to take offence at the above suggestion. But, if after nearly seven decades, during which we have poured in unlimited money and lost tens of thousands of men, including in the three inconclusive wars, there is no light at the end of the tunnel then a drastic course correction alone might be the way out.
When the gangrene sets in a part of the body, the only solution that remains to be tried is amputation. Therefore, let us try and be bold and amputate the link with a wasteful past which has bound us to such harmful policies as Article 370. We know we cannot undo the mischief constitutionally but de facto we can try and attain the same outcome, can’t we? It was a weak government which had crumbled before the fraudulent protests a few years ago over the erection of temporary shelters for the Amarnath pilgrims. Such pusillanimity has all along informed our policy towards the pro-Pakistani Kashmiris.
Unfortunately, even Modi has allowed the unremitting secularist abuse to curb his initiative in Kashmir and elsewhere. We need a more assertive, more purposeful Modi who can make a difference in Kashmir. The cavil at the dispatch of a central team to investigate the NIT trouble is ill-informed, given that the local police had behaved in a provocative manner.
Besides, didn’t the J and K Government send its own team to the JNU to ensure the well-being of Kashmiri students when the JNU campus was in turmoil? In any case, the presence of a central team would help instill a sense of confidence in the non-Kashmiri students who were so mercilessly beaten by the local police. Yes, the NIT trouble is a test for the PDP-BJP Government but Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti has taken the oath to defend the Constitution, not to see it being crushed under the feet of those who raise pro-Pakistan slogans. Such elements must be mercilessly weeded out. Muscular nationalism alone can tame the anti-India elements.
