Students lives in Peril
The Jammu and Kashmir Government literally made a mountain of a mole hill on the 8th of February when it called in military with tanks and armoured cars, clamped a curfew of 72 hours and ordered arrest of all opposition leaders including the venerable Pandit Prem Nath Dogra, the aged President of the Praja Parishad, following a procession of the students of local schools and colleges which was five times lathi-charged and thrice fired upon by the police before it dispersed.
That is was a purely a students affair with which no political party except perhaps the Communists had anything to do has since become fully clear. The Secretary of the students Action committee, Mr yashpal, has categorically refuted the suggestion that their agitation had any political nature. The students demonstrated simply in sympathy with their fellow students of the local Gandhi Memorial College, who had been on hunger strike since the 29th of January to get the heavy fines imposed on their leaders for making a patriotic protest against the hoisting of the party flag of the national Conference alongside with the national tricolor on the occasion of the physical display in the college on the 15th of January.
The Praja Parishad leaders had nothing to do with these students. Some of them did mediate between the authorities and the students on the request of the deputy commissioner of Jammu. But their efforts w ere sabotaged by Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed who demanded complete surrender from students.
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That the Abdullah Government has exploited the situation to suppress its political apponents is clear from the fact that even the Government’s yesmen in the city of Jammu refused to sign a statement which Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed wanted to issue in their name. The threat that he would destroy the people of Jammu lock, stock and barrel and hand over their homeland to Pakistan which he hurled on a meeting of selected citizens of Jammu reveals the mind of the National Conference leaders who all happen to be half communist and half communalist.
The cause of this cold war, which now and then becomes hot also, waged by the Kashmir Government against the people of Jammu, particularly the Praja Parishad, is opposition of the people of Jammu, to their designs of making Jammu and Kashmir a semi-independent State, virtually free of all control from Bharat. They therefore look upon the Praja Parishad as a thorn in their side and all who sympathise with its view point are treated by them as their enemies. That explains the ban on the entry of “Pratap” and “Milap” the well known dailies of Delhi and Jullundur into the State.
