Irrespective of claims and conspiracies by Abdullahs, Mr P Chidambaram can rest assured that Jammu & Kashmir will remain an “integral part’’ of India
Sant Kumar Sharma
The former Union Home Minister, Mr P Chidambaram, can rest assured that Jammu & Kashmir will continue to be an “integral part’’ of India as stated in the Preamble. He needs to be given this assurance in the context of his ill-advised comments about J&K made some days ago.
He has been already condemned for his statement by the Union Information & Broadcasting Minister, Mr M Venkiah Naidu. Mr Chidambaram had said that he had a “sinking feeling’’ that India has nearly lost Kashmir because New Delhi used brute force to quell dissent there during 2016 uprising triggered by July 8 killing of militant commander Burhan Wani.
Mr Chidambaram said he feared the situation would worsen if the Centre did not take up course correction. He was referring to “course correction’’ like the one adopted by the Cabinet Committee on security in 2010. This was a reference to the appointment of three Interlocutors following, what is termed as, summer unrest in common parlance now.
He claimed that after that “course correction’’, the graph of violence had rapidly declined, but it has witnessed a sudden spike now. “The statement of Chief of Army Staff Bipin Rawat that anyone who interfered with defence operations would be treated as anti-national was the last straw,” Mr Chidambaram said.
Incidentally, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) II had the group of Interlocutors to prepare a report in one year. The report borrows very heavily, and appears copied, from the “State Autonomy Committee (SAC)’’ report. The SAC report was submitted by the National Conference (NC) over 15 years ago. It was rejected by the Union government of the day.
It (Interlocutors’ Report) was meant to be a bail-out package for the National Conference leader Omar Abdullah. He was then heading a NC-Congress coalition government in the state in 2010. Ironically, the Congress at the Centre did nothing other than consigning the report to the dustbin.
It is no wonder that around the same time, the NC patriarch, Dr Farooq Abdullah, also made some startling remarks about terrorists operating in J&K. He said the stone-pelters and others of their ilk were boldly “sacrificing’’ their lives for “azadi’’. They were neither fighting for ministerial posts nor for being legislators. Their goal was azadi for Kashmir.
A cartoonist in Kashmir responded to Dr Abdullah’s statement in his own caustic way by drawing a cartoon strip showing Farooq with his son Omar Abdullah. The younger Abdullah, apparently expressing his confusion, poses a question to his father: Are we fighting for autonomy or azadi? Pat comes the reply from the Abdullah senior: Kursi (chair).
It would be funny if it were not dead in earnest, showing Dr Abdullah in his true colours, and playing dirty politics. He was given a rejoinder by Dr Virender Gupta, a spokesman of the Jammu and Kashmir unit of BJP, also. Mr Gupta mocked him by saying that it was about time Dr Abdullah left politics, and picked up gun. It was about time he provided the young separatists and terrorists a direction by leading them.
Dr Abdullah’s statement was interpreted by some Kashmir-based newspapers and commentators as provoking. Provoking the youth to indulge in mayhem, confront troops and get killed with an eye on the forthcoming by-election to the Srinagar Lok Sabha seat.
Back to Mr Chidambaram again. To recall the concluding paragraph of his article in a daily newspaper published on February 26 (Sunday), he wrote: Today, no Indian university can escape the charge of mediocrity.
Further, he says: It is a miracle that hundreds of students are still not able to acquire the rudimentary knowledge that, combined with their native intelligence and penchant for hard work, will earn them a place in a reputed foreign university that will lead to a promising career.
He concludes: It is unfortunate but true that the best Indian student discovers his/her best not because of the current university system but despite the broken system. Here is an area crying for reform.
Mr Chidambaram has to be thanked for identifying an area in which it is very crucial for the country to do better. Infinitely better actually if we are to make sustained progress. We know that development of human resource/s, on which the edifice of higher education system rests, is a long and time-consuming process.
At one place in the article, he writes: Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) faces an existential threat because its founding ideas are the diametric opposite of the founding ideas of the RSS-BJP dispensation.
The next few lines make mention of Kanhaiya Kumar, someone who became (in-)famous after February 9, 2016, demonstrations in the JNU. At a demonstration organised against the hanging of Afzal Guru, convicted of being involved in an attack on Indian Parliament by terrorists.
Mr Chidambaram sidesteps the fact that a Congress government, of which he was a leading light, was in power when Afzal Guru was hanged. At the JNU demonstration (a cultural event on papers) last year, anti-national slogans were raised. What is the “existential dilemma’’ of the JNU the writer is alluding to? Is he lamenting the fact that why such a thing did not happen on February 9 this year?
He mentions the events of last week of February 2017 at Ramjas College around students Umar Khalid and Sehla Rashid. And the fracas between protesting Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and Leftist students. His reverence for one faction (the unions affiliated to left parties) and contempt for the other is touching.
He writes: An invitation to a student leader (Mr Umar Khalid) by another college (Ramjas College) led to an unprovoked attack on students by self-appointed commissars of national interest (the ABVP), with the police watching the mayhem.
He laments the booking of Kanhaiya Kumar on charges of sedition though there is not a “shred of evidence’’ for invoking that colonial-era law. The law dealing with sedition which he terms derisively as “that colonial-era law’’ could have gone out of law books had his government worked towards doing so. Also, since he is a very brilliant lawyer, he will do well to remember that he is talking about a sub judice case. In the court trials, it is the judges who decide on evidence or “not a shred of evidence’’ as he puts it, not lawyers.
All that is very well but it will do well to think of answers to some very pertinent questions raised by Mr Chidambaram. First and foremost, did everything start going wrong after May 26, 2014, when the Prime Minister, Mr Narendra Modi, took the oath of office? The ecosystem of the colleges and universities, places of higher learning all, was prepared over decades. When Mr Chidambaram was very much a part of the decision-making at the very highest level.
A perusal of his political caree, tells us that he became a Central minister in September 1985, no less than 32 years ago approximately. He has remarked that all Indian universities suffer from mediocrity. Let us for a moment agree with him and ask ourselves. What was his contribution to the creation of the ecosystem in universities as it exists now?
Preparing an atmosphere in universities like JNU where sloganeering for breaking up the country comes easy to Left-affiliated student leaders? Or even in Delhi University, where some teachers (in the name of academic freedom) can think of no other persons but Sehla Rashid and Omar Khalid as “intellectuals’’? Persons having been accused of preaching sedition. Worthy of being invited as foremost student researchers to give gian to students on freedom of speech and related issues.
The ecosystem in our institutions of higher education, poisoned, needs to be brought on rails again. Where free questioning is encouraged, but some values other than sloganeering about breaking the nation are instilled. This is an area in which the left-leaning Mr Chidambaram failed in his three decades of his public life to contribute. There is nothing to indicate that he ever did anything (when he could have while in power himself) to correct the manner in which these institutions were run.
Let him not write homilies now about this domain and let the government of the day do what it can. His innings as a minister are over, till next elections at least, and he knows his scores are not very flattering.
(The writer is J&K based senior
journalist)
Comments