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| BJP ideologue Prof Hari Om questions BJP's K policy | | Asks party to Quit Coalition | |
Open letter to Shri Amit Shah
Ji, BJP national president
Dated: April 16, 2015
Prof Hari Om,
Political Advisor to J&K BJP president
Respected Shri Amit Shah ji,
Namaskar!
1. When the BJP registered an emphatic win in the Lok Sabha elections in Jammu & Kashmir by winning three Lok Sabha seats, including the lone Ladakh seat, and obtained more than 32 per cent of the total popular votes polled, the people of the state felt highly jubilant. There were reasons for them to feel jubilant, as they were convinced that the BJP Government at the Centre would adopt for the first time a rational national policy towards Jammu and Kashmir. Shri Narendra Modi's becoming the Prime Minister of India was a right message to the belligerent Pakistan and secessionist forces in Kashmir as well as to the world as a whole. It was generally believed that the BJP Government at the helm in New Delhi will no longer tolerate anything non-sensical with regard to national security and the ongoing separatist war in Jammu and Kashmir.
2. The people of Jammu province again felt jubilant when the BJP broke all the previous records and won 25 out of 37 assembly seats from Jammu province. It was a clear mandate for the BJP and against the Congress, the NC and the PDP, all Kashmir-based and Kashmir-centric parties and all essentially militant-friendly. The mandate was more against the pro-separatist, brazenly communal, anti-Jammu and anti-Ladakh policies practiced by the Congress over the years in collaboration with either the NC or the PDP in the state.
3. I would like to mention with all authority of my study and experience of the happenings in the state since independence that people of Jammu knew it very well that voting for the BJP may not deliver power to them. But they valued rejection of hegemonic processes deployed against them more than anything else and expressed this rejection through the instrument of ballot. The BJP could have certainly won some seats in Kashmir and Ladhak had its electoral strategy been more realistic and not merely wishful. Notwithstanding the fact that the BJP could not win any seat from Kashmir and Ladakh, the victory of the BJP in the assembly elections in Jammu was a landmark and an epoch-making victory.
4. None had ever expected that the BJP would have three Lok Sabha members from Jammu and Kashmir and 25 MLAs. Fine tuning of the BJP's electoral strategy in Jammu would have pushed it across the mark of 30 seats only in the Jammu region. But the strategy adopted to win seats in Kashmir did create a negative impact not only in Ladhakh but in the Jammu province itself. However, the larger picture was that the nationalist constituency in Jammu and Kashmir proved the critics of the BJP wrong and voted en-block for BJP and for furthering nationalist agenda in the state.
5. It was on March 1 this year that the BJP formed a coalition government with the PDP. It was for the first time in the state's political history post-1947 that the BJP, which hitherto was considered a marginal political group, became part of the government. The people of Jammu province and Ladakh region felt a surge of immense hope and expected the era of marginalization, discrimination, humiliation to be finally over. However, sadly, this has not happened and the result has been widespread disappointment and disenchantment across Jammu province.
6. It was also expected that the PDP would respect the nature of the mandate, appreciate all the concerns of the BJP, take steps to eradicate subversives and forge a lasting peace in the state, evolve in consultation with the BJP policies which would protect and promote further the paramount national interests in the state, end discrimination with Jammu and Ladakh and conduct itself strictly as per rules and regulations as laid down by the Indian Constitution and the State Constitution.
7. Unfortunately, this also has not happened. What has happened is to the contrary. The day the PDP-BJP Government assumed office CM Mufti Sayeed embarrassed our Deputy Chief Minister Shri Nirmal Singh Ji by giving full credit to Pakistan and its "assets" like militants and Hurriyat Conference for the peaceful conduct of the 2014 assembly elections and large-scale participation of the people in the electoral exercise. Shri Nirmal Singh Ji was present when the Mufti addressed the press conference to give credit to Pakistan and its assets in Kashmir. The Mufti used an extremely provocative language and even sought to defame Shri Narendra Modi Ji by claiming that "he had already apprised him of the circumstances which led to the peaceful conduct of assembly elections". He didn't behave like Chief Minister of the state; he behaved as if he was the undisputed Muslim leader of South Asia.
8 Both yourself as well as the Prime Minister Sh Narendra Modi tried to assuage the hurt feelings of the people of India. "For us power is not important, for us the nation is first" was an assurance to all of us who were grappling to contest the criticism in the public domain not only with regard to the utterances of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed but also for the rationale of entering into an alliance with PDP.
9. It was hoped that the censured Mufti would reform himself. Sadly, however, it didn't happen. Contrarily, he ensured the release of Masarat Alam, a pro-Pakistan terrorist responsible for the rise of cult of stone throwing and death of about 120 persons in Kashmir in 2010. It was not an ordinary release; it was done in a highly sinister way. The Mufti first created hype and revealed that he had asked his police department to see if the "political prisoners (in this case separatists, terrorists and subversives) could be set free" and then got Alam freed. After the Prime Minister of India assured the parliament that BJP high command and the Central Government was not taken into confidence, The Mufti again chose to embarrass the BJP leadership including the Prime Minister of India by leaking out reports that the decision of release of Masarat Alam was taken during the governor's rule in the state, thus seeking to shift the whole blame on the Union Government.
10. What the Mufti did after the release of Alam in a brazen manner and the manner in which he misused the floor of the Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council and made policy statements is a long history, which I will narrate sometime later. Suffice it to inform your good-self that the Mufti repeatedly targeted the Army, advocated the withdrawal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and consistently said that Jammu and Kashmir was a political issue that needed to be resolved politically by taking on board Pakistan and its "assets" in Kashmir. He termed Pakistan and the Hurriyat stakeholders in Jammu and Kashmir, thus negating the very idea of India and suggesting that Jammu and Kashmir was still an unsettled issue. Mercifully, he would make such outrageous statements at a time when Pakistan would violate and breach the international border and Line of Control to convulse and bloody the Indian political scene in Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan-sponsored terrorists and Pakistani agents would target the soft targets and attack the army camps and police stations. And he would taunt and ridicule the nationalist constituency in the state and rest of the country and adopt the pro-militant stance to send across a message that he enjoyed unbridled legislative, executive and plenipotentiary powers in Jammu and Kashmir and that he and he alone had the authority to decide the fate of Jammu and Kashmir.
11. The truth, in short, is that the Mufti crossed many red lines after taking over as Chief Minister. However, it was on April 15 that he crossed all the lines by allowing Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Masarat Alam and thousands of their supporters to organize a pro-Pakistan rally in a sensitive place in Srinagar, where pro-Pakistan and anti-India slogans were raised and dozens of Pakistani flags hoisted. Instead of asking the police to take a stringent action against them to produce a moral effect, the Mufti made not one but several controversial statements to pander to Pakistan, Kashmiri separatists and his highly sectarian constituency in the Valley.
12. What did Mufti say and his government did in the wake of that anti-India event that had shocked and alarmed the entire nation? He shamelessly rubbed salt on the wounds of the nation and said: "Kashmir is a political issue that needs a dignified solution. The viewpoint of those 'outside the mainstream' needs to be understood. This place has been suffering for the past 30 to 40 years. But there are ways to get out of this situation. It took me two months to form the government. I had support of National Conference, Congress and BJP. My motive was not to grab the chair, but find means of ensuring peace in the region. We need to understand the viewpoint of those who are outside mainstream camp. At the same time, we need friendly ties with Pakistan as well. For ensuring peace in J&K, the SAARC can act as a bridge. My struggle was not for chair but to make J&K a constituency of peace. I want to take the people, who are outside mainstream, as also the people of all three regions, along. We have to be inclusive. I believe politics is an art of exploring possibilities and managing contradictions."
13. Not only this, the Mufti also took on the army and virtually held them responsible for the killing of militant Khalid Muzzaffar in Tral on April 14 despite the fact that the army and the state police were on the same page and were justifying the killing of Khalid. "Army need to deal cautiously with the situation in the State as it is very complex in Jammu and Kashmir. The killing of first civilian, Khalid Muzaffar, in the Peoples Democratic Party-Bharatiya Janata Party government is unfortunate," he said in Srinagar.
14. Earlier, the Mufti Government asked the army to vacate Tosh Maidan in Kashmir, Akhnoor in Jammu and now Khurbathang Plateau in Ladakh. Indeed, his intentions were not noble; his intentions were as dangerous as they were despicable.
15. Yesterday evening, the police under pressure from the BJP registered FIRs against Geelani, Alam and a few other seditionists, but this is not enough. These are just fake FIRs and the Mufti is made of a different stuff. His purposes are two: (I) To remain at the helm of affairs in the state and (II) to use his official position to subvert the Indian polity from within and outside. He just cannot be trusted. He is not only weakening the BJP in Jammu and Kashmir as he, like other Kashmiri leaders, consider it a stumbling block, but also working systematically to create the pre-1990 situation in the state to further his atrocious agenda. He has to be reined in without losing a single moment. He is creating a psychological environment of abdication by the Indian state in Jammu and Kashmir. The PDP-BJP alliance functioning, so far, has given an impression that actually some sort of solution of Jammu and Kashmir agreed upon by BJP and PDP is unfolding and that is causing a laceration of the credibility of BJP in the state as well as rest of the country.
16. To allow PDP any longer to conduct in the manner it has been doing since March 1 will be only to enable it to create a situation of extreme insecurity in Jammu. The impression that is gaining ground here is that BJP after abandoning Kashmiri Hindus has started a process of abandoning the people of Jammu as well.
17. I want to bring to your notice that it is my considered view that the Mufti is playing with dangerous tools and dangerous ideas. Allowing this type of a situation to continue will be disastrous for the national interests and the BJP itself. The BJP must snap forthwith its ties with the PDP. I want to affirm to you that this is the only way to respect the mandate which people of Jammu have given to the BJP.
I sincerely believe that your good-self and Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi Ji would make a national intervention in Jammu and Kashmir as quickly as possible and nothing would be more appropriate than that the BJP should come out of the coalition government.
With respectful regards,
I am sincerely yours'
Prof Hari Om
Shri Amit Shah ji,
BJP National President,
11-Ashoka Road, New Delhi.
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