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| Kashmir unites against Hapless Refugees from Pakistan and PoK | | | Hari Om | 9/13/2015 8:10:34 PM |
| Jammu city, which is the winter capital of Jammu and Kash
mir State, is known the world over as city of temples. Not many outside the State know that it is also called the city of newspapers and city of refugees. Jammu district houses more than 1.5 million refugees and all are non-Muslims. More than half of them have been living in Jammu city and its peripheries since decades now. They include refugees from Pakistan, Pakistan-occupied-Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) and Kashmir Valley - all victims of fanaticism and regressive politics. While thousands of oppressed, suppressed and persecuted non-Muslim families from Pakistan and PoJK migrated to Jammu in 1947 in the wake of the communal partition of India, more than three lakh Kashmiri Hindus quit their land of Vitasta (Jhelum) in early 1990 to save their lives, religion and culture leaving behind their properties, including business establishments, orchards and big agricultural tracts - leave aside hundreds of government positions which they held in the restive Valley. All these refugees have become part and parcel of the Jammu society with the original inhabitants, liberal but brave Dogras, always at their back and call overlooking the fact that the presence of so-many refugees in the district has adversely impacted their economic life. Indeed, Jammu is an oasis of brotherhood as well as the backbone of the Indian nation in Jammu and Kashmir State. Notwithstanding the fact that the local population of Jammu has all along stood solidly behind this displaced population, it continues to face various problems, some of which are very serious, as the successive Kashmiri-dominated and Valley-centric governments in the State did nothing whatsoever during all these years to mitigate their sufferings. They have never been considered part and parcel of the State and the result has been frustration, desperation, discontent and resentment on an unprecedented scale in all the refugee camps and the colonies where they have been putting up. They have no faith in the State Government and they consistently look towards New Delhi hoping that it would surely discharge its obligation and come to their rescue one day.However, it is the over one lakh refugees from Pakistan, mostly Dalits, whose life has become a veritable hell on earth. They are, unlike the refugees from PoJK and Kashmir, not State Subjects. Since they are non-State Subjects despite their 68-year-long stay in Jammu, they are not entitled to any of the citizenship rights which are available to the State Subjects under the Jammu and Kashmir Constitution of 1957.
The State Constitution is based on Article 370 and Article 35-A of the Indian Constitution. Article 370 was adopted on October 19, 1949 much to the chagrin of the integrationists in the State and it - apart from allowing the solitary State of Jammu and Kashmir to have a separate constitution and separate flag - granted extraordinary legislative, executive and financial powers to the State Government. Article 35-A was incorporated in the Indian Constitution in 1954 without taking the Parliament into confidence or without invoking Article 368 of the Indian Constitution and was made applicable only to the State of Jammu and Kashmir. Called the Constitution (Application to Jammu and Kashmir) Order 1954, it was enforced on May 14 the same year in letter and spirit. It empowered the Jammu and Kashmir Government to bar the non-State Subjects from exercising any of the citizenship rights, including the right to immovable property in the State, right to the State Government jobs, right to vote in the Assembly and local bodies' elections, right to bank loan, right to higher and technical education and so on. It was this Article that dashed all the hopes of the refugees from Pakistan that they would obtain citizenship rights in the State and lead a dignified life as Indian nationals in Jammu and Kashmir. Between 1947 and June 2015, these abandoned refugees held several demonstrations and organised long marches and moved heaven and earth umpteen times to convince the authorities of their claim to the citizenship rights in the State, but with no result. The parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party (JKNPP) did on occasions express their solidarity with the refugee cause, but nothing came out of their interventions. Even the 1987 Supreme Court intervention made on behalf of the The reason: The Kashmiri ruling elite under the baneful influence of vested interests in the Valley remained firm on its stand that the non-State Subjects could not be granted citizenship rights under the Jammu and Kashmir Constitution and that they would be well advised to settle in other parts of the country. The upshot of their whole argument all along was that the grant of citizenship rights to the refugees from Pakistan would not only erode the State's special status but would also change the Muslim-majority character of Jammu and Kashmir. Indeed, a spurious argument considering the fact that these refugees became part of the Jammu society in 1947 itself. The worst aspect of the whole situation was the indifferent attitude of New Delhi towards them. It always toed the Kashmiri line and upheld their pernicious view that the grant of citizenship rights to the refugees would further alienate the Kashmiri Muslims from India and provoke widespread protests in the Valley. It was in July this year that these refugees saw a ray of hope. The RSS think-tank, Jammu and Kashmir Study Centre (JKSC), approached the Supreme Court that month against Article 35-A and urged it to declare the Article null and void, as it had no sanction of the Parliament. The Supreme Court heard the plea and issued notices to the Union Government and the State Government asking them why Article 35-A should not be scrapped. It was this action on the part of the Supreme Court that has brought the so-called mainstream Kashmiri leaders, separatists, Kashmiri civil society groups, Kashmiri opinion leaders, Kashmiri commentators and the entire Kashmiri press on one platform. The People's democratic Party (PDP), the main opposition National Conference (NC), all the Kashmir-based Congress leaders, all the Kashmiri separatists and all those who matter in the Valley have in one voice condemned the RSS and charged it with hatching a conspiracy against Kashmir. All of them have resolved to fight out the critics of Article 35-A and declared that they would not allow their move to fructify. They would defeat the move that is calculated to bring not only the refugees from Pakistan but all the non-State Subjects across the nation at par with the State Subjects have been their resolve. On September 2, independent MLA from Langate (Kashmir) Engineer Rashid even went to extent of submitting a resolution to the office of the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly seeking "protection of Article 35-A" and appealing to the PDP and the NC to adopt it in the upcoming session of the State Legislature so that the move of the JKSC was defeated. All this has again upset the refugees from Pakistan. They have expressed the view that the JKSC would not flinch and take the matter to its logical end. Its case is very strong and what it needs is unflinching support of the Union Home Minister and Union Law Minister, as they are required to represent the New Delhi's view on Article 35-A.
Courtesy: www.niticentral.com |
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