Early Times Report
jammu, Feb 28: Out-of-job NC president Farooq Abdullah has again started taking recourse to double-speak to win over the "alienated" Kashmiri Muslim constituency by demanding autonomy (read a step short of independence from India) and trying to strike a chord with the nationalist constituency in Jammu province.
Within a short span of just four days, he made two attempts, one each in Srinagar and Jammu, to win over the people of the two highly diverse regions of Jammu and Kashmir Valley.
On February 24, he demanded autonomy from India, saying a semi-independent status for J&K would restore peace in Kashmir. His son Omar Abdullah, who is also out-of-job, also demanded greater autonomy from India the same day and at the same venue (Srinagar) in his father's presence. Both father and son duo made a desperate attempt to woo the Kashmiri constituency - an attempt that is unlikely to help the declining NC. People of Kashmir have understood the Abdullahs and they, it is widely believed in the Valley, will not turn towards them.
And in Jammu three days later (February 27), Farooq Abdullah pretended that he was a patriot and against the seditious students of Jawaharlal Nehru University. "What was the need to drag him (Afzal Guru) in the protest (on JNU campus on February 9). They have committed a big mistake. This only discredited the institution. What was the fun of doing this? Even if you (JNU students) wanted to discuss Afzal Guru you should have done so quietly," he said while interacting with the media persons in Jammu on the sidelines of a function. It was, undoubtedly, an attempt of frustrated and defeated Kashmiri leader to mislead and hoodwink the people of Jammu.
The people of Jammu, who have been fighting for the national cause in the State and making supreme sacrifices for it since decades, are politically very conscious. They are not fools. They have been defending and promoting the national cause in the State despite the fact that the authorities in New Delhi and national-level political parties, including what is now being termed as "utterly undependable" and "intellectually and ideological bankrupt BJP, have never appreciated the Jammu's sacrifices and spectacular contributions, as also despite the fact that they always gave a preferential and differential treatment to Kashmir, which has been looting, plundering, exploiting and blackmailing India and working for the disintegration of the country since October 1947 itself.
Since the people of Jammu are politically very conscious, they know who speaks what and at which place and they also know the nature of Kashmiri leaders and the meaning of what the Kashmiri leaders of all hues, including Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah, say. That's the reason they have always voted for those parties which claimed that they represented the national interest as, for example, the BJP. It is different story that the BJP turned out to be worse than the Congress, which was founded in London in 1884 to kill the then ongoing freedom struggle in India. Every political party and every political leader has cheated Jammu to please and appease Kashmir like what happened in J&K after March 1, 2015.
The people Jammu are as they are. They are no longer prepared to believe any political leader and any political party, including the BJP. Farooq Abdullah must remember that if the people of Jammu could hate the BJP, how could they trust the parties like the NC, which speaks differently at different places. Gone are their days. |
