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Militancy in Jammu and Kashmir: The Uncovered Face THE young author of this painstakingly researched little book is the chip off the old block. The veteran expert on Kashmir and well-known author, Balraj Puri, is his father who was awarded Padma Vibhushan in 2005. Balraj is not only an academic but also an activist. Author of several books with a bearing on Kashmir, among his bones of contention with the Sher-e-Kashmir, Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, was that the state’s accession to India would be reinforced by the establishment and functioning of national parties in Jammu and Kashmir. At that time, the Sheikh’s National Conference was the only party in the state. The Indian National Congress in India had fraternal relations with it. Thus, the bonds between the state and the rest of India were limited to the constitutional arrangement of the Instrument of Accession signed by the former Maharaja Hari Singh. The Sheikh, however, viewed it differently. He was at the zenith of his power, the only head of a provincial administration to be accorded the status of Premier. His word was law in Kashmir.
A towering personality, Sheikh Abdullah was "unique" primarily because he was Jawaharlal Nehru’s personal friend. Further he had led to success the Kashmiris’ struggle against the Dogra rule for a representative government. Nehru highly valued the Sheikh’s endorsement of the state’s accession to India, on top of the maharajah’s formal action. So, he went along with the Sheikh’s demand for virtual abdication of Maharajah Harisingh in favour of Yuvraj Karan Singh who was crowned Sadr-i- Riyasat or president of the kingdom. Nehru also had signed on the dotted line for inclusion of a new provision in the Indian Constitution (Article 370) to fortify the state’s autonomy. In fact, Jammu and Kashmir had its own constitution, an unusual instance of a "state within state". However, it became an eyesore for the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), the predecessor of today’s Bharatiya Janata Party. Its founder, stalwart Dr Shyama Prosad Mukerjee, personally led an agitation against the arrangement demanding abrogation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and the scrapping of Article 370. The BJS subscribed the concept of a unitary state in India. It had been the demand of the BJP for several years. Mukerjee was arrested and detained. Mukerjee’s premature death in detention became a cause celebre plunging the state in turmoil following an agitation for the Sheikh’s removal. Luv Puri uses throughout the book the expression militant for terrorist. Lest it should jar on some ears, he explains it is a common parlance in Jammu and Kashmir. (I, for one, would think that when the government and semi-official news agencies in India called terrorists ‘militants’, they soft-pedalled the gravity of the threat from them. Perhaps when it comes to the crunch, the difference is between half-a-dozen and six!) Among the author’s conclusions is that "militancy started in Jammu much later than in the Kashmir Valley, because among other others, the anti-Dogra orientation of Sheikh Abdullah’s struggle repelled the people". Further, "as long as (it) comprised of the youth from the Kashmir Valley and was inspired by the ideology of Kashmiri nationalism, it did not have much appeal in the ethnically different region of Jammu. But when the youth from the Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir and the province of Punjab in Pakistan joined the movement, it changed from a Kashmiri to a militant movement. The response to it in Kashmir was a decline in appeal but in Jammu, which was ethnically closer to the new militants, the appeal increased." Thus, Doda district was affected by militancy as early as in 1993. At that time, Kistwar and Ramban were parts of a composite Doda district. Kistwar became a separate district in 2006. It is also significant that Puri does not use expressions like PoK or Pakistan occupied Kashmir, which is the Indian pejorative for what Pakistan calls "Azad Kashmir". The result is an aid to the objectivity of the writing. The National Human Rights Commission had some years ago commissioned senior editors V.N. Narayanan of The Tribune and B.G. Verghese of Hindustan Times to conduct investigation into charges of excesses by security forces. Their findings cleared the atmosphere. Unfortunately, Puri points out, the authorities have been lately neglecting the crucial human rights dimension of the fight against militancy. According to him, the Jammu office of the State Human Rights Commission remains locked most of the time due to lack of manpower. The book has also sketch maps of different regions of the state and photographs, some by the versatile young author — even if not always distinct.
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The
tragedy was that the Sheikh was not a democrat. He thought the power
transfer from the maharaja was to him as president of the National
Conference and was a veritable licence for him to act like the maharaja
before the state’s accession to India. In this context, the Centre had
given the Sheikh and his party a carte blanche. Balraj further rubbed
the Sheikh the wrong way by advocating decentralisation of
administration in the state, with Jammu and Ladakh enjoying autonomy.