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EDITORIAL
RANBIR MANHAS
Treading Sheikh’s Beaten Track!
Mehbooba
Mufti has started following the footsteps of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah at
least by speaking differently at different places. Sheikh Sahib would
speak one thing in Delhi and Jammu and exactly opposite to it in Kashmir
and Muslim majority areas of Jammu where he would use Kashmiri so that
those not understanding Kashmiri could not understand anything. Mehbooba
Mufti too, has used Kashmiri during her three days tour of the Muslim
majority areas of Doda, because she also wanted to hide something from
the sparsely present non Muslims including some party leaders in the
public meetings. In Udhampur, however she spoke in Urdu, but the text of
the speech was different. In Doda she spoke about demilitarization and
self rule, in Udhampur the thrust was the economic development.
When PDP came into being, its agenda was to
give good governance, which has now been changed to self governance- an
idea borrowed from General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan who himself has
trampled under his military shoes all the ethics of self rule in his own
country. The meanings of self rule may be different for PDP leaders, but
for a common man self rule means ‘government by the people, by the people
and for the people’. In no dictionary its meanings are different than
that. Jammu and Kashmir is governed by the State Assembly duly elected by
the local electorate. The only odd man is the Governor who is generally
an outsider. He can also be
replaced by any local visionary to make Jammu and Kashmir a fully self
governed State. The Central government hardly interferes in the internal
matters here except that it protects life and property of the people and
provides truck loads of funds for the development of the State. The
Supreme Court of India and Election Commission of India too have a role
to play and if their interference is stopped, a party that comes in
power for the first time will manipulate the elections as also the law in
its favour thereby trampling the democratic as well as legal rights of
others for ever as has happened in Iraq and has been happening in Cuba
and Pakistan. However, if PDP wants the same self rule for Kashmir as
Gen. Musharraf has been doing in Pakistan, well in that case, I am afraid
PDP will find itself alone in the sprawling fields of Kashmir.
PDP’s another borrowed slogan is demilitarization.
Mehbooba wants to hand over the control of the State to the State Police
despite knowing that the corrupt, inefficient and weak organization like
J&K Police cannot match the ISI backed militants. Demilitarization of
the disturbed State would amount to giving the State to Musharraf in a
platter. Another message that PDP wants to give to the youth is that in
case of withdrawal of Indian forces, it would be they who will be
recruited in their place thereby opening up of employment avenues for
them. By showing such dreams, she wants to attract younger generation
towards PDP and make it a party powerful enough to do bargaining, like
one that Sheikh Sahib did in 1975. The proposition is again a delusion
because if it really matures, it would be the militants who would be
recruited and not the common youth. A drama of mass surrender would be
enacted and they will be given general amnesty and then recruited in the
State Police. Such misleading slogans have already taken a huge toll of
human life in the State. Being the new generation leader, Mehbooba must
think innovative. Beating the already beaten track will create more
confusion and further add to the existing woes of the people whom she
claims to be leading to the garden path.
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