By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter
Srinagar: Following its fourth visit to Jammu and Kashmir, the Concerned Citizens’ Group (CCG) has raised apprehensions over the religious divide in the state that has clearly been deepened in recent years as communalism has taken deep roots along with a host of other issues in Kashmir.
The latest issue that has flagged the rise in communalism in Jammu is the brutal rape and murder of an 8-year-old Muslim Bakkarwal girl in Kathua allegedly by a Hindu, says the report issued by the group.
The Group comprised of Yashwant Sinha (former Finance and External Affairs Minister), Air Vice Marshal (Retd) Kapil Kak, Sushobha Barve (Executive Secretary of Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation) and Bharat Bhushan (Journalist).
According to the findings of the group, the communal divide in Jammu is being promoted by politically ambitious leaders who are intent on tearing apart the rich and diverse social fabric of the region for their short-term political benefits.
“Not only is Jammu getting polarised communally, even the State Legislative Assembly has been polarised after the terrorist attack on the Sunjuwan army camp,” the report says.
“Increasingly the perception is that there is a ‘Hindu Jammu’ ruled by the BJP and then there is ‘Muslim Kashmir’ ruled by the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) – i.e. there is a communal division of labour between the two political allies which govern the state.
Many believe that the PDP-BJP government thrives on communal divisions by promoting polarising voices to represent the sentiment in Jammu and in the Valley. This divides and alienates people. This was described as ‘soft separatism’ by a public intellectual.”
The group also visited some of the affected areas in the cross-border firing between India and Pakistan on the Line of Control (LoC) and the International Border (IB) in Jammu and Kashmir, and also held discussions with prominent opinion makers in Jammu and in Srinagar.
Cross-border shelling has devastated lives
The CCG was shocked to see the devastation caused by the increased frequency and intensity of cross-border shelling.
“While the resilience of the border villagers who are collateral victims of the increased tension between the two countries is remarkable, it was shocking to find that no long-term strategies were being devised to alleviate their suffering. Even the short-term measures seemed ad-hoc and patch-work at best,” the group said.
The inhabitants of the border villages, the group says, deserve to live in peace and security like their compatriots elsewhere in the country. However, they seem to have become itinerant migrants in their own country – evacuating their homes periodically to live in makeshift camps with their livelihoods disturbed by the deaths of their family members, losing limbs and getting wounded, their homes and hearths destroyed by the shelling, their cattle killed and maimed, and their children’s education disrupted, the report found.
Kashmir situation deteriorating
Within the Kashmir Valley, the group found, despite the success of the security forces in eliminating top militant leaders, the recruitment to the militant ranks was on the rise with even highly educated youngsters choosing to pick up the gun.
The CCG members also found out that the hopes of the Kashmiris in Prime Minister Narendra Modi seemed to have been dashed.
“They had thought that he would carry forward the initiatives of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. However, now they felt that he has brought nothing but despair and disappointment in Kashmir,” reads the report.
“The locals have internalised the fact that while violence in Kashmir will wax and wane, politically nothing will happen to address their concerns.”
The group has called for the restart of dialogue between India and Pakistan and an immediate end to the shelling on the LoC.