In 1953, the Praja Parishad launched an agitation against Sheikh Abdullah’s policies. Its leaders — an alliance of landlords and business elites angered by the redistribution of their assets — called for the abrogation of Article 370, the removal of Dogra imperial laws that allowed only state subjects to purchase land and the full application of the Indian Constitution . Sheikh Abdullah used the rise of Praja Parishad to stoke communal fears in Kashmir. In one speech, he claimed the Praja Parishad was part of project to convert India “into a religious state wherein the interests of Muslims will be jeopardised.” If the people of Jammu wanted a separate Dogra state, Sheikh Abdullah said, “I would say with full authority on behalf of the Kashmiris that they would not at all mind this separation.” From 1977, the unresolved strains between Kashmir and Jammu became increasingly sharp. In order to fight off growing competition from the Jamaat-e-Islami, Sheikh Abdullah began to cast himself as a defender of the rights of Muslims. (AND ABDULLAHS TALK ABOUT SECULARISM AND CLAIM THEMSELVES AS SECULARS AND TEACH LESSONS OF SECULARISM TO OTHERS) He attacked the Jamaat’s alliance with the Janata Party “whose hands were still red with the blood of Muslims.” National Conference leaders administered oaths to their cadre on the Quran and a piece of rock salt–a symbol of Pakistan. (AND ABDULLAHS CLAIM THAT THEY ARE NATIONALISTS) Paranoia paid those who stoked it big-time: the National Conference was decimated in the Hindu-majority constituencies of Jammu, but won all 42 seats in Kashmir. (AND THIS IS NOT COMMUNAL POLITICS) When the 1983 elections came around, other politicians showed communalism could be a multi-player game. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi conducted an incendiary campaign in Jammu, built around the claim that the discrimination the region faced was because it was part of ‘Hindu India’. (CHECK INDIRA TALKING ABOUT HINDU INDIA, AND SHE WAS NOT COMMUNAL??) Across the Pir Panjal, Farooq Abdullah and his new found ally Maulvi Mohammad Farooq — secessionist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq’s father — let it be known that they were defending Kashmir’s Muslim identity. At a March 1987 rally in Srinagar, Muslim United Front candidates, clad in the white robes of the pious, declared that Islam could not survive under the authority of a secular state. (NOTE: ISLAM CAN NOT SURVIVE IN SECULAR STATE)
Posted on: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 15:11:18 +0000
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