{"id":2727,"date":"2016-06-27T09:09:23","date_gmt":"2016-06-27T03:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/?p=2727"},"modified":"2016-06-27T09:11:30","modified_gmt":"2016-06-27T03:41:30","slug":"understanding-minority-status-of-jk-hindus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/editors-take\/understanding-minority-status-of-jk-hindus\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding Minority Status of J&K Hindus"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like>

Punchline <\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

Minority Status Demand? \u00a0<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

Z.\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>G. Muhammad<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thank you the PDP-BJP combine for your soiled machinations. These have enabled people to understand your intents and gird their loins to offset your moves targeted at disempowering them into submission. First, you talked about the abrogation of the Article 370 of the Indian Constitution followed by initiating hideous moves for changing the fundamental character of the State.<\/p>\n

For decades, the Article 370 had got drowned in the discourses invented by the National Conference. The party had made people believe that it was a bridge between India and Jammu and Kashmir. So strong was the sway of the National Conference discourse that even the resistance leadership saw it as biblical truth and talking about this article they believed was subscribing to the New Delhi\u2019s Kashmir narrative? But, for your intentions of abrogating this article you made a host of our contemporary historians and political analysts to demystify the \u2018dominant discourse\u2019 about it. That the Article 370 was not incorporated in the Indian Constitution because of bonhomie between Sheikh Abdullah and Jawaharlal Nehru. But, in recognition of the fact that people of Jammu and Kashmir were yet to decide their future according to the UN resolution of 1948 and 1949. The revisiting of the Article enabled the historians and writers to put the proviso, \u2018temporary and transitional\u2019 suffixed to the Article in the right context that \u201cthe constitutional relations between Kashmir and India continue to be temporary and transactional.\u201d The debates in the Constituent Assembly of India and speeches of \u00a0\u00a0N. Gopalaswami Ayyanger and subsequently by Jawaharlal Nehru stand as testimonies that the said Article stands as a guarantee in Indian constitution to New Delhi\u2019s commitment to the international community for abiding by the UN resolutions and International Agreements on Kashmir.<\/p>\n

Since its birth in March 2015, the PDP-BJP combine has been working overtime for politically disempowering the overwhelming majority and reducing it into minority. It has been \u00a0initiating one after another move: Starting with issuing of the State Subject Certificates in contravention of the laid down norms it initiated moves for constructing permanent shelters for \u201cshelterless\u201d state subjects and \u201cnon-state subjects\u201d- intriguingly over a million non-state subject labourers are working in Kashmir. \u00a0Creating ghettos for migrant KPs, building Sanik Colonies for retired army personal and couple of others. All these moves ostensibly initiated for changing the demography of the State have long and short term goals. The long term goal is engineering the demographic changes with the objective as and when an impartial plebiscite is conducted; India wins hands down. And the short term goal is engaging leadership and intelligentsia in these dominant discourses to relegate the people\u2019s narrative to the back seat.<\/p>\n

In keeping with its policy of conjuring up controversial discourse one a day for covering up its failures on Thursday, June 22, 2016, yet another discourse \u2018according to minority status to Hindus in the state\u2019 was added on the floor of Jammu and Kashmir to already long list. The demand voiced by two Jammu members from the ruling alliance did not spark much of debate in \u201cthe House\u201d except response from a cabinet minister. In this column, it is not my concern if the \u201cConstitution of Jammu and Kashmir\u201d empowers the \u201cState government\u201d for granting the minority status to the Hindus of the State or it fall within the dominion of Government of India.\u00a0 It is not equally subject of this column if the minority status is accorded to the Hindus of the state what benefits and privileges they will be entitled to than the disempowered majority community more particularly those living in various districts of Jammu province. Whatsoever has been the response of the government to their demand the two legislators have said nothing but the truth. The Hindus are a minority in the state. And when one considers the entire \u00a0state of Jammu and Kashmir as it stood on August 14, 1947, the Hindus are a minority in the Jammu province. The Constitution of India, the United Nations Security Council Resolution and the Constitution of Pakistan recognise the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir as one Unit.<\/p>\n

This demand has once again brought to the fore the fundamental cause of the birth of the Kashmir Dispute, internationally recognised as a nuclear flashpoint in the South Asia. In fact, it was the non-recognition of the population profile of the State by the Indian National Congress leadership and Maharaja Hari Singh that gave birth to the Kashmir Dispute. To understand this, it will be important to look at the \u00a0demographic profile of the state. The population ratio in the Kashmir province between Muslims and Hindus has not substantially shown any drift; it varied between 98.4 percent Muslims and 1.6 percent Hindus in 1941 to in some later censuses 96.6 percent Muslims and 3.4 percent Hindus and others. In Jammu province, out the total population of 19.81 lakhs, the population of Muslims was 12.15 lakhs, Hindus and others 7.65 lakhs. So \u00a0Muslims in Jammu province constituted\u00a0 \u00a061.33 percent, Hindus and others \u00a038.66 percent.<\/p>\n

Had the Indian National Congress leadership accepted the fact that Hindus in Jammu and Kashmir were in a minority and lived up to the terms and condition as envisaged in the Partition Plan of the British India- there would have been no Kashmir Dispute? Implying the concept of \u2018Paramountcy\u2019 Nehru coerced the Maharaja of Kashmir to join India but did not recognise the independence of Hyderabad on the same principle. As pointed out by Lamb, \u201cWhat is important in the present context is that the state not only had clear ethnic and communal divide, but also a political fault line within the State to further undermine the value of any doctrine which empowered a single Ruler to decide on his own the future of all his subjects.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, the government should recognize the demographic realties of the State without working overtime to change these.<\/p>\n

Published in Greater Kashmir on 27-6-16<\/p>\n<\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Punchline
\nMinority Status Demand? \u00a0
\nZ.\u00a0G. Muhammad
\n 
\nThank you the PDP-BJP combine for your soiled machinations. These have enabled people to understand your intents and gird their loins to offset your moves targeted at disempowering them into submission. First, you talked about the abrogation of the Article 370 of the Indian Constitution followed by initiating hideous moves for changing the fundamental character of the State.
\nFor decades, the Article 370 had got drowned in the discourses invented by the National Conference. The party had made people believe that it was a bridge between India and Jammu and Kashmir. So strong was the sway of the National Conference discourse that even the resistance leadership saw it as biblical truth and talking about this article they believed was subscribing to the New Delhi\u2019s Kashmir narrative? But, for your intentions of abrogating this article you made a host of our contemporary historians and political analysts to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[227,225,226,204],"class_list":["post-2727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editors-take","tag-changing-demography-of-the-state","tag-hindu-minority","tag-pdp-bjp-alliance","tag-z-g-muhamma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2727"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2727"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2730,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2727\/revisions\/2730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}