New Delhi: The gangrape and murder of an eight-year-old tribal Muslim girl in the Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir has exposed a festering divide between the two regions of the state. A deep sense of mistrust has been brought to the fore through the polarised reactions to the incident and the linking of the police investigation to a perceived hegemony of Kashmir over Jammu.
Voices in Hindu majority Jammu have seen the accusation on Hindu men of rape and murder inside a temple as an “attack on Hindus and Jammu”. Several citizens of the Jammu region have dismissed the J&K police crime branch’s investigation as “biased”, “unfair” and “unduly influenced by police officers from the Valley” working on directions from the “Peoples Democratic Party’s separatist centric leadership”. These sentiments were initially supported and fanned by the ministers in the Mehbooba Mufti government belonging to the BJP who marched with the national flag demanding the release of the accused, a CBI inquiry into the incident and accusing the police of indiscriminate arrests. The march was also supported by local Congress leaders.
The march prompted Mehbooba Mufti to take to Twitter and say, “Appalled by the marches & protests in defence of the recently apprehended rapist in Kathua. Also horrified by their use of our national flag in these demonstrations, this is nothing short of desecration. The accused has been arrested & the law will follow its course.”
A chief minister had to take to a social media platform to rebuke ministers in her own government who were accusing the police under the J&K government of unfairly targeting people of a particular religion and from one part of the state. The two ministers in question, Lal Singh and Chander Prakash Ganga, were made to resign by the BJP when the nation outraged, belatedly, in April.
However, the ideological and political differences between the alliance partners, the PDP and the BJP, once again stand exposed through the case, with each pandering to very different political constituencies in two divided regions of the state.
The alliance
After the Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections of 2014 produced a fractured verdict, an alliance between the unlikeliest of partners – the BJP and the PDP – two parties which had diametrically opposite stands on most key issues, was cemented after two months of deliberations. One of the key reasons, outlined by the late Mufti Mohammed Syed, the leader of the PDP at the time, to come together with the BJP, was to bridge the growing divide between the Jammu and Kashmir regions of the troubled state.
In the 2014 polls, the Jammu region had voted overwhelmingly for the BJP with the saffron party winning 25 of the 37 seats in the Hindu majority part of the state. It did not win a single seat in the Kashmir Valley or the Ladakh region. The PDP, on the other hand, won 25 of the 46 seats in the Valley and three seats in the Muslim dominated areas of the Jammu region.
Before joining hands with the BJP, Mufti had mulled forming the government with the support of the National Conference and the Congress party, who had also won most of their seats in the valley and Ladakh. But, that would have meant disrespecting the mandate of the people of Jammu, Mufti said at the time. Whenever questions were asked about the unusual alliance, Mufti went on to highlight the importance of bringing the Jammu and Kashmir regions closer.
Even his daughter and chief minister of J&K since Mufti’s death in 2016, Mehbooba Mufti, has, on several occasions, spoken of the alliance as being an “opportunity to bridge the gap between the people of Jammu and Kashmir”.
A deepening divide
“Bringing Jammu and Kashmir closer” was one of the oft-repeated stated objectives of the alliance. However, has the alliance, in its three years in power, contributed to the opposite?
“Yes,” is the answer according to Siddiq Wahid, a political analyst and the former vice-chancellor of the Islamic University of Science and Technology in Kashmir. Wahid argues that the alliance confirmed the communal divide between the two regions. “Jammu voted a certain way and Kashmir voted a certain way. The alliance was a dishonest one to begin with. It was never going to work. It has only deepened fissures. It confirmed the communal divide after a polarised election,” Wahid said.
While campaigning before the 2014 assembly elections in J&K, the BJP and the PDP campaigned on very different, even opposite, planks. The PDP had campaigned in the valley on the grounds that a vote for them would mean keeping the BJP out of power in the state. While, Narendra Modi, in his characteristic curt manner had campaigned against the musical chairs between the PDP and the National Conference, “Kabhi baap-betay ki sarkar, kabhi baap-beti ki sarkar”.
According to Wahid, the differences between the two parties were never bridged and were visible from the very beginning. “They made this convenient argument that ideological opposites must meet and then the cobbling together of a dishonest, as it turns out, document called the ‘Agenda of Alliance’. The fault lines of the slogan and the document were available for all to see from day one,” Wahid said.
During the three years that the alliance has been in power, leaders from both parties have complained that decisions and statements of the leadership of both parties have adverse consequences for their vastly different constituencies in Jammu and the Kashmir Valley. In 2016, senior PDP leader and MP from Srinagar, Tariq Hamid Qarra, resigned from the party and parliament. He accused the PDP of “facilitating the designs of the RSS” and “surrendering to the brutal policies of the BJP at the Centre”.
Leaders of the BJP, too, have complained of PDP ministers in the state government taking decisions unilaterally on ‘sensitive issues’ which could prove ‘disastrous for the BJP in the Jammu region’. Writing in the Indian Express, senior journalist from the Valley, Muzamil Jaleel, noted, “On the administrative front too, despite the PDP’s claim of a ‘free hand’, there is an unwritten agreement — the PDP takes decisions related to the Valley while the BJP’s writ runs in Jammu.”
The two regions of the state, Jammu and the Valley, have seen deep-rooted divisions due to historical factors. The alliance between the PDP and the BJP has aggravated the divisions, as each party has pandered to its own constituency, with the PDP focussing on the Muslim majority Kashmir valley and the BJP on the Hindu majority Jammu region.
According to Rekha Chowdhary, former professor at the political science department of Jammu University, due to their coming together, both the BJP and the PDP have been under tremendous pressure to prove to their respective constituencies that they haven’t given up on their agenda.
“The PDP in any case was seen as having entered ‘an unholy alliance’ in Kashmir. In Jammu also there developed a feeling that BJP was not in a position to assert itself and was playing a second-fiddle role in the government. As a result, both have wanted to show their respective constituencies that they are not compromising on their agenda and ideology in any way,” said Chowdhary.
“And yes, the alliance has ended up worsening the divide instead of bridging it,” she added.
Building on Wahid’s point of the alliance actually confirming the communal divide between the two regions, Chowdhary argues that post-2014, J&K has seen a very different kind of politics with the Congress and BJP competing in the Hindu majority Jammu region and the National Conference and the PDP competing in the Muslim majority Kashmir Valley.
“The result is a deeper polarisation in the two regions,” Chowdhary said.
With three years still remaining before the current legislative assembly in J&K ends its term, and with both parties determined to last the full term, the polarisation, in coming days, may get worse.
