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The praful Bibwai column

BJP stoops to a new low

Setting Jammu & Kashmir on Fire

Praful Bidwai writes from New Delhi
***The BJP's plans went awry. The victorious, now-aggressive, Manmohan Singh couldn't be convincingly depicted as "India's weakest-ever prime minister." The BJP botched up its manipulative political act, where it's supposedly unmatched. As trouble brews in its state units, the BJP will use inflammatory tactics to rescue itself.***
JAMMU and Kashmir is burning. Jammu has witnessed an intensely communal violent agitation for over 7 weeks over the cancellation of an order transferring 100 acres of forest land to Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB).
This is pitting Jammu against Kashmir, ethnic group against ethnic group and Hindus against Muslims in dangerous ways.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has politicised and exploited the agitation cynically. It imposed an economic blockade, which closed the Jammu-Srinagar highway for weeks, causing public suffering.
Jammu's intolerance is repro-. duced like a mirror-image in the
Kashmir Valley, where mainstream parties and separatists marched to Muzaffarabad with the ostensible aim of selling perishable fruit in Pakistan -- just when the blockade was lifted. More than 20 people were killed in highhanded police action.
The twin agitations threaten J&K s unity and multi-cultural, multireligious character in unprecedented ways. In less than 2 months, the BJP has driven an emotional and political wedge between Jammu and Kashmir - something that pro-Pakistan jehadis couldn't achieve in the nearly 20 years of the azadi movement
The present ferment Is traceable to the state government's decision to establish the SASB, messing gratuitously with spontaneous Hindu-Muslim joint organisation of the pilgrimage.
When the government illegally
transferred land to the SASB, protests broke out. The Valley protestors gave a communal colour to the transfer, prompting its cancellation -- and counter-protests in Jammu organised by the Shri Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti (SASS).
The twin agitations have deepened communal polarisation, and strengthened both Hurrityat and Hindutva.
The Centre failed to open the Jammu-Srinagar highway until it was too late. Its attempt to defuse the situation through an 18-member all-party committee hasn't made headway.
The SASS wants the land re transferred to the SASB and Governor NN Vohra removed. Such demands are vindictive or devoid
of political rationality. This only shows that the BJP wants to politically milk the Jammu agitation.
The SASS is basically a Sangh Parivar enterprise. Its three top leaders have RSS backgrounds and are linked with the J&K National Front, which demands the state's trifurcation: Jammu and Kashmir as separate states, and Ladakh a UnionTerritory.
The demand is despicably communal. The RSS backed it in 2001. In the 2002 Assembly elections, it supported the Jammu State Morcha, which demands statehood for Jammu.
Any division of Jammu and Kashmir along religious lines is a recipe for the separation of the Kashmir Valley from India. It will freeze two opposing identities -- a "Muslim Kashmir," and a "Hindu
Jammu."
Nothing could better help the Valley's pro-Pakistan anti-secular separatists 1 ike Syed Ali Shah Gilani.
The demand for trifurcating J&K will play straight into the hands of Pakistani hardliners. They want to erase whatever progress has been made in informal talks seeking a solution to the Kashmir problem without redrawing boundaries, and crave Kashmir's accession to Pakistan --as "the unfinished agendas of Partition."
Why has the BJP embarked on tills course? It is desperate to rescue its sagging fortunes any which way. It's agitating the Amarnath issue nationally with shopworn cliches like "injustice to Hindus."
The BJP even denies that there ever was an economic blockade in J&K! It calls this "a myth" and con-
tends that the Jammu agitation is entirely peaceful.
Jammu's protestors, who increasingly look like Hindutva's storm-troopers in Gujarat-2002, indulged in stone and acid throwing attacks on truck drivers.
According to the far-from-hostile state government, Jammu has recently witnessed 10,513 protests and 359 "serious incidents of violence," in which 28 government buildings, 15 police vehicles and 118 private vehicles were damaged.
Eighty cases of communal violence were registered, in which 20 persons were injured and 72 Gu jjar homes were burnt.
As many as 117 police personnel and 78 civilians were injured in the Jammu violence. Schools, colleges, government offices and hospitals were paralysed.
Grievances in Jammu, many of them legitimate, took this regrettably violent expression thanks to communalism's baneful effect.
The BJP was pivotal to this violence. Ils leaders have gone back to crude, super-sectarian Hindutva.
Mr. LK. Advani just can't wait to become prime minister. His speeches have become shrill, and
his body language has changed. This is no longer the man to inherit the "moderate" Vajpayee legacy. This is the Advani of the Rathyatras -- warlike, spewing communal venom, and leaving a trail of blood.
Mr. Advani will now stoop to any level to collect political browniepoints. The other day, he focused on the UPA government's "weakness" in the face of terrorism. Then, it was the India-US nuclear deal, the culmination of a long process the BJP itself initiated.
Now, he's drumming up Hindu-chauvinist hysteria, laying claim to the 100 acres on the specious ground that the Hindus have the first claim to land anywhere in India by virtue of their numerical majority, and hence primacy.
This proposition is egregiously, if classically, anti-secular.
Why is the BJP so desperate? Barely one month ago. after a series of Assembly wins, it had primed itself up into believing that its victory was imminent in the next Lok Sabha. It even started announcing candidates.
The BJP was checkmated during the confidence vote, and Mr. Advani was eclipsed by Ms.
Mayawati's dramatic emergence as an alternative.
The BJP's plans went awry. The victorious, now-aggressive, Manmohan Singh couldn't be convincingly depicted as "India's * weakest-ever prime minister." The BJP botched up its manipulative political act, where it's supposedly unmatched.
It wanted to create a Bofors out of the cash-for-votes "sting." But after the CNN-IBN tapes, that looks like collusive but ineffective "entrapment."
The highest number of MPs defying their party whip during the confidence vote were from the BJP. Thanks to its MPs' involvement in the "cash-for-questions" scam, human trafficking. and the latest defiance, the BJP has lost 17 of its original 137 Lok Sabha seats.
The National Democratic Alliance once had 24 members. Now it's down to five.
As trouble brews in its state units, the BJP will use inflammatory tactics to rescue itself. The public will pay the price -- unless it sends the party packing. Praful Bdwa is an orr.nent Indian coiucuvsl