After UP, J&K has come into focus for bulldozing operations. There is a weird story behind the grabbing of state lands and erecting residential or commercial structures on them. It is not only a matter of illegal land grab and its weird aftermath; it is a schematic intrigue forged by the top ruling or non-ruling valley-based political leadership supported discreetly by the state bureaucracy with sinister objectives. Proverbially speaking, it is the tip of the iceberg and the time demands that its bottom should be exposed.
Land grabbing or encroachment of state land is not unprecedented wrongdoing nor is it limited to J&K only. But what we are trying to unravel is a long-drawn game plan aimed at subverting secularism and democracy to perpetuate the precedence of Muslim majoritarianism in J&K which may ultimately end up in the emergence of a theocratic state in theory and practice.
The Machiavellian enterprise of transferring thousands of canals of state land —barren or grassland— nearby the capital cities, to the members of one particular community against a cost next to nothing, with covert or overt involvement of the devious bureaucracy, is a definitive exposé of the Kashmir leadership aiming at converting Kashmir into an Islamic theocratic State.
Knowing that democracy means numbers as long as our sham democracy is concerned, it is obvious that the concentration of a religion-fixated community wants to attain the first pre-requisite of political empowerment through the instrument of majority vote.
Two objectives were behind the dubious Roshni Act. Amusingly, the essence of the Roshni Act was injected into the socio-political construct of J&K by both NC and PDP. Working in tandem, both agreed to make the Congress-ruled administration its cat’s paw. Thus, Ghulam Nabi Azad of Congress, expecting the two mainstream parties of Kashmir to lend support to his government, agreed to carry the cross. After going through some revisions, the notorious Roshni Act was passed by the legislative assembly. This is how an anti-national move that would strike at the roots of democratic secular dispensation in the State was legalized.
Armed with a strong instrument of legislative approval, the government unhesitatingly began to unfold its objective of working out the preliminaries of a theocracy to replace the fragile secularist dispensation. The modality for executing the plan was what is known in Islamic jurisprudence as “takiya” or concealment. How the plan of Islamization would be implemented, who would be the prime actors, what was the time frame, etc., all related details were kept as highly guarded secrets. Secrecy is the hallmark of Islamic jurisprudence and that is why democracy does not suit the Islamic mindset. It has not succeeded anywhere in the Islamic world.
The concealment theory referred to above, unfolded first in 1990, when the NC leadership resigned from the government. It was a masterstroke to legitimize all the perfidy that followed the outspread of insurgency in Kashmir Valley. To disown any responsibility, the NC top leader took a speedy flight to London to be out of the picture as the sponsored terrorists unleashed mayhem, killing and chaos that ultimately forced the hapless Hindu minority to flee the land of their ancestors. The leader who had been voted to power through a democratic process, played golf in London while his voters saw the sword of death and devastation hanging on their heads. The plan of ethnic cleansing of Kashmir was in full progress.
The planning was foolproof. After the NC leader hid in London, his ministers were no more in power, but still ran to Jammu, grabbed government quarters, and established liaison with the insurgent commanders to guide and advise how the ethnic cleansing and Islamization of Kashmir had to be pursued. At the same time, they impressed upon the Commissioner and others in the Jammu administration to provide them with full security.
Farooq knew that after he resigned, Governor’s rule would be imposed in J&K. That happened to the satisfaction of NC as well as PDP and other dissenting groups because now they had the buffer between them and the administration in New Delhi. They brought slander against the governor saying it was on his behest that the Hindus departed from the valley. The entire Muslim population of Kashmir orchestrated the same narrative which continues down to the present day. In doing so, they do not mean to malign Governor, the late Jagmohan. They meant to shift the onus to the buffer between them and New Delhi.
In this way, the first step of denuding the Valley of the presence of Hindus and paving the path for Islamization became a success. Since the Congress or BJP government in New Delhi did not react to the heinous crime of subjecting the valley to ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Hindus, the operators of the Islamization agenda got emboldened and embarked on the second stage of solidifying the theocratic character of Kashmir.
The second vicious step was of building up concentrated Islamic locales in the peripheries of Jammu city. The objective is to equalize or even upset the demographic complexion of the city. Muslim-dominated localities like Sidhra, By Pass, Sabzi Mandi, Sanjwan, Gujar Nagar, etc., were either built or reinforced. Mostly, members of the affluent sections of the valley majority came to inhabit these locales where the government immediately provided civic facilities to make their stay in new locales comfortable and hassle-free.
The third and crucial step was to plan the establishment of vast inhabitation in Jammu of a good number of the valley’s majority community members plus the affluent Muslims from the far-flung areas like Bhaderwah, Doda, Kishtwar, Rajouri, Poonch, Surankot, Ramnagar etc. To achieve this goal, the valley-based leadership drew up the collective plan of grabbing thousands of canals of state land in the proximity of Jammu city and planting the Muslim population there. Avoiding direct responsibility, they let the Azad government (Congress) carry the cross. The Roshni Act was passed which opened the way for bringing up the tail-end of the masterplan.
Two important guiding outlines were strictly observed in distributing the loot called Roshni Act. One was that no non-Muslim would be allowed to claim or bid for land under Roshni Act, and secondly, the land would be given away to the bidders (only Muslims) against almost no price. Thus, land worth billions of rupees were given away for peanuts. It was indirectly a gift for those Muslims who had opted for the Islamization of J&K by agreeing to inhabit the new sites.
Who then were the recipients of the largesse of the Kashmir government? Chief Ministers or their wards, former or sitting ministers, MLAs, top Muslim bureaucrats, political leaders of all hues, industrialists, business magnates, political bigwigs, mafia runners, influential segments of administrative departments and affluent Muslims from any part of the State.
They grabbed large chunks of land almost free of cost, and established localities as detailed below:
1.Khatinka Talab- 90% Muslim
2. Gujjar Nagar 90–95% Muslim
3. Bathinda-80–85% Muslim
4.Sunjawan-90% Muslim
5. Sidhra-80–90% Muslim
6. Karbala-80% (Mostly Shia Muslims)
7. New Plot-50–60% (Mostly Shia)
8. Malik Market-70–80% Muslim
9. Channa Rama-65–75% Muslim
10.Raika (Near Sidra) 95–100% Muslim
11. Agoda (Near Sidra) – 75% Muslim
12. Baxalta- 79–85% Muslim
13.Prem Nagar (Near Gujjar Nagar) 50–60% Muslim
14.Shahabad Colony (Near Baghe Bahu)-85% Muslim
15. Bashir Gujjar Basti (Near Blachernae) – 90–99% Muslim
It is in these localities — where revenue records show the lands belong to the state and were illegally grabbed by the occupants — the bulldozer has to come to play its role.
The question is this: Will the bulldozer be able to visit all these localities or not? The final take from this sordid story is that the Kashmir political rulers established nearly two dozen Muslim-dominated localities in Jammu but it is not prepared to allow the displaced Pandits to return and resettle in Kashmir. That makes us believe we are living in a sham of secular democracy which in practice is the Islamized state of J&K.