Better luck next time!
It’s important to qualify what comes next. Yesterday I said the following to 7,000 people when my friend sent me a link: “Rahul Gandhi insists corruption is bad, murder is sad, etc. Asks for 10 years to stop stating the obvious and start doing something about it.” I’m not a UPA fan. However, in the case of the flag hoisting by the opposition this year…
No one died because Arun Jaitley and/or Sushma Swaraj wanted to show the BJP as a strong nationalistic party. That’s a win for India. The primary argument of the Omar Abdullah government was that only months ago over a hundred people died in the Valley because of perceived callousness of the Indian government. They foresaw that 2,000 of the BJP’s youth wing meeting a similar number of separatists in a public square would result in casualties, not only on Republic Day but also for weeks and months later.
These casualties would not only be in the ranks of the separatists, who are no loss to India but also among security forces. The opposition does not get to decide when we send our police and army to die. It’s simple really.
Another apprehension is the perceived communal nature of the act. The government rarely brought up the religion card in the weeks that led up to the abortive tiranga yatra. It was, in fact, alleged supporters of the BJP who incessantly showcased this as a divisive religious issue. These people insisted that Islam was inalienable to the problem in Kashmir. That Islam needed to reform etc., Seeing an enemy in a faith of over a billion people when the separatists number less than a million…in the mere thousands if some are to be believed.
Several of these people avowedly see no problem in alleging that “Jai Shri Ram” is a patriotic slogan. Secular nations need to relentlessly enforce a separation between religion and the republic. The American military does not march under the cross and the armies of Turkey do not call their wars a jihad. Ram is a Hindu God. Ram is my God. Ram is, however, not a citizen of the republic, he is much more to the faithful like myself, but a fable to many others who also live and die by the flag. One of the great things about Hinduism is that I can state this without it being counted as heresy.
So when these guys with their narrow definitions go to Kashmir shouting “Jai Shri Ram” thinking it’s clearly patriotic or saying that Islam is the real problem not the fraction of the fraction of Kashmir (a state with the population of Mumbai) while carrying the flag that represents all of us it is a divisive act.
Does our writ not run in Kashmir? Well, there was a flag being hoisted a few km away. Having said that, successive governments of the Congress have lied to us saying we control 3 times the land of Kashmir we ever have. The BJP-led NDA continued this lie. Kashmir is not Khalistan. We could hold a vote, but, that might not work in our favour and move our border a 100 km closer to heavily populated areas. We could simply shell the bastards into submission, but do we need to kill thousands of those we proclaim to be citizens, when our economy could eventually find jobs for most of the disgruntled youth, and age would kill most of the die-hard separatist leaders?
The BJP chose to do none of these things differently when they were in power. This is a ploy, a play for the emotions of the masses. Unfortunately for them, it was not in the Congress’ interest for this charade to play out at this time.
