Now that the extremely provocative act of flag hoisting by BJP at Lal Chowk has been triumphantly aborted, the undying pretentious spirit in me of analysing the past week’s political events with a ‘I have an opinion that you should know’ attitude makes me take time off a busy weekend and write this hopefully interesting and short post. It is very ironical that it was on Republic Day – a day that marks the adoption of our constitution – that a failure to enforce the rule of law took the hoisting of national flag as its victim. If I as a citizen am guaranteed by the constitution to hoist the flag on any inch of the land that belongs to this nation, arresting me for trying to exert my constitutional right is basically punishing me for doing something constitutional. Perhaps you might argue that this goes with the nature of the times when law breakers go unpunished. But the issue here moved beyond the vital issue of exercising what you are legally entitled to as a citizen and showed the country as weak and one that easily yields to people who have no faith in our constitution.
The Jammu Kashmir and central government feared that the ‘fragile’ peace process would be harmed by the separatists if our national flag was hoisted at Lal Chowk. Now what good is this farcical peace if it cant stand even a simple non-violent act of flag hoisting? What good is the peace ensured by the governments if it has to live at the separatists’ mercy every single day? Is it not the government duty to enforce the law of the land? If one is not free to hoist the tricolour in a a part of India, then how credibly and with how much conviction can you say that that part of India actually is an ‘integral part of India’? Where is the leadership of the kind that feared none and put Khalistan to rest? Where is the leadership that neutralised insurgency in the North east at one point in time? Where is the leadership that dared the enemy and split it into two forever? It makes you even more sadder that the kind of leadership I talked about in the previous sentences emerged from the party that today runs a central government that stood completely behind Omar Abdullah when separatists went on a rampage a few months back as well as when he pusillanimously surrendered to separatists and ensured that tricolour was not hoisted at Lal Chowk even if that meant arresting leaders of Parliamentary opposition. In effect what Omar Abduallah did was an insult to the idea of India by completely disrespecting the flag as well parliamentary democracy.
What angers me even more is people supporting the steps taken by the Omar Abdullah government as well as by the centre in whole drama while simultaneously berating the BJP for promoting communal and divisive agenda. When did the national flag hoisting become communal and divisive? When did asking to rein in the separatists to ensure constitutional rights become communal and divisive? Even if the BJP tried to further its agenda of abolition of article 370, is that divisive when you consider that the abolition of that article would mean Kashmir becoming integrated completely with the rest of the country? Doesn’t inclusive, non-divisive politics mean treating everyone equally? By that logic shouldn’t Kashmir be treated like the rest of the states to ensure that Kashmiris won’t feel alienated? Dear self-proclaimed inclusive people, would you kindly answer my question?
