BJP's way: Keeping Kashmir, but losing the Kashmiris

One reason things fell apart is that BJP didn't evangelise the idea adequately to its ranks, and more importantly its intellectual/ideological agenda-setters. This coalition was expected to be statesmanly peace-seeking rather than a hypocritical pursuit of power because two ideologically adversarial forces with a nationalist core came together to reunite what an election had divided, ushering in the equivalent of the two-nation theory.

While Prime Minister Modi has taken a big risk with the alliance, the contradiction between his party ranks' ideology and his big-picture politics has set him back. You can see it every evening as the BJP's prime-time warriors descend on television studios, justifying security forces' actions, without a word of sympathy, even stupid old pity, for the Kashmiris who obviously get what 'they asked for.' Or even faking an expression of confidence in their ally.

It's a bizarre way to help your own coalition partner and a most morbid way of declaring open season on a section of 'our own people.'

The repeated emphasis on our own people is deliberate. At some point all of our ultra-nationalist, 'Kashmir hamara hai, saare ka saara hai' chest-thumpers need to ask themselves if the passion Kashmir evokes in their hearts is about its land, a blood feud with Pakistan, or also its people?

Is it only about its kind and its 'loyal' (Hindu and Buddhist) sections and the Muslims can go to Pakistan if they so wish?

If this is your view, you are fully echoing what the Pakistanis say non-stop: That Kashmir is a part of the unfinished agenda of Partition. They want the land and some people (Muslims), we also want the land and the rest of the people.

The British taught us divide and rule. We are practising divide and lose.

Almost 97 per cent of our Muslims live in the mainland. They have never made common cause with Kashmiris, who they see as a really pampered enfant terrible. Even ideologues of the new Sunni right, notably Zakir Naik, have been extremely cautious on Kashmir. This has helped the government keep the issue confined to the Valley.

The army is a truly secular institution and even if there are excesses, you won't hear a soldier, senior or junior, say anything communally loaded or offensive. It is the one institution the insecure minorities, particularly the Muslims, trust with their lives during riots.

There is a problem now with the rise of a popular view that sees Kashmir through the prism of the larger, chronic Hindu-Muslim tensions.

confuzzled dude wrote:

One reason things fell apart is that BJP didn't evangelise the idea adequately to its ranks, and more importantly its intellectual/ideological agenda-setters. This coalition was expected to be statesmanly peace-seeking rather than a hypocritical pursuit of power because two ideologically adversarial forces with a nationalist core came together to reunite what an election had divided, ushering in the equivalent of the two-nation theory.

While Prime Minister Modi has taken a big risk with the alliance, the contradiction between his party ranks' ideology and his big-picture politics has set him back. You can see it every evening as the BJP's prime-time warriors descend on television studios, justifying security forces' actions, without a word of sympathy, even stupid old pity, for the Kashmiris who obviously get what 'they asked for.' Or even faking an expression of confidence in their ally.

It's a bizarre way to help your own coalition partner and a most morbid way of declaring open season on a section of 'our own people.'

The repeated emphasis on our own people is deliberate. At some point all of our ultra-nationalist, 'Kashmir hamara hai, saare ka saara hai' chest-thumpers need to ask themselves if the passion Kashmir evokes in their hearts is about its land, a blood feud with Pakistan, or also its people?

Is it only about its kind and its 'loyal' (Hindu and Buddhist) sections and the Muslims can go to Pakistan if they so wish?

If this is your view, you are fully echoing what the Pakistanis say non-stop: That Kashmir is a part of the unfinished agenda of Partition. They want the land and some people (Muslims), we also want the land and the rest of the people.

The British taught us divide and rule. We are practising divide and lose.

Almost 97 per cent of our Muslims live in the mainland. They have never made common cause with Kashmiris, who they see as a really pampered enfant terrible. Even ideologues of the new Sunni right, notably Zakir Naik, have been extremely cautious on Kashmir. This has helped the government keep the issue confined to the Valley.

The army is a truly secular institution and even if there are excesses, you won't hear a soldier, senior or junior, say anything communally loaded or offensive. It is the one institution the insecure minorities, particularly the Muslims, trust with their lives during riots.

There is a problem now with the rise of a popular view that sees Kashmir through the prism of the larger, chronic Hindu-Muslim tensions.

http://www.rediff.com/news/column/keeping-kashmir-but-losing-the-kashmiris/20160730.htm

BJP & terrorists, from ideology standpoint, birds of a feather. People that don't agree with their point of view are anti-nationals, kafirs.