Jammu is Kashmir

Assuming charge of the National Conference (NC)-Congress coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir following their INDIA alliance’s win in the Jammu and Kashmir assembly polls, Omar Abdullah faces a knotty but critical challenge. The challenge is that of tackling the aspirations of Jammu’s Hindu heartland.

The region, a bastion of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), only elected BJP legislators and faces the prospect of being on the wrong side of the corridors of power. Since the BJP could not get its man to the governing seat, Abdullah had to balance the concerns of this politically important constituency while setting a narrative of inclusivity and equity that avoids the polarising dichotomy oft made at best by the BJP.

He did so by including Satish Sharma, an independent legislator elected from Chamb assembly constituency of Jammu district, among the five ministers who were administered Oath of Office and Secrecy as part of his cabinet.

The road ahead is tough, but it is here that Abdullah has a chance to chart a different agenda – an agenda that should appeal not only to Jammu’s Hindu heartland but also respect the aspirations of traditionally marginalised regions such as the Chenab Valley and Pir Panjal while also reaching out to the Kashmiri Pandit community.

The Hindu heartland of Jammu for all these years has become synonymous with BJP dominance. The party found fertile ground for its rhetoric of Hindu nationalism in this region, where development and identity-based politics, interwoven with issues of security, resonated deep within the population. However, after electing only BJP legislators, the fear of being sidelined looms large. Abdullah would do well to be cautious here. Let him not alienate the very important constituency but also ensure that he is different from the model of governance that the BJP seeks to preside over. Unlike BJP, which has enormously relied on majoritarianism across India to consolidate its vote bank, Abdullah must take the moral high ground.

He can tap into the Hindu heartland - not with empty words, but with a true expansive intent to win over their economic, social, and political anxieties. This might potentially do a better job in mending fences by rejecting the exclusionary politics which BJP has often used in mobilising its own base.

But that alone will not be enough, and only symbolic at best. Development in the Jammu’s Hindu heartland cannot be set against the needs of other areas, and past grievances should not be drowned by new goodwill gestures. Abdullah’s government can take one step forward toward inclusive economic policies for all regions so that Jammu’s sizable Hindu population feels not forgotten or singled out for special treatment at others’ expense. Perhaps the most injurious narrative that Abdullah needs to work much harder to break is the communal rhetoric routinely trotted out in political speeches in Jammu and Kashmir. A classic example was the plea for a “Hindu chief minister” or a “Dogra chief minister,” one that dominated governance as an identity-based battle.

Such appeals are usually phrased in the rhetoric of “regional pride,” but are intensely exclusionary and based on the politics of division. He should outrightly refuse the communitarian and even racist undertones and instead voice support for governance, which does not make subservience to the supremacy of one community over the other. This moment for him as a Kashmiri gives him the opportunity to be the emblem of the very ethos of the culture of Kashmir – erected on pluralism, tolerance, and the spirit of Kashmiriyat.

Outreach to both Hindus and Dogras would give Abdullah a chance to make an unequivocal statement that governance needs to be about competence, fairness, and development, and not identity. It asks for leadership that not only rejects the poisonous communal politics of “us versus them” but projects a sense of belonging to all communities.

It’s the enormous heart that Kashmiris have, and it can wake up in the form of building trust bridges under Abdullah’s governance, having dialogue with each and every section of society – and conversations around mutual respect and understanding, acknowledgement of the fears of the Hindu heartland but not letting it feed, and standing firm against forces that would seek to divide Jammu and Kashmir on communal lines.

Outreach to Jammu’s Hindu heartland is important, but Abdullah also needs to reach out to the long history of marginalisation of regions like Chenab Valley and Pir Panjal. Both these regions have suffered political and institutional neglect in the past at the cost of both Jammu's Hindu heartland as well as Kashmir valley. More often than not they have been too introverted and given a backstage in the apparatuses of state functioning in Jammu and Kashmir.

For decades these regions remained victims of economic deprivation, lack of infrastructural development, and limited political representation. Abdullah’s government needs to ensure that people from these regions are brought out in public and voiced. No doubt, Chenab Valley and Pir Panjal have considerably contributed towards the cultural as well as the economic landscape of the region, their voices, however, remain peripheral. Maybe Abdullah’s biggest task would be to make policies that uplift these regions and bring them into the mainstream of Jammu and Kashmir’s developmental framework.

Investments in infrastructure, education, and healthcare in such regions will definitely send the signal of a breakthrough from the past when certain regions were politically sidelined due to religious or ethnic characteristics of the population.

This political hegemony of the Hindu heartland of Jammu needs to be balanced with proper representation and distribution of resources for these relatively neglected areas. It is not only a political necessity but a moral imperative in addressing the expectations of the people from these areas. The government led by Abdullah needs to prove that this government stands for the whole of Jammu and Kashmir, not for the oft-noise-making-only regions.

An outreach to the Kashmiri Pandit community should be an important part of Abdullah’s governance. Displaced from their homeland for decades now, their alienation has only grown with time. Adding to their miseries, the community has gotten assimilated across different cultures and is losing the exclusive identity it was known for.

Unfortunately, this discourse about their coming back has been hijacked by self-proclaimed Kashmiri Pandit activists seeking a communal ecosystem portraying every Kashmiri Muslim as an extremist and the entire community as abetting their displacement. It has only made it tougher for both the parties to get reconciled.

Abdullah has to move beyond the divisive narratives and reach out to the Kashmiri Pandit community. He must tell them it pains and hurts them but simultaneously dismantle the dangerous rhetoric that tries to demonise an entire community. Abdullah needs to tell the people unequivocally that this is not a matter of a physical resettlement in Kashmir but rebuilding those ties of trust and coexistence that once existed in the Valley. However, this outreach should be genuine. Reconciliation cannot be an overnight work, but honest dialogue can initiate the healing process. The creation of arenas for conversation, discovery of real fears and concerns of both Kashmiri Pandits and Muslims, should start the slow yet necessary healings under Abdullah.

It is here that the high ground matters most, not in settling political scores but in goodness, patience, and understanding becoming a recipe for lasting peace. This is an opportunity for Abdullah to be a change agent in the political paradigm of Jammu and Kashmir, at a time when the region has slipped into communal and regional divisions. He can offer an alternative vision of inclusiveness without divisive politics.

Outreach to the Hindu heartland of Jammu, reconciling aspirations of Chenab Valley and Pir Panjal, and outreach to Kashmiri Pandits could set a new style of leadership in the region. The politics of exclusion must yield to the politics of inclusion. The politics of settling scores must cede to the politics of compassion. And the politics of division must yield to the politics of unity. And in all these, Abdullah from his acquaintance with the corridors of power can now change. The question is whether he will rise to the occasion and lead Jammu and Kashmir into a new era of equity, justice, and hope for all its people. After all Jammu is Kashmir’s, as is Kashmir Jammu's