Demand for Union Territory in Ladakh

EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, July 10: The Trans-Himalayan Ladakh region’s premier political organization, Ladakh Union Territory Front (LUTF), has been consistently reiterating its demand for Union Territory status for the cold-desert which remains cut off from rest of the world for several months a year. LUTF organizes massive public rallies at regular intervals to press its demand.

Reflecting on their demand, the LUTF leaders say that though they “welcome the ongoing initiative of the Union Government for resolution of the Kashmir problem”, the people of Ladakh, who have suffered immensely due to “at least three wars between India and Pakistan”, will not allow their strategic region to become “a theatre of action with consequent sufferings for its inhabitants.”

Each one of them bemoans what he/she calls the “failure of the Central and State Governments to engage the LUTF in the ongoing process for the resolution of Kashmir problem” and reiterates loudly and unequivocally the “united stand of the people that nothing short of the UT status for Ladakh will be acceptable as the solution (to) the Kashmir problem.” LUTF leaders in unison demand the “Government of India to keep in focus this popular demand of Ladakh while exploring a solution”, which is “just, equitable and reflective of the aspirations of all regions of Jammu and Kashmir.”

What the LUTF leaders say is what the people of Jammu province and the internally-displaced Kashmiri Hindus and other patriotic forces in the state believe in and have been demanding for decades. Thus, there is a broad consensus among the people of Jammu and Ladakh and a number of religious and ethnic minorities in the State, that only that solution would be acceptable to them that is just and secular and that integrates them fully into India. To be more precise, these categories of people, who constitute more than 78 percent of the State’s population and inhabit more than 89 percent of its land area, and who have been suffering from the worst form of discrimination since 1947, are for an independent dispensation under the Indian Constitution.

The fact of the matter is that these categories of people in the State abhor the idea of New Delhi linking their fate with the Valley-based Kashmiri leaders whose demands are patently communal, and whose ultimate agenda is separation of Kashmir from India. Those who know something about Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh, post-1947, will vouch for this hard reality at once; acknowledge they do not see eye to eye with the vindictive, discriminatory, unaccommodating and arrogant Kashmiri Sunni leadership; and recommend division of the State into four separate political entities – one each for the people of Jammu province, people of Ladakh, displaced Kashmiri Hindus, and Kashmiri Muslims, especially Kashmiri-speaking Sunnis.

(The Shiite Muslims in Kashmir, barring a few, do not subscribe to the separatist ideology being promoted by Kashmiri Sunnis. They, like the people of Jammu, Ladakh, and other religious and ethnic minorities, also constitute a persecuted and discriminated against social segment. They, unlike the Kashmiri Sunnis, derive their inspiration from Iran.)

Objective and dispassionate Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh-watchers would vouch for the fact that it is the Kashmir-based Sunni leaders, both the so-called mainstream and the separatists, who are squarely responsible for the prevailing discontent in areas other than the one inhabited by the Kashmiri-speaking Sunnis (read Kashmir Valley proper, and not Kashmir province as a whole). They would say that it is the communal approach of the Kashmiri Sunni leadership to the issues confronting the State that has forced the patriotic forces and grossly discriminated against and persecuted communities to raise extreme demands and work for the division of the State.

Commentators with democratic and secular credentials would also endorse the views of the State’s suffering communities, saying they have every right to demand a dispensation that guarantees them all their natural and fundamental rights and protects and advances their general political, economic and social rights.

A brief description of what Ladakhis have been doing for political empowerment is in order. The political history of post-1947 Ladakh could be legitimately considered as the history of the rise of nationalism and integration with New Delhi. As a matter of fact, nationalism became their watchword, their battle-cry, with the highly revered Buddhist Kushok Bakula as the champion of this mass ideology. It was he who started propagating nationalism in the cold desert of Ladakh to counter the separatist ideology of the Kashmiri leadership.

It was this nationalism which became the “rallying force among the Ladakhis to fight back the Pakistanis and the Chinese who made frequent bids to conquer (their) land in 1948, 1962, 1965, 1971 and 1999.”

Who played the exemplary role in these wars to comprehensively defeat the enemy’s misadventures? The brave jawans of the Ladakh Scouts did all they could to defeat the Pakistani and Chinese evil designs. They made supreme sacrifices to preserve the unity and integrity of India.

The people of Ladakh had made it loud and clear from day one that they wanted to be part of India and that they would not become party to any agreement biased in favour of the separatist and communal Kashmiri leadership, and against them. In fact, at the time of the communal partition, they submitted memoranda to the Maharaja of Jammu & Kashmir, as also to The Government of India, containing demands “based on (their) bitter experience.”

The memoranda contained three specific alternative proposals:

1. “The Maharaja should govern Ladakh directly without tagging it on to Kashmir Valley”;

2. “Our homeland be amalgamated with the Hindu majority Jammu and should form a separate province in which adequate safeguards should be provided for distinctive rights and interests of Ladakhis”;

3. and”Ladakh should be permitted to join East Punjab.”

It bears recalling that the Maharaja could not respond because certain developments had in the meantime worked against him, and he had to abdicate his authority in favour of Sheikh Abdullah who enjoyed the full backing of Jawaharlal Nehru. The result was that the Ladakhis decided to “merge with India straightway” and the decision to that effect was communicated to the Prime Minister of India on May 4, 1949, by the President of the Ladakh Buddhist Association (LBA) Chhewang Rigzin.