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On December 8, the Trans-Himalayan Ladakh region’s premier political organization, Ladakh Union Territory Front (LUTF), once again reiterated 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 organized a massive public rally at the historic Polo Ground to press its demand.
Reflecting on their demand, the LUTF leaders said 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 bemoaned what they called the “failure of the Central and State Governments to engage the LUTF in the ongoing process for the resolution of Kashmir problem” and reiterated 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, including the outfit’s working president Dr Sonam Dawa Lonpo, Chief Executive Councilor (Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council) Tsering Dorje, LUTF youth president Namgyal, LUTF women president Thinless Angmo, chief advisor women LUTF Yangchan Cho Cho, Chuchot Block president Hassan Mohammad, senior vice-president LUTF Saif-ud-Din and patron president and former MP and son-in-law of Rani Parvati of Ladakh Thupstan Chhewang, in unison demanded 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 said at the Polo Ground 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 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.
Needed: four separate political entities
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 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.