NEW PHASE
| Date :01-Nov-2019 |
VERY rarely do such developments take place such as splitting of a State into Union Territories. And the Government must have agonised a great deal before deciding to split the State of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories. There are reasons to believe firmly that the decision came when the Government concluded that it had no option as effective as this one. There also are reasons to believe that these two smaller entities under a different constitutional arrangement than before will add strength to the effort to integrate the region into mainstream India to the fullest measure, like any other part of the country. As Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh become two separate Union Territories, they mark the beginning of a new phase in contemporary history of Independent India -- of getting integrated and assimilated fully into India as a nation.
By any standard, this is a welcome phase! For, from now onwards, Kashmir as a region will have its own identity and activity, and Ladakh its own. This splitting has become necessary from many angles, one of those being the massive and rather unmanageable size of the erstwhile J&K State wrapped in the Special Status under Article 370 of the Constitution.
Among other angles is also the security concerns that the Government will now be able to address more efficiently. In fact, it was an original mistake to place J&K and Ladakh under one common title of a State. For, culturally, the two entities have been altogether different. And geographically, mountainous heights were the only common feature between them. Therefore, when the Government put them under one banner, it only created permanent trouble for itself as the two regions could not really integrate with each other -- and with the nation -- with the barrier of Articles 370 and 35A. True, this process may appear simple on paper, but it will pose its own challenges to the Government and the administration as well as population. For, what is to be tackled is a range of obstacles which political elements will place on the way. Despite all these undesirable possibilities, glorious opportunities, too, will present themselves -- to be utilised for a larger purpose, beyond the realm of a handful of political personalities and families that ruled the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir.
From now on, an honest process of apolitical administration will get started and take the two Union Territories (UTs) forward with shared ideals and destinies. From now on, every word of the law applicable to the rest of the country will be applicable to the Kashmir region under an entirely different constitutional, administrative and political arrangement. And this change will alter the texture of public affairs in the Kashmir region. If the abrogation of Article 370 was one momentous point, the actual birth of the two UTs of J&K and Ladakh is another.
This moment has many facets that actually will reshape India’s current socio-political narrative, redefine its integration metaphor, reconfigure its secular metaphysics, redirect its collective trajectory towards a secure republic! This moment also marks the start of a new phase in which earlier political fraud will be burned and buried, and a clear-headed thinking would emerge in time about what India of the future should be like, and how it should conduct itself internally so that it becomes a strong international entity eventually. Most importantly, the event also is a marker of a sovereign assertion that India will never recuse from its fundamental accountability to the promise and resolve it has made to itself -- to manage its own affairs with strength and straightforwrdness. Fortunately, the world also has understood this message well.