What comes to your mind when someone says “Jammu and Kashmir”? Gorgeous serene valleys, Chinar Trees, Shikaras floating leisurely in Dal Lake, snow falling from the heavens, beautiful snow-capped mountains, people walking around in coarse woolen Phirans, enchanting aroma of Rogan Josh and bomb blasts, and bloodshed and terrorists lurking around in desolate buildings ready to pounce upon unsuspecting army men and chants of anti-India slogans and Pakistan flags and ISIS flags. Every Friday after the weekly prayers, Pakistan and ISIS flags are waved in the heart of Srinagar. It’s a routine that goes on unchallenged. Government, Police and Media call them “Misguided Youth”. To an uninitiated this may sound like an extreme example of ‘tolerance’, but what if the same state declares a blanket ban of the biggest Student organization of the country. You heard that right. ABVP has been banned from colleges across J&K.
The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, founded in 1948 with the initiative of the RSS activist Balraj Madhok, was formally registered on 9 July 1949. Its primary purpose was to counter communist influences on university campuses. And it has been largely successful in that. ABVP is one force that communists and pseudo-secularists are scared of. Partly because of their huge numbers but mostly because ABVP has a Sangh like strategy – Penetrate and expand.
ABVP has been banned for reasons best known to the J&K University. It has been barred from holding any function or event in college campuses.
Now this comes as a surprise to me because BJP holds the power in the state along with Mehbooba Mufti led PDP. BJP had won all its 25 seats in the 2014 Assembly Elections from the Jammu region and PDP won all 28 seats from the Kashmir valley. So BJP and PDP are almost at the same pedestal as far as numerical strength in the house is concerned.
The J&K Deputy CM Nirmal Singh is a former state ABVP President. The State Legislative Assembly Speaker Kavinder Gupta and Health and Medical Education Minister Bali Bhagat have claimed to be former activists of the ABVP. And regardless of the numbers and presence of powerful BJP leaders in the state, ABVP – the student wing of the Bhartiya Janata Party has been banned in the state.
The banning of ABVP once again ascertains the fact that the politics in the state is dominated by the Valley in which BJP has no presence.
Mehbooba Mufti is no Mufti Mohammad and she made it amply clear in the aftermath of the demise of the latter, when there was a governmental crisis in the state. The BJP had to go down on its knees in order to woo Mehbooba Mufti. Not very long back, NIT Srinagar students were lathicharged for waiving Tiranga inside the campus. The state of affairs in Jammu and Kashmir attest to the fact that the BJP-Alliance is not as smooth as it appears on the surface. The banning of ABVP only solidifies the claim.
Mehbooba Mufti is scared of the rising clout of BJP in the state. ABVP is expanding too and so is the Sangh. Although it is next to impossible to change the mind-set of Kashmiri Muslims but a large number of them have already started getting disenchanted with the decades of agitation and violence. BJP is still new in the state but it has started appealing to a large number of Muslims. There were many Kashmiri Muslims who contested elections on BJP tickets. Mehbooba Mufti understands the risk.
BJP cannot afford to play second fiddle in the state for long. While it was still recovering from the assault on students in NIT-S, ABVP has been banned. Although Ram Madhav has issued a strongly worded advice against the Vice Chancellor, Nirmal Singh and Co. have a tough task ahead. A student organization as big and as influential as the ABVP which has produced leaders of towering statures cannot be banned without any notices or reasons. The J&K University must clarify its stand. And BJP must fight for it. We haven’t given up on Kashmir and we never will.
http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/jammu-kashmir/abp-baned-on-jammu-campuses/240202.html
