In a massive show of hypocrisy over Article 370 of the Constitution of India, party spokesperson, Pawan Khera has said, “Not once or twice, but the Congress party diluted article 370 as many as 12 times, but without letting any controversy break out.” This is as hypocritical and delusional as the Sonia Gandhi-led party could have get.
The Congress is boasting about “diluting” Article 370, when the party had gone overboard in its attempts to criticise the Modi government’s move to abrogate Article 370 of the Constitution. Ever since the Modi government made this move on August 5, the Congress has made some of the most distasteful remarks opposing abrogation of the provision, which is a result of historical blunders of the Nehruvian era.
While the Congress is today boasting about its imaginary claims of diluting Article 370, it was the Congress Leader, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury in the Lok Sabha, who even went on to question if Kashmir was really an internal matter of India. He had said, “You say that it is an internal matter, but it is being monitored since 1948 by the UN, is that an internal matter? We signed the Shimla Agreement and Lahore Declaration, was that an internal matter or bilateral?”
He didn’t stop here and had gone on to say, “S Jaishankar told Mike Pompeo a few days before that Kashmir is a bilateral matter, so don’t interfere in it. Can Jammu & Kashmir still be an internal matter? We want to know.” This is the official stand of the Congress, the dynasty-run party doubts if Kashmir even an internal matter of India. Something that emboldens the stand taken even by Pakistan in its nefarious designs to internationalise the abrogation of Article 370.
The Congress is alleging that it did not create any controversy on the issue of Kashmir and Article 370. Probably, the party has forgotten that it is responsible for the Kashmir controversy in first place, and why the erstwhile state had to battle separatism and terrorism for 70 years. Even after Modi government cleaned up the created by it in Kashmir, the Sonia-Gandhi led party made some of the most inflammatory, anti-India remarks which were even taken up by Pakistan and the international media.
It was again Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury who went on compare the security precautions put in place to safeguard the people of Kashmir with Nazi concentration camps. He said, “PM had announced from Red Fort that we’ll take Kashmiris forward not with bullets but by embracing them, but today, the situation in Kashmir is similar to that of a concentration camp.”
Rahul Gandhi also went on to make remarks that were clearly detrimental to India’s interests in Kashmir. He even went on to be quoted by Pakistan in dossier to the UNHRC regarding Kashmir. The dossier had quoted the Gandhi scion as saying, “It has been 20 days since the people of Jammu and Kashmir had their freedom and civil liberties curtailed. Leaders of the Opposition and Press got a taste of draconian administration and brute force unleashed on people of Jammu and Kashmir when we tried to visit Srinagar.”
Congress’ utterances again turned out to be detrimental to India’s interests when Pakistan PM, Imran Khan quoted the grand old party during the UN General Assembly session held earlier this year. He said, “For a start, they have to lift the curfew, that’s the beginning. Even the Congress party in India has commented that poor people have been shut inside for 50 days. No one knows what’s happening with the political prisoners… (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi has boxed himself in a blind alley.”
Today, the Congress is blaming the BJP of creating controversy in Kashmir and trying to take credit for trying to solve the Kashmir problem by ‘diluting’ Article 370. This is rather absurd on so many levels, since Kashmir would have never been a problem but for Nehru’s unfathomable blunders. Apart from Modi government, no other government was keen on undoing this massive blunder. The spine shown by the Modi-Shah duo indeed commendable.
The grand old party is claiming that it has diluted the bizarre provision several times, however the reality is that the Congress not only tolerated it for several decades, but also nurtured it continuously by making absurd moves such as enacting Article 35A, an inherently toxic, misogynist and gender discriminatory provision, and that too by bypassing the parliamentary amendment procedure given in Article 368 of the Constitution. And even the successive Congress governments did not make any attempts to remove this toxic provision. The Congress is the architect of Kashmir problem and its claims of trying to solve the problem is a sham.
And it is not just about Article 370, the Congress has remained tolerant of, and in fact, oversaw the growth of a corrupt polity in Kashmir, along with dubious politicians like the Abdullahs and Muftis who never took a pro-India stand on the Kashmir issue. In fact, the rise of separatism and Islamist radicalism took place in Kashmir right under the nose if successive Congress governments. The grand old party which was totally embroiled in vote bank politics, never really had the spine of ending the Kashmir problem, rather it was the architect of the Kashmir problem, a bitter reality that it will never be able to escape.