Not a day seems to be passing without one or another leader of the ruling party, business elite, country’s industrialists, corporate honchos, lawyers, doctors, academicians and even Bollywood stars and starlets going over the board to praise the Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the ‘historic’ decision on August 5 that has stripped Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood and downgraded the turmoil hit region to two union territories – Ladakh and Jammu & Kashmir.
Every other day, there are reports in newspapers quoting various union ministers and BJP leaders in praise of the PM for his ‘bold’ move on J&K. While on one day it is the union defence minister Rajnath Singh who hails PM Modi for delivering on the issue of Jammu and Kashmir, union roads and transport minister Nitin Gadkari, a former BJP president, does a repeat on the next day. Even the tone, tenor and sometimes even the wording of the statements, doesn’t change.
Nevertheless, it is to the BJP’s credit that the party has delivered on the manifesto for 2019 Lok Sabha elections and it should not surprise us anymore if the ruling dispensation goes on the win another landslide in 2024 general elections.
But be that as it may, the optics created by the Article 370 abrogation and bifurcation of J&K into two union territories has lit up an almost festive mood in the country. Not only the parliament and newsrooms, debates have been organised in educational institutions in many states of the country on the issue. Even the chief ministers of a number of states, including Uttar Pradesh, New Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and others have not minced words while making their opinion public over the central government’s August 5 move. With many states facing elections, the din over J&K’s special status is only going to grow in coming weeks and month.
However, Kashmir is watching the central government’s move with hopeful patience and studied restraint. People have so far behaved maturely and refused to react in the vocabulary of violence. Their patience can’t be put to a test forever. Is a change in offing? If reports, and not just the official ones, from the first day of ‘Back to Village 2’ are any indicator, the J&K before August 5 is not any different from the one we are living in today. Some people may believe and hope that their statements impact the ground situation but Kashmir may prove them horribly wrong. It is time for the new admin in JK to deliver before it gets late!