Prof Hari Om
It’s unbelievable. It’s both surprising and praise-worthy. For, no one had ever expected that former J&K Chief Minister and Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad, would call the Kashmiri bluff and the bluff of vested interests in the establishment and Jammu and Valley-based political outfits but he did spring a very pleasant surprise by proving everyone wrong. The case in point: he denounced as divisive all those who had been terming the Jammu province’s highly mountainous Doda, Kishtwar and Ramban districts as ‘Chenab Valley’ since decades. He said without mincing words that Doda, Kishtwar and Ramban districts couldn’t be termed as ‘Chenab Valley’ and that plains situated between Reasi and Akhnoor tehsils alone could be geographically termed as ‘Chenab Valley’.
Ghulam Nabi Azad also tore into those who had been leaving no stone unturned to make everyone believe and understand that the Jammu’s Poonch-Rajouri mountainous belt alone constituted the ‘Pir Panjal region’, which is the natural barrier between Jammu province and Kashmir Valley. He dismissed as divisive all those who had been terming Poonch-Rajouri belt ‘Pir Panjal region’.
The whole point is that Ghulam Nabi Azad only vindicated this writer, who had been debunking the whole concept of ‘Chenab Valley’ or ‘Pir Panjal Valley’ and urging the powers-that-be in the state, media houses and political class to not use such fake terms as ‘Chenab Valley’ and ‘Pir Panjal region’ or ‘Pir Panjal Valley’ as these were coined decades ago by the votaries of the obnoxious Dixon Plan, Kathwari Formula and Greater Kashmir consisting of the whole of Kashmir Valley and Muslim-majority areas of Jammu province and the Trans-Himalayan Ladakh adjoining Kashmir, den of all anti-India intrigues and epicenter of terrorism since centuries.
It would be only appropriate to quote verbatim what Ghulam Nabi Azad said the other day while criticising Vivek Agnihotri’s epoch-making ‘The Kashmir Files’, which actually is not a film but a true story of woeful and heart-wrenching tales of the miniscule minority of Hindus in Kashmir. Such an approach will help put things in perspective and expose those who had been seeking to break Jammu province to achieve their sinister objective. What did Ghulam Nabi Azad actually say? Referring to the concept of ‘Chenab Valley’ as presumed by some people, Ghulam Nabi Azad said. “It is not only Ramban, Doda and Kishtwar but the area below Reasi up to Akhnoor and Khour is also part of ‘Chenab Valley’. Rather it would be more appropriate to call Akhnoor area as Chenab Valley because ahead of Reasi it is totally hilly region and from Akhnoor it actually appears like Valley where irrigation facilities have also been created with the construction of Ranbir and Partap Canals. So, this entire area is ‘Chenab Valley’ and the attempts should be avoided to divide people on this count. Rajouri- Poonch belt has been termed as ‘Pir Panjal’ region and on this narrative, attempts were being made to create wedge among the people. We must shun such type of attempts to divide people for vested interests”.
Indeed, Ghulam Nabi Azad exposed all the vested interests in J&K by saying what he said about the geography of Poonch, Rajouri, Doda, Kishtwar and Ramban districts, nay about the Jammu province. It needs to be underlined that the vested interests and protagonists of Greater Kashmir, including Sheikh Abdullah, Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah and Muftis, including Mehbooba Mufti, had been seeking to create an impression since 1970s that Jammu province consisted of three distinct regions – ‘Chenab Valley’, ‘Pir Panjal region/Valley’ and ‘plains of Jammu’ and that the people of the plains of Jammu were squarely responsible for the ‘neglect, under-development and backwardness’ of these five districts, where Muslims were, and are, somewhat superior to Hindus in terms of numbers. Now that none other than the former J&K Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has publicly denounced as divisive those who used to pit people of Poonch, Rajouri, Doda, Kishtwar and Ramban districts against the people of Jammu’s Kathua, Samba, Jammu, Reasi and Udhampur districts and undermine the identity, personality and integrity of Jammu province to promote the cause of separatists in Kashmir, it’s hoped that the J&K establishment, media houses and political class would now desist from presenting the geography of Jammu province in a wrong way. It would be only geographically prudent to point out that Doda, Kishtwar, Ramban and Poonch districts and parts of Rajouri district are located in the same mountainous belt – the mighty Pir Panjal mountain.
As said, Ghulam Nabi Azad sprung a pleasant surprise by defining the topography of Poonch, Rajouri, Doda, Kishtwar and Ramban districts in the manner it should have been. Surprise because the Ghulam Nabi Azad-led Congress, PDP, CPIM and PDF coalition government had committed many grave wrongs, jeopardised the paramount national interest, hurt even the genuine interests of the people of Jammu province, subverted the justice system and outraged religious sensitivities of the minority Hindus between November 2, 2005 and July 7, 2008. Leave aside the three roundtable conferences and working groups constituted to discuss the political status of J&K vis-à-vis India at the behest of the Congress-led coalition government in 2006. For example, the Congress-led coalition government applied the Wazir Commission Report in a wrong way (created four new districts in Kashmir, as against one as recommended by the Commission, and four in Jammu, as against three recommended by it); rejected bills on National Flag, Secularism, Socialism, equal representation to Jammu in the Assembly, citizenship rights to Hindu-Sikh refugees from Pakistan languishing in Jammu since 1947 and reduction of the life of the Assembly from six to five years; and passed bills on J&K Flag and Sharia etc. It all happened in 2007. And, in 2008, the Congress-led Government subverted the justice system to please the separatist and communal forces in the Valley, including Hurriyat leadership, and snatched from the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board that piece of land at Baltal which the Shrine Board had got as per the J&K High Court’s direction for creating additional facilities for the Shri Amarnath pilgrims on a temporary basis. The Congress-led UPA Government at the Centre and the then J&K Governor N N Vohra all extended their unflinching support to the Ghulam Nabi Azad-led coalition government. It’s a different story that the Amarnath Land Movement in Jammu brought down the Azad government on July 7, 2008. However, to recall all this is not to undermine what Ghulam Nabi Azad said about the so-called Chenab Valley and Pir Panjal region. He needs to be commended for what he said about the geography of the otherwise under-threat Jammu province.