Kashmir is burning, Pakistan is unstable, India is mute

India provides hundreds of rupees in Haj subsidy every year, maintains a Waqf board, pays for Muslim universities (Aligarh Muslim university) and Urdu universities, provides reservation for Muslims in education and employment (Andhra Pradesh state government) apart from spending crores of rupees for Muslim welfare in India. Yet, when Jammu and Kashmir decided to give 99 acres of land to the Amarnath Shrine Board for providing basic conveniences to Hindu pilgrims that pay for the pilgrimage from their pockets, Muslims rioted!

After two weeks of Kashmiri Muslims burning public property and bringing life to a standstill, the Jammu and Kashmir government relented and rescinded the order to provide land to Amarnath Board. This was when the Hindu population of Jammu began their own riots. I cannot believe that a government would rescind such an important and long-delayed order because a section of the population engages in destroying life and property. More so when hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits still live as refugees in Delhi and other parts of India. Why does the Indian government tolerate and condone Muslim violence?

The Indian government spends thousands of crores of rupees on Kashmir’s development. Yet Kashmir is protected by a special act which also disallows non-Kashmiris from owning property in the state. I think it is high time that special status to Kashmir is removed and all Indians are allowed to buy property there. This will not only result in an economic boom for Kashmir but will also result in the region’s development creating education and employment opportunities.

Protesters in Kashmir have been carrying the Pakistani flag and demanding independence from India. The Booker-prize winning author Arundhati Roy claims that it is perhaps time India reconsidered holding on to Kashmir. The BJP has rightly retaliated that Kashmir is much better off in India’s hands. Pakistan is an economic disaster that is fighting terrorism and militancy all over the country. It presently has a very unstable government and human rights do not exist there, especially in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir. Who would think that the Kashmiris have a better future with Pakistan? The religious division was created by the British in 1947, but the so-called secular Indian government has hardly ever acted in a secular fashion.

So Kashmir is burning with Muslims rioting (even after the order to grant land has been reversed) and Jammu is burning with Hindus rioting (to get the order passed again); Pakistan’s coalition government has lost its majority and the country is without a President; Pakistani army has twice opened fire in the last couple of weeks on the Indian side breaking the ceasefire. And all India has done so far is to impose curfew in Kashmir! Could we have a dumber government than the current Manmohan Singh’s?