Valley parties alone in call for Article 370 return, all others wanted it gone, says Ram Madhav

In an interview with ThePrint, senior RSS leader Ram Madhav says while statehood will be restored in Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh will remain a Union territory.

RSS leader Ram Madhav | PTI

New Delhi: No political party outside Jammu and Kashmir has protested against the revocation of Article 370, even two years after the decision, because of a broader national consensus on the issue, said Ram Madhav, member of the RSS national executive.

In an interview to ThePrint’s Senior Consulting Editor Jyoti Malhotra, Madhav, a former BJP general secretary, said, “No major political party in India was in support of Article 370, they were all doing it out of a certain political compulsion.”

Article 370, which granted the erstwhile state special status, was scrapped by the Modi government on 5 August 2019. Another measure taken at the same time saw the state bifurcated into two Union territories — Jammu & Kashmir, and Ladakh.

Madhav said the parties from the Valley are isolated in their cause to restore Article 370. The whole country, he said, believes it should have been removed earlier but nobody had the political will to do so except Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“Has any political party taken it up as a big issue, has the Congress taken it up? Has the Communist Party of India taken it up? Even in Kashmir, nobody is there to stand up for the Valley parties. Even if they stand up, they will only show sympathies, other than that nobody is in favor of restoration of Article 370. This realisation should better dawn upon the Valley leadership,”  said Madhav.

He added: “It’s a unanimous feeling of the entire country across the political spectrum that Article 370 should have been done away with.”

Madhav also said the “major complaint” of political parties in J&K is not Article 370 but statehood.

He added that while statehood will be restored in Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh will remain a Union territory.

The former BJP national general secretary also spoke about the historic but ill-fated alliance between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in J&K in 2016, noting that there was no other option but for the two parties to come together.

Madhav had played a key role in stitching together the alliance after the 2014 assembly election threw up a fractured verdict. While the BJP received overwhelming support in the Jammu region, the PDP won the majority of seats in the Kashmir Valley.

“We also thought that by bringing the PDP into alliance we would be able to control soft separatism in the Valley and we [would] probably be able to bring it more into the mainstream, and I think we have succeeded,” he said.

Commenting on the PDP’s present status, the RSS leader said very few politicians are with the party today. Most leaders, he said, are with People’s Conference President Sajad Lone and Altaf Bukhari, chief of the Apni Party.

‘Non-issue’ Pegasus, Mohan Bhagwat’s Muslim comment

Madhav spoke about the disruptions caused by Opposition parties in Parliament over the Pegasus scandal, calling it an issue with no roots or evidence.

In a series of articles last month, an international media consortium, including The Wire from India, revealed that a spyware called Pegasus, developed by Israeli cybertechnology firm NSO Group, was allegedly used to attempt surveillance on several prominent leaders, politicians and journalists, among others.

“Just because some American papers, some British papers and some Indian digital agencies have published some names and leads that the government is snooping on them, it cannot be taken up in Parliament. Next time, every Tom, Dick and Harry will come up with some allegations,” said Madhav.

“Not a single valid proof has been presented to the people not just in India, even in the world, on Pegasus,” he added.

The RSS leader also said that instead of disrupting Parliament over the Pegasus issue, the Opposition should participate in discussions on parliamentary business.

Talking about the controversy stoked by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s statement that Hindus and Muslims share the same DNA, Madhav said some Hindus misunderstood Bhagwat’s intent.

“Bhagwat ji was not making those observations for the first time, neither is he the first leader to make such observations. Golwalkar, like Nehru, appealed to Muslims to think of themselves as Indian. Mohan Bhagwat was not telling Hindus anything new, he said Muslims shouldn’t be worried, he said.

Assam-Mizoram clash

Madhav, who oversaw the BJP’s northeastern affairs as general secretary, also called the border clash between Assam and Mizoram on 26 July, which resulted in the death of seven policemen, unfortunate.

“I am not blaming anybody but not enough care was taken in demarcation of boundaries. But for more than a week’s time, things are normal,” he said, adding that the situation could have been handled better from both sides.

On China, Madhav said the country “wants to assert dominance not just in the neighbourhood but across the world”.

“China remains a big challenge, not just on the borders, but also in the larger scheme of things, it will pose a big challenge to the entire political system that we have developed with great effort in the entire world,” he added.

(Edited by Rachel John)