THE DISEMPOWERING DEBATE

Integration and subsequent bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir is the major happening in contemporary history with consequences within and outside India. But the work is still in progress, reports Masood Hussain

- Masood Hussain

For most of the last 67 years, only a section of the population was able to distinguish the flag of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir from the party flag of the National Conference. The flag, however, bounced back to the public debate in wake of the massive Narendra Modi wave in 2014. Two major factors sustained the flag debate: Engineer Rasheed’s politics and a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) that was eventually decided by Justice Husnain Masoodi.

Later, Jammu and Kashmir’s law ministry ordered that people holding a constitutional position in Jammu and Kashmir must give due respect to the state and the national flag. The order irked the BJP. Once it came to power, the order was amongst the initial few things that its ally, PDP, rescinded.

On August 25 evening the flag disappeared from the civil secretariat. By then, Engineer Rasheed was in a Rajasthan Jail and Masoodi, now a member of the Lok Sabha, was trying to have his first meeting with his jailed leaders, Dr Farooq Abdullah, and Omar.

“There was a thought process in the few days after August 5, that the flag may unfurl till October 31, when the new law will be rolled out,” one middle rung official of the UT government, privy to the developments, said. “But nobody knows why it was removed barely 20 days after the law was promulgated.” An expectation was the lowering of the state flag would mark some kind of a function that BJP was initially thinking about but it disappeared silently. Nobody knows who removed it and how.