Former Jammu & Kashmir Finance Minister and J&K Bank chairman Haseeb Drabu on Wednesday launched a scathing attack on the BJP for dropping the name of National Conference founder Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah from local awards and buildings. All the regional parties, including the NC, the Peoples Democratic Party ) and the CPI(M), have also questioned the move.
“It is epochalism being expressed through place-names to reflect the new Indian politics in its political ideology, behavioural values and, of course, historical figures. While restoring “their” great men in the new narratives of India, throwing the stalwarts of Kashmir’s political history down Orwell’s memory hole is unacceptable.
‘Larger agenda’
“Such changes have a much larger agenda: snap the every day’s historical connection so as to erase the memory of the past. The toponymic changes are used as a tool to disrupt the ethno-cultural continuity of Kashmiris which is the core of a historical identity. In reality, it is an assault that will, in the long run, prove to be more debilitating and damaging than abolishing the compromised constitutional provisions,” warned Mr. Drabu, who drafted the basis of an alliance of the PDP with the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2015 to rule J&K, in a column written in a local daily.
Mr. Drabu was commenting on the recent moves to drop the title, Sher-e-Kashmir, conferred on Sheikh Abdullah, from J&K’s police awards and buildings.
