‘Battlegrounds of Faith’: BJP's Support For Exclusion of Non-Hindus From Jammu College Sparks Storm

Srinagar: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s support to the demand of some Hindu right-wing groups to reserve seats in a medical college run by the Vaishno Devi Trust for Hindu students has sparked a political storm in Jammu and Kashmir.

Ali Mohammad Sagar, a senior leader of the ruling National Conference (NC), said that the BJP has launched a “disgraceful assault on the Constitution, merit and the very sanctity of Maa Vaishno Devi” by supporting the right-wing groups in Jammu who initiated the reservation demand.

Another NC leader and legislator, Tanvir Sadiq, accused the saffron party of turning educational institutions in Jammu and Kashmir into “battlegrounds of faith”.

“You are planting a time bomb that, once it goes off, will create a divide no one will ever be able to fix,” Sadiq, the party's chief spokesperson, said in a post on X.

The controversy broke out days after chief minister Omar Abdullah got a rousing reception in Jammu, a saffron party stronghold, for his government’s decision to resume the ‘Darbar Move’ practice.

Despite protests, the Dogra-era biannual practice under which the capital city of J&K alternates between Srinagar in the summer and Jammu in the winter was scrapped by the lieutenant governor administration in 2021.

While resuming the Darbar Move was a long-pending demand of traders in the winter capital and its resumption had seemingly earned a lot of goodwill for the Abdullah government in the BJP’s backyard, the latest controversy is likely to play into the Hindu-Muslim divide in Jammu, which has been traditionally used by the saffron party for electoral gains.

The BJP has however defended its decision, arguing that Hindu devotees from across the country donate to the Vaishno Devi Trust, which runs the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence in the Reasi district of Jammu, with the “sole aim of promoting the ‘Sanatan Dharam’ and Indian culture”.

The institute admitted its first batch of MBBS students this year following a notification by the J&K Board of Professional Entrance Exams, which allotted 42 out of 50 seats to Muslim students, most of them from Kashmir, according to a merit list.

Admissions to the institute are governed by the National Medical Council's guidelines, with 85% of seats reserved for J&K domiciles while the remaining 15% are up for grabs for candidates from the rest of the country.

A delegation of the saffron party's leaders headed by leader of opposition in the J&K assembly Sunil Sharma met lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha on Sunday (November 23) evening and demanded that the seats be reserved for Hindu students only.

“It is not acceptable to us. Having students and people from other religions here won’t be good for donors and the shrine board. Hence we have requested the lieutenant governor to provide admissions to only those students who believe in Mata Vaishno Devi,” Sharma said.

The BJP leader claimed that all the officers in J&K administration, whom he purports to have met over the issue, had “agreed” that the seat should be reserved for Hindu students only.

“We have got assurances that a positive decision will be taken,” he added.

The Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Sangharsh Samiti J&K, which is spearheading the agitation in Jammu, has called a press conference on the issue at its office on Tuesday.

The row erupted last week after activists of the Rashtriya Bajrang Dal (RBD), reportedly affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, stormed into the Reasi campus of the medical institute.

The RBD activists were joined by Sangh parivar affiliates, including the Vishva Hindu Parishad and others, who set the effigy of the chief executive officer of the Vaishno Devi Shrine Board on fire while demanding that the admission of Muslim students be scrapped.

Jammu has been a stronghold of the BJP since 2014, when the party both bagged Lok Sabha seats from the region and emerged as the second largest in the J&K assembly elections with 25 seats.

The party's vote share increased from 22.98% in the 2014 assembly elections in J&K to 25.63% in the assembly polls held last year.

However, some controversial decisions taken by the Union government post-2019, including the scrapping of the Darbar Move practice, the opening of jobs to outsiders and high power tariffs among others are believed to have sowed the seeds of resentment against the saffron party in some pockets of the region.

Without taking the name of any political party, Sheikh Shakeel Ahmed, a senior advocate and social activist based in Jammu, alleged that “dirty politics” was being played “on the education and students” of Jammu and Kashmir.

“Ordinary people in Jammu are least bothered about who gets to study at the college [in Reasi]. We should stop poisoning our education system. Be it a doctor, an advocate or a journalist, professionals have no religion,” he said.

A senior Peoples Democratic Party leader said that by supporting the right-wing groups, the BJP has defied the “convent of brotherhood and harmony which exists between citizens of different faiths as per the Constitution”.

“The college is located in a Muslim-majority state and it will naturally invite more students from the majority community. The poison [of communalism] has been seeping into the system slowly [after the BJP came to power]. Now it has started to dominate and run the system,” he said.

This story was updated at 8:36 pm on November 24.

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