Kashmir: Appropriate Is as Appropriate Does

An irritatingly anti-national streak seems to have infected Kashmiris.

Having been so often appropriately assured by appropriate authorities that statehood will be returned to them “at the appropriate time”, their repeatedly inappropriate suspicions on this score must greatly annoy all right-thinking people.

In a season when so many bounties are bestowed on people by the royalty of the day, when enlightened self-interest beckons, this swagat of statehood will also find its own appropriate time for bestowal.

Sadly, Kashmiris miss the all-important point here: bestowal of bounties require fertile grounds for their receiving.

Whose fault is it that Kashmiris insist forever on producing inappropriate results election after election?

If that is not a conspiracy, what is?

The bestowal of democracy must be conditioned on the premise that those that receive it are not just Indians but nationalists.

Now, there was a time when Kashmiris were indeed nationalists, ergo when they rejected Pakistan for Bharat.

Sadly, through the subsequent years, thanks to the perfidy of the grand old Congress party and her tendentious off-shoot, the so-called National Conference, this last political formation has dwindled just into being Indians, although retaining cleverly the tag of "national."

The canny inappropriateness of this ruse is obvious to any lover of Bharat Mata.

The whole world now knows that to be an appropriate Indian one must now be a nationalist of a certain type; and being that type of nationalist, one must forever elect to political power the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Now, should this not happen in states – especially those where demographies remain inappropriate – the ruling royalty may swallow the aberration for a while.

Given their inappropriate demography, it is not enough for the parties the Kashmiris elect to be Indian, it is not enough that they owe allegiance to the constitution or that they fought off Pakistan for years, losing thousands of their cadre in the process.

Clearly not.

Not till such time as Kashmiris learn to conflate being Indian with being an elector of the nationalist party can the appropriate time for statehood arrive.

And who can contest the fact that this appropriation of appropriateness is after all in the most appropriate interest of the unity and integrity of, er, India, but India that is Bharat.

So, let Kashmiris learn this lesson with appropriate acceptance: don’t just grow zafran but switch to saffron and statehood will follow.

How else may we achieve the grandiloquent goal of one nation, one party, one leader, endorsed by the judiciary, the media, and a legislature of one glowing saffron hue, unspoilt by intrusive shades that issue from both internal and external invasions?

This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.

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