Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti had no reservations in throwing open a public park named after the Dogra ruler Mahraja Hari Singh in presence of Deputy Chief Minister and other BJP leaders just to satisfy the political ego of the saffron party running a coalition government with Kashmir’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the last three years. Interestingly both the previous and the incumbent governments’ headed by Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti have showed reluctance in naming the Srinagar International Airport after the name of Kashmir’s great Islamic preacher Hazrat-e-Sheik Ul Alam(RA). Keeping in view the fact that Mahraja Hari Singh was the last feudalistic ruler of the state and a mass public movement was launched to dethrone the said last feudalist ruler of the state the present day rulers beating drums of democracy and chanting slogans against autocratic rulers of the other country should not have agreed to the idea of naming a public park in the name of the last feudalistic ruler of the state. Ironically BJP the ally of PDP in the Mehbooba led coalition government has been shamelessly raised the demand for declaring the birthday of the said feudalistic rule a public holiday just to offer a feudalist the treatment which has been given to late Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah the champion of anti-feudalistic movement in the state. Perhaps for the first time in the world history oppressor and the oppressed are treaty equally by any popular government in any part of the world.
Though there are many dogra leaders who along with late Sheik Mohammad Abdullah have fought against the feudalistic rule of one particular Dogra family but BJP neither demands the declaration of their birthday as public holiday nor tends to demand the naming of any public place like park after their names. In fact now present day rulers while propagating the ideas of democracy are projecting their second and third generation children as their successor just to revive the feudalism in a different way in this state and henceforth their tendencies of naming a public place after the name of a feudalist ruler and declaring the birth day of a feudalist public holiday indicates their motives of reviving the feudalist ruler in a modern democratic way. Unfortunate it is that the political parties engaged in power politics in Jammu & Kashmir are trying to glorify the people who have committed atrocities on the people to curb the dissenting voices for their own political motives. Such highly objectionable tendencies of political exploitation have to be thwarted by the people who deliver sermons on the stability of democracy in India and the enforcement of autocratic rules in some other countries.