Outlook's Naseer Ganai and Chinki Sinha speak with Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi, Srinagar's candidate from the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference. The party aims to address restoration of the region's dignity, status, and autonomy, along with confronting challenges related to the denial of basic rights and press freedom.
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#Kashmir #LokSabha2024 #KashmirNationalConference #PressFreedom
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00:00 Hello, I am Naseer Ghanai. I am correspondent with Outlook Magazine based in Srinagar. We
00:10 spoke to Aga Ruhullah who is National Conference's candidate from Srinagar constituency.
00:17 So why this election is important?
00:21 This election is happening after 2019. This is the first parliamentary election after
00:25 2019. Its significance comes from the fact that this same parliament took decisions on
00:32 August 2019 which went against the principles of the democracy and the principles of the
00:38 constitution and with those decisions the dignity of the state of J&K was snatched.
00:44 The state was degraded, it was degraded to a more intelligent nation and it was divided.
00:52 We the people of J&K were disenfranchised, turned into certain class cities and all this
00:57 happened without our wish and will. We did not vote for that, we did not subscribe for
01:02 that, we did not give our consent for that. So whatever happened, happened undemocratically
01:06 and unconstitutionally. This is the first opportunity for the people of J&K to express
01:12 themselves democratically against the decisions taken on August 2005 and put their dissent
01:20 with a strong mandate not only in the parliament but to the people of the nation.
01:26 You have been saying that development is not an issue. Why the development is not an issue?
01:29 At the moment this election, we do not contest this election on the pitch of development.
01:35 Give us our status back, give us our autonomy back, we can show how the state prospers and
01:40 we can do the development. We have done development before this. On all the indexes, J&K was much
01:47 better than UP, Bihar, on many indexes it was much better than Gujarat. We know how
01:53 to develop but to write our own destiny, to be the masters of our own destiny, to decide
01:59 for ourselves, we need the status back so that we can. And at the moment development
02:04 is not the issue again because when you do not have the dignity, when you do not have
02:09 the democratic right that you were guaranteed and which was the reason we acceded to this
02:14 nation. Development is secondary to that. If development was the driving force for the
02:21 nations, Britishers did the development, they brought railway, they brought roads to this
02:26 nation, they brought education institutions to this nation. But the people of some subcontinent
02:33 fought against them because they considered that we were slaves and in the same manner
02:39 we consider ourselves at the moment second class citizens of the nation. So no amount
02:44 of development can satisfy the need of dignity. People in Srinagar usually remain away from
02:51 the voting, maybe because of credit and because of other factors. Do you think this time they
02:56 will vote? We expect people to come out in numbers. The enthusiasm that people show and
03:01 the sentiment that they have, they want to express and register their dissent against
03:06 the decisions taken on August 5th. And the enthusiasm I hope will turn out into actual
03:13 voting and the numbers will rise from earlier numbers.
03:17 Hi, I am from Outlook. One question is that there is a lot of silence from Kashmir in
03:23 the past four years. We have not seen enough people writing from here, enough people even
03:27 saying anything. So how do you think this will translate into this election? Do you
03:31 think people will be able to express because there is a lot of fear?
03:35 Your question actually is our driving force in this election. We actually mean this. We
03:39 actually believe what you ask. For the last four or five years we have been denied the
03:45 right to express, right to protest, right to dissent which is the soul of democracy.
03:51 The media fraternity, friends from your fraternity were intimidated, they were tortured. Any political
03:57 actors who talked against the status was intimidated. PA was slapped against them, UAPA, they were
04:03 booked under UAPA. We have many preachers who are still under arrest. We have many activists
04:09 who are still under arrest. We have student activists who are still under arrest. And
04:13 in this atmosphere people were scared of talking. The space for dissent was denied to them.
04:19 The political space to mobilize their opinion, to express themselves was denied to the people
04:24 of Jammu and Kashmir unfortunately. This is true in the entire nation at the moment but
04:30 we speak in the context of Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir. This election brings us the opportunity
04:35 to express ourselves, to create that political space which was otherwise denied to us for
04:40 the last four or five years and gather the courage to speak and mobilize ourselves politically
04:46 and tell the nation that this is actually what we want and we do not agree to the status
04:51 that you have reduced us to. And the other question is that there is a lot of this polarization
04:56 situation happening with the speeches, you know, this anti-Muslim speeches everywhere,
05:01 you know, there was this biryani thing, there's all kinds of things, the reservation question.
05:06 Not only biryani, even the question of dress, eating habit, the right to pray and any identity
05:15 of Muslim is challenged at the moment. The being of Muslim is challenged at the moment
05:20 and it's being, it's used as an object in order to gain vote from the right-wing Hindu
05:27 vote bank. Unfortunately, this has taken the country way away from, it has taken far away
05:36 from the principles on which it was founded. We did not accede to a nation which believed
05:42 in fundamentalism, which believed in division. We were guaranteed that every religion will
05:48 have a rightful place, will have freedom, every citizen will have his or her dignity,
05:55 will have their right and all the citizens will be equal. Anyone as a Hindu, anyone as
05:59 a Muslim will be equal in front of law and no one will be intimidated. For the last 10
06:05 years, what happened in Germany, we see the replica of that in India, unfortunately. And
06:12 this was not the founding idea of the nation and a person none less than a prime minister
06:19 speaks against the minorities, not only Muslims but minorities. Since Muslims are the largest
06:24 minority, they face the brunt of it, speaks openly and brazenly against the Muslims. It
06:31 speaks how institutionally we have degraded, how immoral the institutions have turned and
06:38 people of India need to stand against it. The people who believe in secularism, those
06:43 who believe in the fundamental principles on which the nation of India was built, they
06:48 need to come out, they need to fight this fascism. If this fascism is not fought at
06:54 the moment, we as a nation will have to pay for this.
06:57 My last question is, there's a lot of these films that have come out in the past, you
07:01 know, like Article 370, of course, Kashmir Files, all these things. So, how are you going
07:07 to counter and what is your ideological position versus, you know, the many ideological…
07:11 You can draw the parallels with the films which were produced during Hitler's rule
07:16 in Nazi era. Same happens in today's regime. We do not have, see the institutions that
07:25 should speak for you and me are all compromised. One of the most important institutions is
07:30 media that is compromised. While we have an onslaught from the ruling regime, we have
07:35 the flood of propaganda, the only medium that we people, you and me, any citizen of India
07:41 would have would be media. But unfortunately, that media, that institution is also compromised.
07:47 So, it's for us now to rise from the dust, gather our courage, speak for ourselves, take
07:53 any opportunity democratically like this to speak for ourselves, present to the world
07:57 the facts about ourselves and the nation. We have the institutions which are compromised
08:02 but the most important institution in any country is the institution of asceticism.
08:07 If asceticism gathers the courage it needs to, I can find a hope. If the nation starts
08:14 listening to each other, I have hope with the nation because any fascism does not thrive
08:23 in a society where people are still who hold political morals, who hold principles and
08:28 I believe majority of people in India still hold morals and political principles.
08:33 [MUSIC PLAYING]