New Delhi: The Congress has mentioned that the social gathering will hoist the nationwide flag on 30 January — the concluding day of the Bharat Jodo Yatra — at its headquarters in Srinagar and never Lal Chowk. The yatra, in its final leg, entered Jammu and Kashmir Thursday.
Making the announcement, Rajni Patil, All India Congress Committee (AICC) in-charge for J&Okay Tuesday mentioned that unfurling the nationwide flag at Lal Chowk is part of “RSS’ agenda”.
“We don’t consider within the RSS’ (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) agenda of hoisting the tricolour at Lal Chowk, the place it has already flown excessive,” she mentioned. The venue for flag-hoisting — Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee (JKPCC) headquarters — is on Maulana Azad Highway, lower than a kilometre away from Lal Chowk.
Lal Chowk is the primary sq. in Srinagar. Situated within the coronary heart of town, it’s surrounded by parks, faculties and media places of work. On a standard day, Lal Chowk buzzes with exercise, however on some days, there are barbed wires in and round it.
And whereas the RSS, BJP’s ideological fountainhead, has not spoken of an “agenda” involving flag-hoisting at Lal Chowk, its staff — who’ve gone on to carry outstanding positions within the BJP — have made the act an emblem of nationalism.
Earlier this month, social gathering’s Ludhiana MP Ravneet Bittu had mentioned that the yatra will conclude with flag hoisting at Lal Chowk. “Rahul Gandhi began the yatra from Kanyakumari and will probably be hoisting the flag on January 30 at Lal Chowk, Srinagar,” he mentioned.
The Congress’ stance towards hoisting the flag at Lal Chowk is curious, on condition that it was Rahul Gandhi’s nice grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru who, together with Sheikh Abdullah, had first unfurled the tricolour at Lal Chowk in 1948. Following that, at a rally within the presence of Nehru, the Kashmiri chief had recited a Persian couplet, “Tu mann shudam, mann tu shudi, taqas na goyed, mann degram, tu degari” (I grew to become you and also you grew to become I, nobody can say we’re separate’).
Chatting with ThePrint Thursday, Patil sought to minimize her remark. “Pandit Nehru unfurled the nationwide flag. (However) because the Nineteen Nineties, first (BJP’s) Murli Manohar Joshi unfurled the nationwide flag at Lal Chowk. Then Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley got here however have been stopped. The nationwide flag might be unfurled wherever. What I meant was that when our workplace is in Lal Chowk, why do we have to go there individually?” she mentioned.
“Now we have to keep watch over the nationwide flag. How will we try this in Lal Chowk? Why ought to we go into RSS agendas like Lal Chowk and Article 370? Now we have include the message of peace,” Patil added.
BJP says that hoisting the nationwide flag at Lal Chowk is in itself a press release “in favour of nationalistic forces”. Chatting with ThePrint, BJP spokesperson Sunil Sethi mentioned, “It’s a matter of pleasure for Indians if the nationwide flag flies at Lal Chowk, which was the nerve centre of separatism. They (Congress) have been those who created such situations for his or her political advantages over the previous 70 years, giving separatists and anti-nationals a free hand in Lal Chowk and such nerve centres of Kashmir. This isn’t simply an agenda of RSS however of all Indians.”
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Historical past of Lal Chowk
Since India gained independence, Lal Chowk has been host to many political occasions.
Lal Chowk was given its title by B.P.L. Bedi — actor Kabir Bedi’s father and a confidant of Sheikh Abdullah — within the Nineteen Forties. Impressed by the Russian revolution, he had named it after Moscow’s Purple Sq..
In 1980, Bajaj Electricals constructed a clock tower on the chowk, which has over time turn into a centre of political exercise. When Sheikh Abdullah signed the Indira-Sheikh Accord in 1975 with then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi — which allowed him to re-enter politics and have become the chief minister of J&Okay — it was at Lal Chowk that he addressed an enormous crowd and defined the accord.
On the peak of militancy within the Nineteen Nineties, Lal Chowk was witness to bomb assaults, firings, rocket assaults. In these darkish days, even a Pakistani flag may very well be noticed at Lal Chowk on some days, and rallies by militants and separatists have been additionally not unusual.
Tiranga yatras over time
On the peak of militancy in Jammu and Kashmir in 1992, then BJP president Murli Manohar Joshi, together with Narendra Modi, who was the social gathering’s yatra convenor on the time, unfurled the nationwide flag at Lal Chowk on 26 January, marking the profitable completion of the social gathering’s Ekta Yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir.
With militants issuing warnings towards the yatra, joined by hundreds of staff, it needed to be stopped in Jammu. Joshi, Modi and some others have been airlifted to Srinagar, reportedly on the “pretext“ of landslides on the Jammu-Srinagar freeway.
In 2011, one other yatra, this time by the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) was launched from Kolkata. Led by the social gathering’s then youth wing president Anurag Thakur, the yatra’s closing vacation spot was Lal Chowk. Senior leaders, together with Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and Ananth Kumar, tried to enter J&Okay to hitch the yatra however have been arrested for violating Part 144 of the Code of Legal Process Code (prohibiting gathering of 4 or extra folks) that was in power on the time.
Whereas Jaitley had then reiterated that they may hoist the nationwide flag on the Lal Chowk, the yatra failed to succeed in its vacation spot. On the time of their arrest, Swaraj had mentioned, “Why are we being arrested? We have been marching peacefully. Those that burn the nationwide flag are being supplied safety whereas these holding it are being stopped.”
A lot earlier than this, although, a lesser recognized native chief, Yogesh Gupta of Akhil Bharatiya Shiv Sena, boasts of getting hoisted the nationwide flag at Lal Chowk for 5 successive years starting 1994.
In accordance with Gupta, he together with few different folks needed to sneak previous safety forces to unfurl the nationwide flag on 26 January, 1994, after they have been initially detained in Udhampur.
Related makes an attempt to succeed in Srinagar on “tiranga yatras” usually are not exceptional. In 2016, over 100 youths on bikes have been stopped at Lakhanpur by the police after they have been attempting to enter the state with a purpose to unfurl the nationwide flag on the Nationwide Institute of Know-how (NIT), Srinagar.
The group — elevating slogans of “Bharat Mata ki Jai” and “Jahan hue balidan Mukherjee woh Kashmir humara hai” (the Kashmir the place Shyama Prasad Mukherjee was martyred is ours) — was led by Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga, then a frontrunner of Bhagat Singh Kranti Dal. Bagga is BJYM nationwide secretary and a Delhi BJP chief.
A yr later in 2017, a few hundred folks from Sonipat, with an purpose to unfurl the nationwide flag at Lal Chowk, have been stopped at Samba in Jammu. Their Tiranga yatra was additionally not allowed to go any additional.
The newest political flag-hoisting occasion at Lal Chowk was held final yr, amid tight safety, led by BJYM nationwide president Tejasvi Surya. To mark the Kargil Vijay Diwas, bikers from throughout the nation carried out a Tiranga Bikers yatra from Lal Chowk to Kargil.
“In 1992, Shri Narendra modi Ji had unfurled the Nationwide Flag at Lal Chowk throughout ‘Ekta Yatra’ led by Shri Murali Manohar Joshi. 30 years later, due to the abrogation of Article 370 by Modi Ji & HM Sri Amit Shah Ji, BJYM unfurled Tiranga At Lal Chowk immediately,” wrote Surya after the flag hoisting in 2022.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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