Does law legitimate the practice of having a 'Muslim chief minister' and 'a Hindu governor'

The Telegraph
June 26 , 2008

Srinagar’s religious split, by law
- Legislature’s seal on tradition of Muslim chief minister and Hindu governor
MUZAFFAR RAINA

[PHOTOS](From top) Securitymen throw stones at protesters in Srinagar, chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and governor NN Vohra on Wednesday. (PTI, AFP)

Srinagar, June 25: Law, tailor-made for trouble.

The violent protests in Kashmir over transfer of forest land to the Amarnath shrine board have their roots in laws that legitimised the state’s tradition of having a Muslim chief minister and a Hindu governor.

The state has only had Muslim chief ministers while all governors have been Hindus, except for high court Chief Justice V. Khalid, who officiated at Raj Bhavan for 10 days in 1984 when B.K. Nehru went abroad.

Over the last two decades, the government has created several Hindu and Muslim bodies for managing shrine properties of the two communities.

According to the laws framed for these bodies, the first choice for running the Hindu organisations is the governor while that for the Muslim ones is the chief minister.

“This is based on the presumption that the state’s governor will be a Hindu and the chief minister a Muslim,” said an officer in the law department.

Political observers say the laws that set up these shrine bodies had “communalised” the state’s two top posts.

Consider the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Act, 1988, moved by the then National Conference government. It says the state’s governor “shall be the ex-officio chairman” of the shrine board.

The governor also heads the other Hindu body, the Amarnath board, set up in 2000 by the National Conference.

Muslim bodies like the state wakf board and the wakf council, on the other hand, have the chief minister as their ex-officio chairperson. Both were set up in 2003 by the then PDP-led government.

The state acts have a second option, which, however, has never been exercised.

In case the governor is not a Hindu and the chief minister is a non-Muslim, each can nominate an eminent person from the other faith to head the bodies.

“This is more a customary proviso, though the division between the post of chief minister and governor is complete here,” said Anwal ul Islam Shaheen, a lawyer at Jammu and Kashmir High Court.

Shiekh Showkat, who teaches law at Kashmir University, said this “division” had no parallel.

“Why has the tradition of a Muslim chief minister and a Hindu governor been allowed to thrive here? You have states like Assam, Bengal or Kerala with a sizeable Muslim population, where no such tradition exists,” Showkat said.

Observers say the division, and its reflection in law books, has damaged the state’s secular fabric.

So deep-rooted is the divide that when the name of Wajahat Habibullah was making the rounds as a replacement for outgoing governor S.K. Sinha, groups like the BJP and the VHP in Jammu threatened an agitation against appointing a Muslim.

The observers say the chief minister, despite pressures of governance, devotes time to the wakf bodies and two Muslim universities the ruling coalition has set up.

Sinha — who handed over charge to N.N. Vohra today — was, on the other hand, deeply involved with the Hindu bodies.

It was Sinha who had secured the allotment of 40 hectares of forest land to build camps for Amarnath pilgrims, sparking the current unrest.

Sinha took keen interest in both the Amarnath and Vaishno Devi pilgrimages. He extended the duration of the Amarnath yatra by a month, a move that brought him into repeated confrontation with former chief minister and PDP patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.

He also came up with a Vaishno Devi University in Jammu, revived the ancient Shiv Khori yatra in Reasi by creating a separate board for it, promoted the Kailash Kund and the Machail yatra in Doda and was seeking an ordinance to set up a Shardapeeth University in Kashmir.

Sinha had made it clear that neither the Amaranth board nor the Vaishno Devi board was accountable to the legislature.