People from various communities, faiths join Christians in celebrating the festival
With Christmas celebrations gradually picking up in the city, Christians, who feel more secure and safe in the heterogeneous society of Jammu, say that people from various communities, faiths and beliefs join them to celebrate the festival.
Domes, minarets and tombs of temples, gurdwaras, mosques, Sufi shrines and monasteries in Jammu stand testimony to Jammu’s heterogeneous character, which has withstood many onslaughts in the past to polarise it.
“While successive governments never bothered to give the community its share, we have mingled completely with the people from various communities and faiths in Jammu city. They, be Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Muslims or Jains, join us in the Xmas celebrations,” said Mark Gill, a community leader.
Jammu city is fast turning into a cosmopolitan city. Festivals like Chath Pooja, Ganesh Chaturthi, Christmas, Gurpurb, Eid and other festivals of the country have not only found their way to the temple city, but also are celebrated in a big way every year.
The miniscule Christian community living in Kashmir had recently expressed concern over its safety and stated that it was leading a quiet life and feeling neglected.
While the 2011 Census stated that the population of Christians had witnessed an increase of around 75 per cent from 2001 with 11,857 of them living in Kashmir, members of the community maintained that they were “on the verge of extinction”.
Mark Gill said, “Though we till date have not received our due share from the successive governments in the state, we never harboured any fear of being unsafe or insecure in Jammu city.
“Jammu has a rich tradition of hospitality accepting every community with open arms and that is the reason why refugees from PoJK and West Pakistan and internally displaced Kashmiri Pandits have settled down here,” said Gill.
Another leader Emanuel Peter, who also echoed similar views, said till date the Christian community had only two MLCs in the state government.
“When Mir Qasim was the Chief Minister of J&K from 1971 to 1975, we had Wazir Massih as an MLC in his government and then in Farooq Abdullah’s government we had another Christian MLC, SM Gill,” said Peter.
The brazen discrimination by successive regimes in the last 68 years was evident from the statistics, he said.
“While our community remains neglected by the government, we have no fears of being unsafe in Jammu city,” he said.
There had been a time before 1990s when the Christian community felt little worried over certain development at that time, but since then Jammu city had come a long way and today every community lived here in a complete harmony, he said.
Some hawkish elements were present in every society, but Jammu by and large had set an example of complete harmony and had lived up to it character of being secular, he added.
Another Christian said their community in Kashmir had been living in a shell.
