Saturday, June 02, 2012

Is Hurriyat reconciling to ‘change’ in Kashmir?

JAMMU, May 20: When a day after the opening of Darbar in the summer capital last fortnight Mr Omar Abdullah chose Budgam to be the venue of his first public meeting of the season in Kashmir, residents had a host of reasons to stay away. They were least interested in the Hurriyat’s politics—AFSPA, bunkers, inquiries, human rights—that has been acquired in second-hand by the Valley’s mainstream political outfits, including the opposition PDP and the ruling National Conference. People seemed to be equally disinterested in the local Hurriyat leader’s reaction. Ironically, Anjuman-e-Sharee Shia’an chief, Aga Syed Hassan, did not talk about Azadi, human rights and the UN resolutions. In his hard-hitting statement, Aga expressed his concern over Budgam’s poor development, while making his point that the ruling NC had failed to deliver on the developmental and governance front in the last eight years. None other than Aga’s son-in-law, Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi, has been functioning as MLA from Budgam since 2002. Since July 2009, Ruhullah has been functioning as a Cabinet Minister in Omar Abdullah’s government.

“Not a single lavatory has been built in Budgam. They have just given IAY (Indira Awas Yojana) units to a few in Budgam”, Aga Hassan lamented in his reaction to the Chief Minister’s visit and public meeting. “Just a handful of people attended their public meeting when they showcased the participation of someone related to the respected dynasty (of the Agas)”, he said with obvious reference to the son-in-law Ruhullah’s participation in CM’s rally. He said with and without insinuations that the NC’s MLA and Minister of Animal Husbandry, Aga Ruhullah, had beseeched Chief Minister to announce a developmental package for Budgam but Omar categorically ignored the MLA’s demand.

Added the Hurriyat stalwart: “Gone are the days when masses used to follow men simply due to their relationship to respected dynasties”. Without much equivocation and obfuscation, Aga Hassan suggested that Aga Ruhullah had failed to represent the people of Budgam and, as such, they deserved to be represented by a competent politician. Reading too much in Aga Hassan’s statement, residents insist that the Hurriyat leader had, for the first time, conveyed to the all concerned publicly that Ruhulla should be replaced in the forthcoming Assembly elections either by himself or by his son—Aga Mujtaba.

According to reports in wide circulation, but awaiting confirmation, relationship between the pro-Azadi father-in-law and the pro-India son-in-law has remained strained since last year. Many in the Valley’s political circles believe that the e-mail, that originated from the official ID of Aga’s Anjuman and claimed that a Minister of Omar Abdullah’s Cabinet had acquired a Rs 50 Lakh BMW out of “bribe money”, had been circulated from the Agas’ kitchen. That explosive email had led to speculations that the Hurriyat leader was projecting his own son as Ruhulla’s replacement in the next Assembly elections.

This watershed does not seem to be restricted to the Shia-dominated district headquarters of Budgam. Well around the timing of Aga Hassan’s hair-raising statement, another senior separatist leader and two-time Chairman of undivided Hurriyat Conference, Prof Abdul Gani Bhat, decreed at his first public rally in hometown Botengo (Sopore) that the UN resolutions of 1948 and 1949 could not provide a solution to the Kashmir problem. It has straightaway hit the hornets’ nest.

Prof Gani’s extraordinary projection of his son as his successor is also being widely interpreted as the separatist leader’s urge to send “real and competent peoples’ representatives” to the platform of governance and development. Like Budgam, Sopore has gone nearly unrepresented since the three-time MLA, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, resigned in 1989, alongwith three other MLAs of the Muslim United Front.

Those viewing politics as the art of the possible insist that even the most “cowardly” and reserved, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq was yearning for the change. “Status qua”, according to his various assertions, is not in the interest of the “freedom movement”. The young Mirwaiz, holding a substantial mass base in downtown Srinagar, has avoided to be expressive in the matters of electoral politics but people close to him swear that he too was not expecting miracles from the post-9/11 situation. Even in the pre-1990 decades, Mirwaiz dynasty has never shared the power directly.

As the history goes, Mirwaiz Umar’s father and founder-chairman of Awami Action Committee, Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq, spearheaded a pro-Pakistan sentiment for 40 years. During the same course, he became part of a Janata Party-led alliance and played host to Prime Minister Morarji Desai at Mirwaiz Manzil in 1977, only to pull down Sheikh Abdullah. Nine years later, Mirwaiz Farooq became a key protagonist of the Rijiv-Farooq-Farooq alliance, with arch rivals Dr Farooq Abdullah and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, when New Delhi decided to restore power to the NC. Two of Mirwaiz dynasty’s nominees—Pir Mohammad Shafi and Mohammad Shafi Khan—were installed as “independent” MLAs from Zadibal and Iddgah respectively with the support of NC and Congress in March 1987.

Significantly, since the failure of the street agitation of 2010, Mirwaiz Umar has been laying remarkable emphasis on the issues of development and governance. Lately, he has been seen inaugurating commercial complexes and asserting against the menace of corruption in the state government. Political observers are now expecting Mirwaiz to field proxies in the Municipal elections, much like his separatist colleague Abdul Gani Lone’s son, Sajjad Lone, allegedly did in the Assembly elections of 2002. It took Sajjad and his sister next six years to directly contest the elections, albeit unsuccessfully.
Reports from North Kashmir are suggestive of a changing political spectrum in Lone’s Kupwara district too. Two of late Gani Lone’s children have left no stone unturned to consolidate their father’s constituency in the last three years in particular. That both of them are particularly eying the estranged Peoples Conference activist and incumbent MLA Engineer Rashid’s segment of Langet is evident from the frequency of their public meetings and movement.

For the first time in the last 10 years, Lone’s successor son in the Hurriyat, Bilal Lone, is going to organize his father’s assassination ceremony in Langet. The Lone siblings have also successfully cut away some prominent activists from Er Rashid, NC and the PDP. For now, it appears that the Lones have reconciled to NC’s and PDP’s strength in Handwara and Lolab respectively but their electoral ambitions are stark in remaining three segments of the district—Langet, Kupwara and Karnah.

By the separatists’ own admissions, militants have assassinated family members of all the four “moderate” separatist leaders. Mirwaiz Umar’s father, Mirwaiz Farooq, was shot dead at his Nageen residence on May 21st, 1990. Five years later, Prof Gani’s brother, Mohammad Sultan Bhat, was gunned down in his village, Botengo. Aga Hassan’s brother and prominent Congress leader, Aga Syed Mehdi, was blown into pieces alongwith his driver and six PSOs when militants targets his vehicle in a landmine explosion near Kanihama, on Srinagar-Gulmarg Road, on November 25, 2001. Bilal’s father, Abdul Gani Lone, was gunned down on occasion of Mirwaiz Farooq’s assassination anniversary at Eidgah grounds in Srinagar on May 21, 2002.

There is a palpable breeze of the changing political spectrum in Kashmir since November 2010, when the myth of America’s support to the “Kashmir cause” exploded with Barack Obama’s speech in the Indian Parliament. But, expecting the Hurriyat to contest elections without green signal from Islamabad would be, least to say, foolish.

http://www.jammukashmirnow.org/is-hurriyat-reconciling-to-change-in-kashmir/

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