First, Omar Abdullah.
Omar Abdullah vows to bring back the symbols of Kashmir’sautonomy – Sadr e Riyasat, and Wazir e Azam. You laugh, you mock, or may besilently walk away from the spot – choice is all yours. May be it’s a seriousremark. I sit down, and mourn the fate of my politics. The murderer of mypolitics asks for the support of the murdered to resurrect the dead!
Even a tall story called myth is an inadequate container tohost a contradiction, a delusion, a fantasy, a misbelief, and finally anuntruth like National Conference. Late Sheikh Sahab and his party qualifies for a grand myth that explains howall the ingredients of life are mixed up to ultimately produce death. I wishOmar Abdullah made a candid confession on the massive wrongs committed by his tribe, and the patriarchs ofthe tribe. Politics is not necessarily about holding back the truth. Sometimes the only form of politics available isto unbosom all.
If anyone, Omar Abdullah and National Conference included,is honest about the interests of Kashmir, escaping the imperatives of themoment is no option. speaking truth, unalloyed, and then engaging with what ispossible, is the lone way forward. Those in the electoral politics, presumingthey mean what they say, can do a long term politics if only they strive tospeak straight, drop ambiguities, and prepare to bear the consequences of this.
By not changing the character of their politics, parties like NC refuse to breathe, when theyare actually dying. At this stage breathing will come with massivedifficulties, but that is the only way to keep living. The first breath offresh air would me be to confess that Kashmir’s politics is entered around itbeing a Muslim population that has civilisational, historic, and economicrelations with the rest of the Muslim world, starting the people across theLine.
In the name of Secularism and Nation-State these relationswere destroyed. This process of destruction should stop. And a new beginningmade to restore these relationships. When Omar Abdullah talks about retrievingthe symbols of Kashmir’s political agency – Sadr e Riyast and Wazir e Azam –who doesn’t know it is a wishful thinking, given the situation. But by talkingabout the substance of Kashmir’s politics – its being Muslim, and contagious toMuslims – new symbols of political agency can be created. If familial burden,and the party’s liabilities, are momentarily set aside, Omar Abdullah canreflect on this personally, and more seriously. He only has to discover it forhimself.
One caveat, though. Muslim doesn’t mean polarisation, andexclusivity. In this case it only means a democratic expression of a people,that would only contribute to democracy elsewhere. So care needs to be takennot to give grist to the communal forces in the region while fighting for therights of the Muslims of Kashmir.
Now, Amit Shah.
Amit Shah says that BJP will finally jump this red light ofArticle 370 and 35 A. They said the same things in the poll campaign for 2014elections. Had it been for them alone, they would one day gather all the Muslimpopulation of J&K and drown it in the ocean. Such is the level of hate,ignorance, and arrogance. Constitutionalists, and political commentatorssometimes aver that this bond of 370 and 35 A is indestructible, and if destroyedthe whole edifice – Kashmir’s Accession with India – will come down tottering. As if India’scontrol over Kashmir is really dependant on constitution, or any legalmorality. Amit Shah plays with theemotions of his own voters, and all these emotions are based on the incessantpropagation of lies by the political leadership of India, its intelligentsia,and its media. There are barely any exceptions in this spinning of falsehood.
But Amit Shah is not saying something he doesn’t mean. Thedanger that a major upheaval can becreated in the geography and demography of Kashmir is not a mere fantasy. The way India has acted in Kashmir, and theway Indian population is misinformed about Kashmir, such things are always apossibility.
This is more a political challenge than constitutional. Evenif it’s fought on the legal and constitutional turf, it is still a politicalbattle. Here too a reference to Kashmir’s Muslim character is the key. And thisMuslim is no extremism, no radicalisation, no violence, and no hatefor Hindu. It’s an articulation of afact that exists on ground, and an attempt to create the subsidiary facts ofpolitics without violating the primary fact. Here, Secularism, and Islamism,are false and dangerous references. Both need to be kept out.
No Hindu would benefit even by a speck if the politicalrights of Kashmiri Muslims are vandalised. Contrarily, their own spaces fordemocracy would shrink. So, politically speaking, a common Hindu living inIndia has his own reasons to stand for the rights of the Kashmiri Muslims.
Finally, Syed Ali Shah Geelani.
Geelani repeats his call for boycotting the upcomingParliamentary elections, and by extension all the elections to come. Even hemust have lost the count of how many time he stated this. The arguments furnished, the explanationsthrown up, and the ideological spin given to this all is not just unconvincing,but flatly vacuous.
There is always a potential consensus in a people; aconsensus present in a defused form. Political leadership makes it concrete,and functional. Things like boycott undermine that consensus, and distort itsfunctionality. Besides, it throws open the gates for violence. The two, as thedynamic goes, feed on each other.
Kashmir’s Muslim politics can speak only through a politicalleadership. Resistance politics, with its policies of Boycott, Hartal, and’Mainstream’ bashing has left nothing undone to decimate the institution ofpolitical leadership. Popular uprisings –2008, 2010, and 2016 – was an expression of the potential consensus ofKashmir’s Muslim politics. None of these threw up any political leadership. Andif things are to be learnt crude way, these uprisings were followed by hugevoter turn out. But we have decided not to learn lessons, and relish in ourincapacities, and ideological idiosyncrasies.
Meanwhile Kashmir’s Muslim politics is gasping for breath. Muslim as democracy, notfaith.