Horse-trading on a scale unknown thus far, that was the screaming voice over the idiot box, the voice of the prime bidder who had chosen to cry foul; drawing heavily on the BJP’s colorful reservoir of expletives the BJP had deployed all its resources looking, eagle-eyed, for the Pakistani hand behind things going wrong in the Stat. The saffron bhakts meanwhile have been very active in the field, resources and official patronage never a lack. Ram Madhav, the RSS prtacaharak turned BJP General Secretary, is rarely a shout away from the twin capitals, and eternally engaged is he in strategy sessions involving security chiefs, the civil administration and the Raj Bhavan, routinely of course. The principal obsession is to silence the protesting valley, the saffron strategists are convinced somehow that anything that moves the other side of the Banihal (the valley) must be seen as the enemy. A pity that this should be so. Guided by the RSS appointed Ram Madhav, the Jammu man, his overworked vocal chords, is matchless when it comes yelling, screaming, enough to send you running out of your own living room if, God forbid, the TV is on. The loudest of the Indian Army’s trumpeters would finds himself rendered voiceless when the local Jammu BJP shouting brigade gets screaming. And on top this you have Madhav telling you that Kashmiri leaders, separatists as much as mainstream, have raised the political tempo in the valley as a quid pro quo — Pak money speaking, the short message from the sanctimonious Madhav. And when someone dares to call his bluff, as did Omar Abdullah the day before, he sheepishly slips in an apology via twitter. Time really, the State leadership calls this bluff. Forgetting that the BJP-appointed Governor of the State, Mr. Sat Pal Malik was by his own admission unaware of the “crisis”: the daring but belated move by the three mainstream parties in the valley – the National Conference, PDP and the Congress offering to come together in the suspended State Assembly to form an alternative to the late PDP-BJP alliance. The Jammu BJP trumpeters till then had stuck to the theme that Sajjad Lone, the lone People’s Conference legislator from the valley backed by the disgruntled PDP leader Muzaffar Baig, who moments earlier had blown his own trumpet on Sarkari and non Sarkari TV, looking very angry. The three-party initiative in Jammu and Kashmir has brought into the open at last that they have a degree of cement in their common resistance to the attempts to tinker with Articles 35 and370 of the Constitution. For Kashmir-based parties the Articles are indeed an Article of Faith. Facts also pointed to another direction: the mainstream had nothing to worry after choosing to close their ranks for the moment. In fact Jammu and Kashmir may have much to gain should all these mainstream parties and their ilk come to a common platform. Given its size and population the State could well do with a much lesser number of parties, if you will.
Governor Malik for all his long experience chose to make himself unavailable to be burdened with the offer of an alternative government by three valley parties together, making for a comfortable majority, way beyond the minimum 44 MLAs required; BJP’s tally : 27. For Mr. Malik’s political background, he had done his round of grooming in so-called secular parties before putting on the saffron garb. The reborn Hindu has told us – or, so he told to an unbelieving TV audience – the lack of action on the former CM Mufti’s letter was due to his having declared Eid –e-Milad as a holiday in Raj Bhavan. His office remained close; and hence the non-receipt by him of letters sent by the mainstream parties. Mr. Malik felt peeved that the Muslim leaders, signatories to their letter, did not realize the Prophet’s Birthday was a holiday. Poor Mr. Malik didn’t even have his “rasoaiya”(chef cum valet) at the well-populated Raj Bhavan. He did have time though later to turn down the request to revive the State Assembly, a decision which New Delhi had deferred for weeks in the hope of Sajjad Lone and the BJP’s own of loudmouths would achieve the miracle of a majority through horse-trading. Unfortunately that must now seem so long ago. Truth to tell the sudden decisions to dissolve the Assembly has chicken written all over it. BJP had continued to hope that after establishing a toe-hold for itself in the State by manipulating the Mufti father-daughter combo it would work towards realizing its overall agenda for Kashmir. Yet while manipulating its way to power is a pet ploy of the saffronites they must realize others too can play the game. They had a taste of it in Karnataka recently. The bluff was called in Karnataka and hence the need for more pliable governors. When Malik was appointed much was made of the State being liberated from rule by generals and former bureaucrats. The true meaning of a political governor may just have been articulated. Yet again to be sure. For there are instances galore of Governors having failed to uphold their constitutional role.
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