A seasoned politician and parliamentarian Satya Pal Malik is the new Governor of Jammu and Kashmir. His political background propelled him to the most challenging assignment in the State when Kashmir is in a new mode of resistance.
Malik has spelled out “winning hearts and minds of the people of Kashmir” as the starting point of his journey in Kashmir at the time when he will be both the head of the State and the government, as J&K is currently under Governor’s rule. So he would have to translate his words into action. His political acumen should help him through. That is the expectation.
His predecessor N N Vohra set high quality benchmarks in invoking the accountability and transparency in the administration and the system. Though he was a bureaucrat to the core, the way he brought about peace in 2008 when the State was falling apart on the communal and regional lines, it spoke of his skills in negotiating things for a better future for Kashmir. The man could have ruled the state longer but he worked hard and restored the democratic institution of the State Legislative Assembly. His holding of the Assembly elections in those difficult and polarized times and events is a uniquely remarkable development. That is not history, it is a lesson for everyone in the politics for loving peoples’ representative democracy over individual’s rule. He has many feats to his credit, the biggest, however, is his love for zealously guarding the sanctity of the institutions. That was his style of working to take everybody along with a primary mission to restore peace and stability in Jammu and Kashmir.
Kashmir was always in need of peace since the armed insurgency erupted in 1989, and there were different approaches applied by the men who assumed high offices of Governor and Chief Minister. Whether they were able to achieve that or not are a long story and it will take several volumes of history to document the same.
On January 19, 1990, when Jagmohan took over as Governor for a second time (earlier,he was Governor of the State for five years from 1984 to 1989 and courted a life time controversy by dismissing an elected government of Farooq Abdullah and installing a government of defectors) had declared rather loudly,” I have come here ( J&K) as a nursing orderly..” The way his stint ended in May 1990 following a massacre of the mourners grieved over the assassination of Mirwaiz Moulvi Mohammad Farooq, showed it clearly that his words had failed to percolate to the security forces or there was no strict monitoring of the situation. Those were the grim days and he left behind a legacy of more violence and massacres. Kashmir never recovered from that.
There was a huge gap between his words and what happened in the Valley under his watch in those five months in the year when the whole idea of democracy revival died for more than six years, so much so that the Government of India could not hold 1991 parliamentary elections in the whole of the State along with the rest of the country.
Things today are much different from 1990 and also 2008 when the State was threatening to fall apart. But the challenges have not diminished as the militancy has turned more inwards but with a strong external focus. The partisan approach to the issues has stirred the turmoil and that partisanship has now left Kashmir in a crisis of different type – partisanship is being met with more partisanship. This ignores the perils of losing the long-term gains for short-term considerations.
Malik knows many political stalwarts of Kashmir,. Farooq Abdullah is one among them. He was also associate of late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, a life time champion of “healing touch” in Kashmir, the legacy that his daughter Mehbooba Mufti sought to work on in a mission mode. By making his closeness to late Mufti Sayeed known to media, he was hinting that the healing touch would be a guiding factor for him during his tenure in the Raj Bhavan.
The new Governor has an opportunity to utilize his political skills to take everyone along and make good on his commitment. That is important and critical for his success. But the point that Kashmir has confronted time and again is the governance deficit is at the root of many problems that have assumed the shape of an unresolved issue. That requires strong administrative skills and political will – the script has already been invoked in practice for the past few weeks.