Kashmir and Politics

Book

Title: Farooq of Kashmir

Authors: Ashwini Bhatnagar & R C Ganjoo

Publisher: Fingerprint, New Delhi, 2023

Pages: 330

This book is much more than a biography of Farooq Abdullah. It is a short history of the trouble-torn Kashmir. Though Farooq remains at the centre of the history, his father Sheikh Abdullah is given ample space in the first few chapters. Towards the end of the book, Farooq’s son Omar gets due attention too.

Kashmir went through a lot of pain and misery ever since India became independent. Its political leaders as well as their religious counterparts were mostly responsible for all that pain and misery. Add to that the nefarious role played by the neighbouring country of Pakistan.

Pakistan has been a thorn in the very heart of Kashmir right from Independence. The political leaders and religious terrorists of that country have left no stone unturned to make Kashmir their own. Understanding Kashmir’s unique condition, independent India had given the state certain constitutional rights and privileges. Unfortunately, the rulers of that state didn’t make proper use of those rights and privileges. Like most politicians anywhere, especially in India, Kashmir’s leaders failed to ensure the welfare of the ordinary people and disgruntlement crept in sooner than later.

When religion gets involved with politics, things become uncontrollable. Kashmir, the erstwhile paradise on earth, now became sheer hell. Farooq Abdullah was the dominant political leader of the state in those hellish years.

With secular education, a degree in medicine and some practice as a physician in London where he married Mollie, a woman of a different nationality and religion, Farooq could have redefined politics in Kashmir. He wanted to. But he failed. This book tells us that he did bring a different sort of energy into politics. He was a “fresh-faced, sprightly leader (whose) physical energy was in sharp contrast to that of other politicians in the Valley…. He was informal; he had no patience with protocol and officious ways….”

The book informs us also that Farooq wanted to ban communal and secessionist parties like the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the Mahazi Azadi, the J&K Liberation Front and the Muslim League in the state. The RSS was frantically active in Jammu and nearby areas. Its main demand was the abrogation of Article 370. The Muslim organizations, on the other hand, challenged the validity and legality of Kashmir’s accession to India.

“A mouse is challenging an elephant,” BJP vice president Ram Jethmalani scoffed at Farooq when he tried to level a gun at the belligerent Hindu outfit. The Muslim leaders didn’t like Farooq’s secularism either.

Sanity has hardly any place in politics, especially in a country like India the roots of whose civilisation are being rediscovered in prehistoric times. Farooq failed. Naturally.

This is not to say that Farooq was a saint or something of the sort. Not at all. He had his own personal limitations and drawbacks. Plenty of them too. Who doesn’t? That’s not the point. We can belittle anyone by highlighting their personal imperfections. As the present dispensation has been doing to Jawaharlal Nehru. The point here is that sane intentions and efforts are likely to fail in Indian politics because vast majority of people are insane, driven by primeval scriptures which they have never read in the first place.

The book ends with the violent enforcement of peace on the state by Amit Shah and Narendra Modi. Maybe, what they did was a genius act. Only history will prove that. As of now, it looks like there is indeed peace in that part of India. A lot of people died in the process of bringing about that peace. Many are in prisons. Many are transformed beyond recognition.

On the last pages of the book, we meet Omar Abullah on his way from Hari Niwas sub-jail to his family home. It is 24 Mar 2020. He was in jail for 232 days. Part of the process of bringing peace to Kashmir. “232 days after my detention,” the book quotes Omar, “today I finally left Hari Niwas. It’s a very different world today to the one that existed on 5 August 2019.” Kashmir is peaceful. But people there are confined to their houses. They are fighting life and death. It’s a peaceful Kashmir, but.

“The person who went into detention centre on 5 Aug 2019 [the day on which Article 370 was scrapped and Kashmir was cut up into union territories] is not the person who came out,” Omar said in an interview later. Earlier he did what he thought was right and good. But now, he says, he’s not sure where he is. He finds a people around him who don’t trust their government anymore. Who don’t expect anything from their government. But there is peace.