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EDITORIAL In 1993 when top secessionist leaders of Jammu and Kashmir were lodged in New Delhi’s Tihar jail, they got an opportunity to directly inter-act with each other. Very wisely they felt that they should have a joint political superstructure. This, it was realised, would gain respectability for their movement. Any struggle had to be based on logic and reasoning and not seen to be backed by the gun, they thought. There was a serious apprehension as well that their own role would be usurped by the militants if the latter continued to call the shots. Nobody would acknowledge them as members of the political class were they to play a secondary role. They concluded, therefore, that it was of utmost urgency that they should articulate their views and philosophy in a manner that the others were not frightened away. Broadly, All-Party Hurriyat Conference was born of such mature and subtle thinking. Its emergence was widely hailed as a well-intentioned measure to bring some sanity and stability to the State’s political scenario. Such warm reception was not entirely surprising. Although.......more |
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Kashmir: Peace
and violence By B. Raman The situation in Jammu & Kashmir, which was show-ing definitive signs of normalisation since the coming into office of a new coalition Government headed by Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in October last year, is again giving cause for concern, with a deterioration in the ground situation..........more Bharat Jhunjhunwala The Government of India has placed advertisements to discourage people from discriminating against AIDS patients. An AIDS patient is shown to be eating his lunch alone in a factory canteen. An enlightened worker sits and shares a meal with him.....more Judicial
system By V R Krishna Iyer It is pathetic, even bathetic, that our Indo-Anglian legal process and its personnel should have, so rapidly after Independence, forfeited credibility in courts because of (a) forensic inefficiency....more |
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EDITORIAL In 1993 when top secessionist leaders of Jammu and Kashmir were lodged in New Delhi’s Tihar jail, they got an opportunity to directly inter-act with each other. Very wisely they felt that they should have a joint political superstructure. This, it was realised, would gain respectability for their movement. Any struggle had to be based on logic and reasoning and not seen to be backed by the gun, they thought. There was a serious apprehension as well that their own role would be usurped by the militants if the latter continued to call the shots. Nobody would acknowledge them as members of the political class were they to play a secondary role. They concluded, therefore, that it was of utmost urgency that they should articulate their views and philosophy in a manner that the others were not frightened away. Broadly, All-Party Hurriyat Conference was born of such mature and subtle thinking. Its emergence was widely hailed as a well-intentioned measure to bring some sanity and stability to the State’s political scenario. Such warm reception was not entirely surprising. Although a conglomeration of secessionist outfits of different hues, it had seemed it would fill in a vacuum and become amenable to reason gradually. National Conference, the premier political outfit of the State, was lying dormant. At that critical moment, it had authored its own irrelevance. People’s Democratic Party was nowhere in sight. Fear had hung low in the air that in the absence of a political platform the Kashmiri society would drift towards complete anarchy. Hurriyat Conference had generated such hopes that when it inaugurated its office in the national capital, many top nationalist leaders, including Mr Inder Kumar Gujral who became the Prime Minister later, were present to hail the move. Indeed, the appointment of Mirwaiz Moulvi Umar Farooq as the first chairman of Hurriyat Conference had come as a surprise. He was at that time just like any other teenager totally unaware of the nuances of the tough and murky politics of the State. Cruel circumstances had pushed him into the inferno. One thought that given their vast knowledge and experience either Syed Ali Shah Geelani or the late Abdul Ghani Lone would be the first chairman of the conglomeration. Was Mirwaiz given the baton to mollify him and his loyal supporters following the assassination of his illustrious father? One theory was that his religious status had tilted the scales in his favour. Since that pre-emptied the possibility of his arrest, he would be best placed to guide the movement with the help of senior associates who would be in and out of jail. That was the argument behind the scene. Subsequently, while Mr Geelani had become the chairman, the charismatic Lone was denied the job — the practice of unanimous selection for the post was abandoned in his case. Instead, an election was forced which he had lost by one vote. This electoral outcome was the genesis of one of the most spectacular political battles in the State. Never the one to take a defeat lying low, Lone took up the theme that Jammu and Kashmir was a political problem and that foreign mercenaries had no role in it beyond extending a helping hand. This had angered the pro-Pakistan lobby. Mr Geelani retorted that it was a religious dispute, implying thereby that it was a continuation of the two-nation theory, and that the foreign militants were allies in the campaign; even today he sticks to this position and says that Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad are ‘friends’. Lone had showed rare nerve and guts in reiterating his stand in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad and ‘Azad’ Kashmir’s capital Muzaffarrabad, the base camp of terrorist organisations. He had come around to the view that a dialogue among all regions of the undivided State as it had existed in 1947 and between India and Pakistan alone could lead to a lasting solution. For his courageous stance he had to make the supreme sacrifice when he was gunned down in Srinagar’s Idgah ground last year. Small wonder that many countries, including the United States, which were appreciatively watching his peace efforts, had reacted with anger and anguish to his dastardly murder. The Lone-Geelani tussle had exposed the false ceiling over Hurriyat Conference. If the roof had not fallen, it was because Lone had carried out his fight within the conglomeration itself. With this background in view, it sounds ironic that Mr Geelani has now formalised split in Hurriyat Conference. He has declared himself chairman of ‘the real Hurriyat’ in opposition to the one headed by Moulvi Abbas Ansari. As discussed in these columns earlier, the organisation has faced multiple splits with Mr Shabbir Ahmad Shah having parted company long ago and Jamaat-e-Islami and Jammu-Kashmir Liberation Front keeping all their options open. What is revealing is that down the line Hurriyat constituents are fragmenting. Lone’s People’s Conference had split long ago with the slain leader’s old associates, Mr Ghulam Mohammad Hubbi and Mr Ghulam Ahmad Gulzar, parting company with the heirs, Mr Sajjad Lone and Mr Bilal Lone, who have stayed put with Moulvi Abbas Ansari. Mr Hubbi and Mr Gulzar have declared themselves to be the real PC and joined Mr Geelani. A section of People’s League, which was a member of the undivided Hurriyat executive, has done likewise. The latest blow has been dealt to Muslim Conference of former Hurriyat chairman Prof Abdul Ghani Bhat. Mr Ghulam Nabbi Sumjhi has formalised the split in Muslim Conference by removing the Professor from the post of chairman ‘to restore the dignity and authority of the party’s constitution’. He has ‘dissolved’ all district and tehsil units of the organisation. As is well known, Mr Bhat has aligned himself with Moulvi Abbas Ansari. Mr Sumjhi has moved close to Mr Geelani. Though there is no formal division so far, there is continuing turmoil within Jamaat-e-Islami. A significant section of the fundamentalist organisation remains loyal to Mr Geelani who is one of its main architects. A fall-out from the division in the Hurriyat is that Moulvi Abbas Ansari has condemned Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) for having invited Mr Geelani to its forthcoming meeting. His observation that the organisation has hurt the interests of the Muslims more than serving them shows his pique and anger. Why is it that Hurriyat Conference and all its erstwhile constituents are in such an undisguised discomfort? Had they stayed together, they would have realised the tremendous opportunity the post 9/11 global scenario had created for them to play a positive and meaningful role under one umbrella organisation. Is it because of the decline in the militants’ gunpower — notwithstanding a couple of serious terrorist attacks recently — that they feel that the united Hurriyat Conference has lost its real strength to dictate people? In that event, is this not proved that they have no ideological thrust and support? This point is further driven home by lukewarm public response to their recent strike calls. Clearly each constituent of Hurriyat Conference has come around to the view that it should somehow retain its own constituency in the hope of seeing better days again. An idea that was supposed to lend credibility to political leaders and move the people has thus been sucked away as if in a whirlpool of the Wullar lake. |
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