Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
Given its present never-say-die spirit the Bharatiya Janata Party has announced its arrival on the poll scene in the Kashmir valley with a full-throated war cry : Kashmir ko Mufti-mukt, Abdullah mukt karaana hai. As if the two were evil spirits and the BJP was the chosen tool to get rid of them. The tone was the same; querulous, self-righteous, the one which had been the leitmotif of the Modi campaign in the parliamentary polls : Bharat ko Gandhi-mukt karana hai.
Assuming the BJP’s “mission plus 44” succeeds what exactly would that mean for Kashmir. Given the original BJP song that would, to my mind, mean a woefully divided State, granted that Abdullahs and the Muftis are evil and therefore worthy of elimination. What next? Let the Muslim majority valley stew in its own juices; Jammu will wallow in its newly recovered Hindu-pride and in Ladakh, the Buddhists, a highly endangered species, now would manage their own “lamadom”, even if there wasn’t much of the laity left. Get rid of the Muftis and Abdullahs.
The chief trumpeteer was Mr. Ram Madhav, senior RSS pracharak, recently named General Secretary of the Sangh’s political arm, the BJP. His cry : plus 44 is just enough to reach the halfway mark. The goal may to begin with have seemed unrealistic but given Mr. Narendra Modi’s sense of commitment very achievable really. Mr. Modis foot soldiers in Jammu, led by his own Minister of State, the untiring Dr. Jitendra Singh had done the sums well ; Jammu about 42 (if not 44) ,L adakh all four seats, Kashmir valley six to seven seats. Adds up to some 53 seats. This, when the party needs just 44 plus, to announce its emergence as the State’s ruling party in the Indian Unions only Muslim majority State.
Since Ram Madhavji was also kind enough to announce in Srinagar that his party didn’t care whether a Hindu or a Muslim headed the new political dispensation in the State. That clearly may not have been in accord with an earlier assertion made by the top BJP leadership in Jammu that it was not a constitutional requirement for the State to always have a Muslim Chief Minister. Ram Madhav did add a new dimension to his two-day first round visit to Srinagar : our objective in Kashmir is to give an Abdullah- and -Mufti mukt Jammu and Kashmir, just as Modi’s objective in the parliamentary poll had been to make India Gandhi mukt. (An India rid of Gandhis).
Ram Madhav’s objective is very limited in that sense : a Kashmir minus the Abdullahs and muftis. A jingoistic campaign, you may call it but who cares when the stakes are so high. It’s my way or the highway, Ram Madhav would seem to suggest even as he promised a solid campaign in the valley.
Times surely are changing. Reassuring as Mr. Ram Madhav might have sounded in Srinagar in a particular context; the truth is that his party had been fishing for some known Kashmiri names to claim as its own. After all Atal Bihari had not hesitated to have the present Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah as a Minister in his Cabinet. Or, for successive governments, including V. P. Singh’s offering senior ministerial positions to the former Chief Minister of the State and Home Minister of India, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. How low can campaigning go!
Now at the dawn of the Modi era when the need had arisen to give the party’s campaign in the State a Muslim face it hit upon the youthful visage of Sajjad Lone, the maverick lone leader follower of the People’s Party, founded by his late father, Abdul Ghani Lone. Lone senior had once served as a Congress Minister in the State and was disenchanted with local politics, enough for him to form the Peoples Conference only to switch later to the Hurriyet; he was assassinated by the separatists.
Sajjad, as a younger man, married the POK leader Amanullah Khan’s daughter and returned to Srinagar, to try his hand at politics. His brother has continued to be with Hurriyet while Sajjad did unsuccessfully try to become a legislator. Those who I know him are not surprised that he volunteered through local BJP to seek an audience with the Prime Minister.
This has apparently sent his spirits soaring and in the process given an impetus to a few marginalized political workers to stake a claim to fame, political office, if possible. Lone is not the only politician to have thrown his hat into the ring; there are old-timers, including a serving Minister Ghulam Hassan Mir, engineer Rashid etc as well.
One of them was alleged to have been on the Army’s payroll as a “Mr. Fixit” of sorts. The allegation was made by then Army Chief V.K.Singh, currently serving as a Junior Minister in the Modi government. All fingers had then pointed at Mr. Mir as the man in question, who, incidentally, is popular in his own right and always considered an efficient Minister.
Without getting further mired in the marginal, the poll scene has really warmed up in the valley. At least that is how it looks, even from a distance. It is a given in the valley situation that the BJP is keen to put up candidates in few seats considered winnable, particularly those which have a substantial migrant Kashmiri Pandit vote. The Party’s support is on offer to those willing to move towards it when the moment of reckoning arrives.
A Mir or a Rashid may make for easy pickings or so it is believed. The contest in the valley, by accounts available to me, suggest a virtual decimation of the National Conference with the People’s Democratic Party maintaining its sway in the valley. Party leaders are very hopeful of picking up a few seats from the other side of the Banihal range, oddly seen as a part of Jammu province. The PDP has been campaigning hard in the Jammu region including Doda, Kishtwar, Baderwah and nearby regions, not to exclude its presence in Rajouri, Poonch etc.
If you ask me, it will be a pity if the BJP’s tactics in the valley or in the State as a whole do succeed. Like it or not, the PDP, the National Conference, Congress and even the BJP have always been considered mainstream parties, including by the peers of the present BJP leadership .In more recent years, of the local parties the People’s Democratic Party has demonstrated its ability to identify with local concerns in the entire State without ruffling ultra sensitive feathers in other parts of the country. The BJP, in conclusion, would serve the nation’s interests better should it choose not to be too strident in its criticism of the local mainstream. It will only lead to further alienation of a people still struggling to come to terms with the aftermath of the disastrous floods.
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