Dwarika Prasad Sharma
Hurriyat leaders met with their comeuppance when Irfan Sheikh, a cousin of Qaisar Ahmed, in emotion-charged tones berated them for making propaganda capital from the dead boy’s body.
Qaisar Ahmed by now has become a household name in Kashmir. He died after being run over by a CRPF vehicle on which stone-throwing boys had menacingly borne down, and they would have lynched the driver if he had not managed to speed away.
The Hurriyat team, sent by Syed Ali Shah Geelani, had come to the boy’s home to mourn his death. In a moment of hubris for them, Irfan said that they swore by Nizam-e-Mustafa, but while the boy’s body should have been piously laid to rest in a grave soon after his death, it had been audaciously laid out for exhibition to score propaganda points.
Calling the Hurriyat leaders Janus-faced, he said that, while they were congratulating Shabir Shah, whose daughter was in DPS, for her good performance in exams, they had been lecturing others not to send their children to Christian missionary schools.
Irfan’s punchline was: “Now people are frightened of you!”
To sum up, he said that the Hurriyat leaders were the devil’s advocates, funeral junkies and self-serving roodalis— a pretentious pack directing the people to a destructive path, while choosing for themselves and their families a cosy life.
The separatist leaders have no qualms about being protected by the Indian state at a high cost, and at the same time accepting funds from Pakistan for their own comfortable lifestyle and for channelizing them to terrorists and subversives. Geelani, while issuing poll boycott calls, had been drawing ex-legislator pension, till his perfidy was exposed. According to a published report, another separatist, Ghulm Nabi Sumbji, has claimed the enhanced pension, and been granted it, with arrears! Said to be the richest member of the Geelani Hurriyat, he has also been issuing poll boycott calls and professing non-acceptance of the National Constitution. Money is honey, dear, and let the claimed principles be hanged! It would be in order to publicly expose their shenanigans.
Is the Indian state protecting the separatist leaders against “Indian agents”? Believe me, if anyone of them were to be bumped off by terrorists, they would blame “Indian agents”, though their own bush telegraph would pinpoint the perpetrators.
The Middle Kashmir, the silent majority, should take a lesson from Irfan’s diatribe and try to assert themselves. In fact, to the various interlocutors who have held talks in Kashmir, it was suggested that, apart from with the usual suspects, they should hold talks with the youth, and also try to find out why the silent majority, who want a peaceful environment, and who are convinced that aazadi is only a futile dream, do not speak up.
The Hurriyat leaders, as is their wont in such cases, did not out of hand label him as an “Indian agent”. The circumstances were such that they would have done that at their own peril. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, though, took to twitter to go hammer and tongs after the national (“Indian”) media for playing up Irfan’s denunciation to gain, what he called, viewership points. He said: “The Indian media repeatedly exposes their shallowness and frustration… It is deplorable that this boy (Irfan) is being made a tool by this insensitive media in a vicious propaganda campaign.”
His moronic and misplaced use of the word “frustration” guides us how seriously to take his rant. In fact, he poured forth his own frustration, as the stock of the separatists is coming down among the people as well as the violent youth. The Mirwaiz has been in the forefront of those who have been bemoaning the long suspension of talks with the separatists. He has also been futilely talking of a magic formula for solving the Kashmir issue that he claims he has up his sleeves.
It is, however, all for the good that the separatist leaders are inclined, though cautiously, to accept the Union Government’s offer of talks. They went into a huddle and put it on the vine that they wanted a “clear agenda” before formally accepting the proposal. One report, probably floated by a Kashmir news agency, said that, among the “conditions” indicated by them, was a prior acceptance by the Union government that Kashmir was “disputed”.
This sounds naive, if the “condition” has, indeed, been advanced. The Hurriyat leaders themselves have always insisted on “unconditional” talks, so they should not now make any talks contingent on pre-conditions. Besides, this is a good chance for them to refloat their sinking ship.
The separatists have been claiming for themselves a prime position in any dialogue on the Kashmir issue, saying that it derives from their disputing India’s “claim” over Kashmir, and not accepting the Indian Constitution. They argue that the elected representatives of the people and the mainline parties are not germane as they accept the Indian Constitution. This specious logic is blasted by the mainline parties thus: Can any separatist leader validate his claim of “speaking for the people of Kashmir” by winning even a municipal election?
If they have gained any experience over the years, they would know that starting talks and maintaining the tempo has its own rewards. Infantile tantrums do not work in a talks process. Nor does any claim of exclusivity, when there are other contenders.
Whenever a wider process of talks has been set in motion, the separatist leaders have sought to mount a high horse. They little realise that a psychologist would call this inferiority complex. The fragile state-protected erstwhile gunman Yasin Malik seeks to ride the highest horse when he urges talks in a third country, like the ones between the Union Government and the “moderate” faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, the Isak-Muivah group. The faction is, however, not being overly pampered by the Union Government, as its call not to hold the February assembly elections was ignored. There was a 75 percent turnout in Nagaland.
At every election time, the separatists issue boycott calls and engineer violent incidents, but they are held anyway. Critics say that turnout figures should not make the Government complacent. Well, “the biggest joke that the Devil can play on the people is for them to believe that he is not there”. What would be the reaction of the separatists if, by their own interpretation, any talks process, if and when started was seen to flounder? Will they let loose the jehadis and the child stone-throwers? It is doubtful now that the separatists can directly influence these groups for action. But circumstances can be created by stealth by Pakistan to push them into action.
To extend the macabre joke that “Pakistan would fight India till the last Kashmiri”, I would say that the separatists would not balk at fighting India till the last stone-thrower.
(The writer a Senior Journalist)
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