Kashmir: New equations

With the elections drawing nearer, political activity is centred round the possibility of a merger between the National Conference and the Awami National Conference. New names are being thrown up. But the problem is that no coalition in the state has ever worked.

By R C Ganjoo

With the elections in Jammu and Kashmir drawing closer, political activity in this sensitive state appears to be stirring, with a series of meetings being organised by political and separatist parties. But the state’s political history shows that rallies and crowds have never been indicators of any party’s strength. Kashmir saw massive crowds and political demonstrations in the 1977 elections when Mirwaiz Farooq, with the full support of the then ruling Janata Party at the Centre, was pitted against the monumental Sheikh Abdullah’s National Conference. The state’s silent masses put their trust againin the towering personality of Sheikh Abdullah and handed him an absolute majority. Today, that silent majority is waiting for history to repeat itself.

There is a political vacuum in Jammu and Kashmir, and it has to be filled. The vacuum was created following the division of the state’s premier political party, the National Conference, in 1984. Sheikh Abdullah’s son-in-law, G M Shah, formed the Awami National Conference (ANC). It was then that G M Shah and Dr Farooq Abdullah, Sheikh Abdullah’s son, began scrambling to appropriate the Sheikh’s legacy. The rivalry might trickle down to Sheikh Abdullah’s grandchildren, Farooq’s son Omar, and G M Shah’s son Muzaffar Shah.

One of the major debates in political circles both within the state and nationally is whether the NC and the ANC will ever come together. The main obstacle to such a merger is the issue of who then would head the National Conference. Omar Abdullah, the NC’s current chief, has been a successful Union minister but had failed to carve a niche for himself in state politics, despite the experienced machinations of his father.

On the hand, Muzaffar Shah, an executive who has trained with Tata Steel, is adept in the art of statecraft, an inheritance from his father. A strong-headed personality such as Muzaffar could pose a threat to Omar Abdullah. Muzaffar has already honed his claws on the strop of state politics—he has gone on record that he holds his maternal uncle, Dr Farooq Abdullah, responsible for having wrecked the National Conference in 1982, and his father for having backed out of the 2002 elections. The ANC’s absence from 2002 elections gave birth to the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) of Mufti Mohd Sayeed.

Another factor that might trip up a possible NC-ANC merger is that no political alliance in Kashmir has ever worked. The present political structure in the state, the Congress-PDP coalition, rests on an extremely precarious foundation.

Although, to its credit, the NC is a cadre-based organisation, it scuttled its own public image due to its poor performance when it was in power. Furthermore, its alliances with Rajiv Gandhi, with Mirwaiz Farooq (of the Awami Action Committee) in 1987, and later with the Bharatiya Janaya Party-led government at the Centre raised questions about its ideological integrity.

The inherently unstable nature of all coalition arrangements in Kashmir was understood well by the late Indira Gandhi after the so-called Indira-Sheikh accord fiasco of 1975. Unwilling to take further chances following the NC split in 1984, she backed the politically and administratively experienced G M Shah to independently run the affairs of the state, without sharing power with the Congress. But Mufti Mohd Sayeed, the then state Congress chief wanted to share power in the state, which fact pitted him against G M Shah.

Indira Gandhi’s assassination gave Mufti Mohd Sayeed and his supporters the leeway to ratchet up opposition to Shah. With the support of Rajiv Gandhi, Arun Nehru and Makhanlal Fotedar worked against G M Shah. After communal riots in his hometown of Anantnag in 1986, G M Shah quit in disgust. A political vacuum has existed in the state since then.

Kashmir watchers feel that the revival of the National Conference still has the potential to haul Kashmir by the scruff out of the present turmoil. There is every likelihood that the two daughters of Sheikh Abdullah, Khalida Shah, wife of G M Shah, and Suriaya, a well-known academician, will have a role to play. Neither needs an introduction to Kashmir politics and may well prove to be the trump card.

In the ongoing political arrangements, much of it under the radar, there is talk of the formation of a ‘third front’. The People’s Democratic Forum’s (PDF) Hakim Yaseen, who is presently transport minister in the coalition government, has been trying hard to float such a front carved out of the PDP, the Congress and separatist parties.

However, were the NC and the ANC to jointly throw up a new leadership in Kashmir, it would leave not a smidgen of a role for the PDP, the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference, and the ‘third front’.