Kashmir calls: six voices

Manisha Sobhrajani met leaders of the Kashmir movement to ascertain their views on the future of the Valley. Moderate and hardliner alike, they speak of India reneging
on the dialogue process. If anything, the mood in the Valley is becoming more aggressive.

In an attempt to gather the thoughts of people in the embattled Kashmir Valley on what they feel might be the future of Kashmir, I spoke to six people who represent different aspects of Kashmiri public opinion. Each either influences a majority of Kashmiris or has a significant impact on them, whether it is Aasiya Andrabi, chief of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat, who has a newfound status in Kashmiri society after she made headlines for her protests and statements against those involved in the sex scandal in the Valley, or Bashir Manzar, who runs the local daily, Kashmir Images, and gives a balanced reportage of the daily happenings in Kashmir. Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, Yasin Malik, and Omar Abdullah are Kashmiri leaders rather better known outside the state.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani, although critical Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s handling of the India-Pakistan-Kashmir conflict, favours the accession of Kashmir to Pakistan. He is a member of the Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir, and has also formed the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, which is a component of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC).

The youthful Mirwaiz (which means “hereditary priest”) Umer Farooq, chairperson of the APHC,
has an extensive following, especially in his native Srinagar. Thoughtful and articulate, he was pushed into the limelight after his father’s murder in 1990. Clearly one of the more liberal Kashmiri opposition leaders, the Mirwaiz is among the few who has persistently been raising questions about Kashmiri minority communities as well as the majority Muslims.

Yasin Malik, leader of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Force (JKLF), is a charismatic Kashmiri opposition figure. In favour of independence from both India and Pakistan, he was a military commander of the JKLF before he turned into a politician after the JKLF ceasefire in 1994, which he brokered. Having spent much of the early 1990s in Indian jails, he has been frequently detained since. Chronically unwell, he is said to have been severely mistreated in prison. While he has great support in Srinagar, it is unclear how much of it he enjoys across the Valley as a whole. Malik’s popularity with influential pro-independence Kashmiri diaspora activists is substantial.

Omar Abdullah comes from what is arguably Kashmir’s First Family and is clearly modernist, a politician unswayed by the obscurantism that attends much of Kashmiri politics. He has been leading the National Conference ever since its defeat in 2002. Adbullah is volubly keen to reform Kashmir's moribund economy. He is also a key militant target, and has narrowly escaped assassination a number of times.

Four years after the Indo-Pak peace process was flagged off by the then Indian prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, and Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf in 2003, Kashmiris remain largely marginalised and invisible in the current feeble dialogue. Although every Kashmiri has her or his own views on a solution to the dispute, envisions a future for Kashmir, and can vividly describe it for anyone willing to listen, ironically enough, no one seems to be listening.

The Kashmir issue is the oldest pending issue on the UN table, and is almost as old as the UN itself. India and Pakistan have fought two wars over the state and came dangerously close to a third after the attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001. After the first war ended in 1949, the UN arranged a ceasefire, set up a truce line, and called for a vote by Kashmir's citizens to decide the territory's future. The politically correct answer to why the plebiscite has not been held to date would be—because neither India nor Pakistan have removed their troops from the disputed territory.

Travelling to different districts in India-administered Kashmir and speaking to people from a cross-section of society drives home the anti-India sentiment. What is striking is the fact that even a 13-year old child in Kashmir would be able to give one an account of the state's modern history. The reason: not a single house in Kashmir has escaped the fallout of the conflict.

Kashmiris continue to live their lives as much in the shadow of the peace process, the five meeting points on the Line of Control, General Musharraf's four-point formula, and India's claims on Kashmir being an integral part of the national polity as they do in the shadows of the conflict. Their past is not a matter of debate—their future is.

Mirwaiz Umer Farooq
‘We can’t leave Kashmir to chance meetings between PMs’

Yasin Malik
‘Kashmir’s political scenario will emerge from the dialogue table’

Omar Abdullah
‘In next five years, I am not sure we would have peace to sell’

Syed Ali Shah Geelani
‘I visualise Kashmir’s future as free from Indian imperialism’

Aasiya Andrabi
‘We have to attain freedom through jehad’

Bashir Manzar
‘Let us first talk of economic and social freedom’