On the first death anniversary of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, Delhi indicated that he will become the second posthumous Padma Vibushan from J&K ever. Honours apart, the real big challenge for his political successor is to see if his political legacy is salvaged.
On his first death anniversary, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed almost followed his erstwhile political guru Ghulam Mohammad Sadiq. Delhi acknowledged Sadiq’s contribution and became the first Padma Vibushan in history of J&K. Bakhshi’s successor; Sadiq was the only chief executive of J&K who ruled as Prime Minister as well as Chief Minister till he died in July 1972.
If reports emanating from Delhi are to be believed, then Mufti is being tipped to be the second person from J&K – politician to be precise, who would get the second highest civil award in history. Between 1961 when Sonam Narbu became the first resident of J&K to get Padma Shri, J&K has got 64 padma awards. Apart from one Padma Vibushan and five Padma Bushans, all others are Padma Shri’s.
Let history decide why Delhi avoided honouring Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, the key player in the history of subcontinent, or the ‘iron man’ Bakhshi Ghulam Mohammad, who replaced Sheikh at the peak of his popularity, and helped Delhi retain what was seemingly slipping away after 1953. On the occasion of Mufti’s first death anniversary, when the ruling PDP is busy giving final touches to a major commemorative event, the real debate is while Delhi has acknowledged Mufti’s public service – to be announced a fortnight later, what has been done to his legacy, the Mufti doctrine.
Unlike most of the politicians in Kashmir, Mufti, in many ways had a different trajectory. Political beings in Kashmir have historically followed a trajectory of taking off in the state and then gradually gaining wait to eventually end up in Delhi. But Mufti started in his state as part of the governance structure that emerged after the powerful Sheikh Abdullah was taken aside to the jail. Post-1975, when Sheikh returned to power, though with shrunken status of the throne, Mufti remained a parallel power centre with the blessings of Congress government in Delhi. In Congress’s Kashmir history, he will remain as the most powerful Congressman in J&K, a status that was later diluted when erstwhile Gen Next, comprising Rajiv Gandhi in Delhi and Dr Farooq Abdullah in Srinagar, stitched a new alliance.
Mufti was taken to Delhi where he remained a central minister. Then he left Congress and joined V P Singh and eventually became the only Muslim Home Minister of India. Many years later after Rajiv was assassinated, Mufti rejoined Congress which set off a new phase of his political career. Insisting that the national parties in India were too big to accommodate the regional aspirations, Mufti set up his PDP. Given the vacuum that the turmoil had created, for the first time in history of his political career, Mufti became relevant to Kashmir to such an extent that he became J&K chief executive in barely a couple of years of forming his party.
The powerful Sheikh is credited for being supportive of the process that witnessed Kashmir’s accession to India in the fall of 1947. Mufti, in his own way, deserves credit for engaging the right-wingers in Kashmir context. After surviving on the margins of the mainstream politics, right-wing parties eventually seized power with the rise of Narendra Modi.
But the old Congressman engaging right-wing and allying with them did not change this thought process which was evident when on the day one of his takeover he credited Pakistan and Kashmir’s political class for the elections who are routinely accused of the disruptions. He believed that Kashmir can rarely be peaceful unless Delhi and Islamabad are good neighbours. Every time, there was talk of talks and Mufti would invoke the Vajpayee spirit. At the state level, he wanted more space to his opposition – both political and ideological, as he would always term democracy the “battle of ideas”. With his 2002 term as Chief Minister, he made ‘healing touch’ a real model of governance.
Where has this legacy gone?
How Kashmir burst into a crisis in the just past summer will be dissected by history to pass a judgement. But it has not left anything to be compared with Mufti’s three year stint of 2002. The party pulled out of the alliance with Congress at the start of Amarnath land row in 2008 – that led to the fall of Ghulam Nabi Azad as Chief Minister. Then, it was stated that idea behind pulling out of the alliance was because the party does not wish to be spectator when people are being killed. The heaps of corpses and the hoards of pellet blinds, now consigned to darkness for perpetuity, are indicating the death of a doctrine.
Kashmir has survived with political divide and an ideological divide for most of its post-partition history. But the process of denial of political space, especially from early 2016, to the ideological opposition in J&K has posed a serious question mark over the ‘battle of ideas’ debate. The scale of counter-agitation operation was pushed to a new level this year. Now again, the feeling at ground zero is that managing J&K’s Kashmir is essentially a security operation that shall remain unchanged.
But part of the blame has to go to Delhi, PDPs allies who have remained clear from day one that they shall be part of the ruling alliance but not forget that they have evolved an agenda on Kashmir even from the day when they really did not matter. This was one of the key tensions in Chief Minister Ms Muehboba Mufti’s mind after her father died in AIIMS. Literally waiting for succour for the flood affected population of Kashmir, Ms Mufti’s stated repeatedly her father’s concern over the issue that Delhi had agreed upon but implemented in breach.
Parivaar has evolved its own system of managing Kashmir strictly as per their ideological framework. The BJP while negotiating with the PDP, its bible of governance, agreed to issues that it was not so harshly opposed to. While in power, the BJP also agreed that it will not invoke critical issues that bring in key areas concerning Kashmir to a new scrutiny. Once in power, new brigades emerged from the Parivaar and started resorting to judicial activism and street politics by bringing in all those issues.
In almost three months of calmly sitting in the Fairview Guest House, one of the key compulsions, as insiders would put it, was how to manage the members of the Parivaar who are directly bound by the common minimum programme that rules J&K. There were quite a few talks on that subject but barring feeble assurances nothing concrete came out. Finally, when she decided to takeover, these tensions rebounded and are gradually become the new challenge to her and her party. This crisis will magnify manifold, once the party goes to seek votes for the twin Lok Sabha seats in central and South Kashmir, later this year. While the summer 2016 has already dented its support base within the sections of the society sitting in the margins of the separatist camp, PDPs political opposition – the NC, would not give it a leg room and any space for muscle flexing. This is despite the fact that PDPs skirting of influence at ground zero did not hugely lead to any support shift in favour of NC.
Now the situation has reached a level that a veteran lawyer, speaking in a close room discussion, sounded quite panicky in managing the judicial activism of the individuals working for integrating J&K fully. “It is double whammy,” he said, “you go to the court room to defend the position that the state enjoys, you argue and eventually you get a verdict against it. What do you do? You even lost the argument that it was arbitrary.”
Born in politics as an opposition leader, Ms Mufti had a turbulent start as chief minister. But her experience as chief executive of J&K for all these months must have grown her wiser. She is committed to the Agenda of Alliance but she has a right to have a political way-out to the tensions J&K faces in courtrooms. Why should J&K’s constitutional relationship with Delhi be subject matter of the court? If she manages a halt to these interventions, she will make the remaining part of her term less bumpy and it is also possible she can salvage part of the legacy that Mufti doctrine denotes.
