Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Dec 30: If the people of Kashmir valley have shown little enthusiasm to Hurriyat’s recent visit to Pakistan, they have a combination of reasons.
Firstly, the separatist political platform has ceased to be a monolithic entity after a vertical split that marked its 10th birth anniversary in 2003. Contrary to the unity when it came into existence in 1993, today we have Hurriyat (Mirwaiz), Hurriyat (Geelani) besides JKLF and People’s League separately, each having degenerated into three or four factions. One-upmanship and self-promotion of individuals have left the amalgam bereft of its credibility and every prospect of leadership.
Once known as Nelson Mandela of Kashmir and ‘Prisoner of Conscience’, Shabir Shah, along with his pre-1990 alter ego, Nayeem Khan, has been sidelined from the caravan over his obduracy of not traveling under the tag of ‘Indian nationality’. Instead of an Indian passport with the Pakistani visa, Shah insisted on travel documents for a cross-LoC visit via Uri. Uncharacteristic of him, JKLF chief Yasin Malik has remained tightlipped for over three weeks now. Significantly, the Mirwaiz delegation’s visit came close on the heels of a no-holds-barred between unruly supporters of the three Hurriyat bigwigs on one side and those of two others on the other. It suspended under Police intervention.
Secondly, the most authentic representative of the radical secessionism, Syed Ali Shah Geelani—may be under the influence of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan and other constituents of the right wing—has publicly dismissed the idea of visiting Pakistan as “an exercise in futility”. He has unequivocally asserted that Hurriyat’s visit to Islamabad at the fag end of the Zardari regime was not only “meaningless” but also carrying a potentiality of exploitation by the parties contesting the National Assembly elections in that country. His love for Mamlukat-e-Khuda-daad has been a reality but his hatred for all outfits off the orbit of Jamaat has also been an open secret. For him, everybody from Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to Benazir to Zardari carried a legacy of secular and feudal or non-puritanical Islam. Nawaz Sharief was acceptable to Geelani and Jamaat only till he enjoyed the blessings of Gen Zia-ul-Haq or cracked a whip on Pakistan People’s Party. Geelani also termed Gen Parvez Musharraf’s fall from the grace as “good tiding” for the people of Kashmir.
Thirdly, living in a volatile conflict cesspool for decades, the Kashmiris can not be gullible and naive enough to be beguiled into the lullabies of January 1990. Part of a fast transforming Sub-continent, they can comfortably see through the semantics of a political rhetoric. They vividly remember how many times the Hurriyat promised them the moon and created an impression as if its next visit to Pakistan would get them Azadi on the pillion. “Nothing short of our visit to Pakistan. We won’t budge an inch” was invariably the Hurriyat’s rhetorical refrain for about a decade. And finally, when they visited, heavens didn’t bounce in windfall. Next 10 years later, nobody in Srinagar keeps the count of a Hurriyat leader’s visit to Pakistan. With exceptions like Geelani and Shah, they have been shuttling between Srinagar, Rawalpindi and Muzaffarabad, much the way ordinary Kashmiris travel between the two capital cities in Jammu and Kashmir.
Some of the leaders even imported spouses from that country with all the trappings of the State facilitation from New Delhi to Islamabad. The United Jehad Council chief got one imported all the way from Srinagar and settled with her in the Pakistani capital. Besides, sons and daughters of over a dozen “leaders” —even in twos and threes—have been permitted to do MBBS at different medical college in Pakistan. Geelani’s own son has returned with a post-graduation in Medicine. The Government from Srinagar to New Delhi has broken all laws and rules to facilitate MBBS of the children of top militant leaders at two or three medical colleges in Srinagar and Jammu, besides their migration in relaxation of rules and selection in post-doctoral courses at SKIMS. This may not be necessarily a quid pro quo but how many of the “ruled” Kashmiris have access to this kind of privilege?
Fourthly, even by a mundane interpretation, common man’s enthusiasm to the Hurriyat’s business trip to Islamabad would have been misplaced at its face value. By their own admission, the Hurriyat leaders have stressed on Islamabad to “involve the Kashmiris in the dialogue process between the two countries over the resolution of the Kashmiri problem”. Did they want to convey to the world at large that it was Pakistan, not India, that lacked will to include the Kashmiris in a peace process? At the famous ISS session, Mirwaiz and his colleagues have reportedly urged Islamabad to “give us unconditional support”. Even as they have not specified the conditions Pakistan had shackled them in, they have brought home to the world, for the first time perhaps, that Islamabad had its own gameplan [of making J&K a sovereign part of the country] in the Kashmir armed strife. It also bellies Hurriyat’s 20-year-long rhetoric that the turmoil in Valley was an “indigenous movement for the purpose of seeking freedom” from India”. “My father was killed by our own people, not by India”, one amongst the delegations is reported to have complained.
Lastly, an average Kashmiri knows it more than the strategy experts and political architects of the two countries that the world has turned its back on what was glorified as “freedom struggle” in the pre-9/11 era. Kashmir being “the world’s most beautiful prison” is now just an archived energy drink of the European Union. Fed up with their photo sessions with the separatist leaders at their palatial houses in Srinagar, even the American diplomats have been telling their old hosts that they have missed too many buses. Significantly, nobody in the Hurriyat has contradicted a story in a national daily, suggesting preparations of the Hurriyat’s contesting the next Assembly elections through proxy candidates.
Clearly, the visit to one of the world’s most politically instable states, one of the worst militarily engaged states and one of the worst economically debilitated states—that came around the audaciously carried out assassination of a Minister—carries neither meaning nor promise for the much suppressed and much exploited Kashmiri. It doesn’t bring to him even an iota of what he has been promised as reward for one hundred thousand sacrifices of life and 1600 days of shutdown in 22 years.
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