Excelsior Political Correspondent
JAMMU, Nov 4: Universal standard duration for a Freudian slip is perhaps two seconds. It may be the maximum of three seconds for a bigger slip of the tongue. But the Valley’s separatist constituency has set its own standards for everything as there has never been a culture of introspection and accountability.
When a firebrand politician conveniently interprets his full-length speech of 30 minutes as ‘Sibgat-e-Lissani’ (slip of the tongue) without fear of contradiction, he has to be accepted as a charismatic and redoubtable leader. That is what one of them did in August 2010. His well-wishers, if not masters, reportedly took exception to his act of publicly humiliating two of his separatist colleagues—Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik—at a rally on TRC Grounds in Srinagar. Media was instantaneously summoned to take the notes of ‘clarification’.
“That was just the slip of tongue. I did not intend to hurt anybody”, he told the journalists about his 20-minute act of taking an oath from the audiences that he alone was the representative of the people of Kashmir. The ‘press conference’ ran for a total of two minutes. Besides, his media aide put an unprecedented condition: ‘None of you mediapersons will ask any question or clarification’.
This separatist icon’s ferocious confidence in rewriting the rules of the game and redefining the standards of everything from place to space did not come out of the blue. The mainstream politicians, who are now sarcastically offering him a helicopter for the aerial inspection of Amarnath Yatra track, begged before him for an inch of space in the Valley’s political spectrum around those eventful days.
The sea change in the situation in the last two years arguably is not the outcome of assertiveness by the state’s mainstream leadership on political front. Notwithstanding an alarming level of corruption, particularly in the funds provided by Government of India for MGNREGA, NRHM and other flagship schemes, governance has been admittedly refined in certain crucial sectors. However, with the exception of one-odd leader, none of the mainstream politicians has demonstrated will to contest the separatists politically.
For once, it appears as if the entire job of confronting the separatists politically has been pitiably assigned to a non-Kashmiri provincial level IPS officer. Mercifully, his finesse in political management and other extracurricular activity has turned into irony and cost him a full year of his entitlement to the rank and posting of an Additional DG. It is reminiscent of pre-1997 days when Army’s soldiers were seen manning the beats and managing traffic.
Those who should have actually done the job, seem to have not only abdicated their responsibility but also ventured into a circus of competitive separatism. Not only the mainstream politicians but also Government officials holding key positions take pride in glorifying the separatist icons and obliging and placating them with one or the other statement, one or the other favour. In the new lexicon, everything from putting the history in perspective to calling a bluff on “Amarnath Nagar”, and even a minor correction in facts and figures, means nothing but being “politically incorrect”.
Even in today’s National Conference, the Farooq Abdullahi style of giving a naked affront to separatists is pooh-poohed as “jingoism”. One of the secessionist icons is still characteristically dismissed by the NC patriarch as a “lier”, if not “maut ka saudagar” now. Others in the coalition call Farooq’s bete noire as “an institution in himself”. Some other mainstream leader certifies him to be the “J&K’s only politician who is not on payrolls of intelligence agencies”. Ingeniously, a scene has emerged where everybody, from heads of the coalition constituents to the leaders of opposition, is pegged to remain “politically correct” with regard to a Valley-centric constituency whose real volume and dimensions have been hugelu erratic and irregular.
Like many a time in the past, this leaves the task of contesting the religio-secessionist politics to the opposite pole across the Pir Panjal. Nothing more could be asked by the politicians who have been thriving on parochialism and regionalism and those who have made region and religion as their strong turf in the state and national politics.
Once the state’s immensely secular and peace-loving populace is forced to polarize on the basis of regional and religious identity, a Ragda-2012 is but imminent. With the advantage of inertia in almost all the secular outfits in Jammu and Kashmir, fundamentalists must be bracing up for their 2008-type role in either region. Apparently, the Chief Minister’s single-handed effort to contest the separatists’ Amarnath propaganda, have not yielded the desired results so far.
Yet again, like in 2008, the issue at this embryonic stage is more ecological than religious. Politicians and intellectuals, who sang paeans for Mughal Road despite the phenomenal damage caused to over 20 dense forest compartments which have now thousands of dry and diseased conifers standing, have raised hue and cry over the litter and defecation in the Lidder and the Sindh upstream in June this year. Newspapers published photographs of ‘concrete hutments’, supplied by a Hurriyat constituent, to make point that Forest and Wildlife laws were being violated. By August that year, ecology was nobody’s concern as the communal flare up was in full bloom.
In 2010 too, situation turned intractable when newspapers front-paged rows of “teenage martyrs” and the rulers chose to ignore everything. Soon it was a cut-and-paste of 2008 street agitation that consumed Azad-led Congress-PDP coalition Government. Omar Abdullah, nevertheless, survived as the Centre and AICC stood firmly on his back. Will they always stand? is a big question mark. More so, at a time when the state is nearer to Lok Sabha and Assembly elections and New Delhi has had its pound of flesh—be that continuance of AFSPA or implementation of the equally controversial 73rd amendment.
Not one in the State’s composite Council of Ministers has thought it prudent to checkmate the radicals by setting right facts of J&K’s 20th century political history. One-odd contradiction to a hardliner’s recently released autobiography has come from Yasin Malik’s JKLF—not from NC, Congress, PDP, CPI (M) or BJP. Even after contesting seven or eight elections with the oath of protecting the sovereignty and integrity of India, some of the Valley’s unbridled secessionists have been abusing Sheikh Abdullah and his National Conference as “traitors” for participating in the Indian elections.
With a what-to-me in almost all mainstream leaders and outfits, some of the separatist leaders enjoy every promise of yet again emerging as the “heroes” of a regionally and communally polarized J&K. Just a couple of innocent killings are needed! As of now, entire credit of sustaining the two-year-long peace goes to an ordinary Kashmiri who has perhaps reconciled to living without a leader.
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