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| Mufti’s khul ja SIM SIM and Geelani’s ghar kab jaoge? | | Why both slogans are failing to generate Ragda-III in Kashmir | | AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 8: Apparently taking advantage of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s limited access to understanding of ground realities in Valley and the level of confidence he has exuded over the last 10 months of his maiden regime, mainstream as well as the separatist opposition have been floating assortments of issues and non-issues in Jammu & Kashmir. Creation of a new theatre of regional and communal divide has been, however, elusive for both after the resolution of Amarnath Shrine Board land allotment crisis last year.
Alleged rape-cum-murder of two young women in Shopian shook the Valley for a couple of months in the middle of current year but revelation of a lady doctor’s unethical act of fudging the vaginal smears with a nefarious design took the sting out from the outrage in a few weeks. The outcry, locally known as Ragda-II, faded out further after a team of forensic experts from AIIMS and CFSL exhumed the bodies in presence of a local doctor, nominated by Majlis-e-Mushawarat Shopian, and, according to reports not refuted by CBI, found biological evidence of the unmarried girl’s virginity.
Characters of a love-hate relationship, PDP patriarch Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Hurriyat (G) supremo Syed Ali Shah Geelani, have been remarkably in a competition to steel the show with identical issues. Interestingly, none other than PDP’s ideologue and former Chief Minister, Muzaffar Hussain Baig, has solved the mystery of this uniformity by revealing in a television programme last week that his party was doing the service of “occupying the space Hurriyat would have captured”.
Geelani had the advantage of being in detention when Mufti and his party were humbled by hundreds of thousands of the Kashmiris by their proscribed participation in Assembly and Lok Sabha elections. In September 2008, PDP had taken the lead over Hurriyat by claiming that nobody in the Valley would participate in the elections as the Kashmiris, according them, had not been taken on board by Governor N N Vohra’s establishment while resolving the land crisis and inking a deal with “representatives of just one community and region”.
A host of speculations with regard to security of Durbar Move staff failed to prevent the Kashmiri employees from proceeding to the winter capital. Not one untoward incident happened for six months of the seat of power being in Jammu.
Ever since the two elections, that swapped the places of National Conference (NC) and PDP, Mufti’s party appears to be confused whether to emerge as NC’s secular alternative or to exist and expand as Hurriyat’s Muslim-centric, Valley-centric mainstream parallel. It has, in the process, failed in both. Its silver line, admittedly, lies in the fact that the NC’s cadres are as demoralized and disempowered as in previous six years, the government by many indicators appears to be that of any party other than the NC and Congress and the anti-incumbency factor is swelling, though not phenomenally in the first year of the coalition regime.
Nobody in the ruling coalition appears to be sensitive to things like most of the government jobs being grabbed by people through corrupt practices and the writ of mainstream as well as the secessionist opposition running far larger than Omar Abdullah’s government and party from matters of transfers and appointments to government contracts and supply orders.
Chief Minister, and consequently all Ministers of his Council, have been playing the politics of apology and defence as most of their policies and decisions seem to be influenced either by men of slapdash knowledge about Kashmir’s politics or by dangerously subjective reports and editorial comments of newspapers. In his futile attempts of outwitting arch rival PDP, Omar Abdullah has spent more time in calling for dialogue with the largely marginalized separatist leadership than interacting with the ordinary man in Valley and Jammu and solving his mundane problems.
From continued recession in Pakistan’s terror market---that is meteorically increasing with every singe blast in Punjab and NWFP and military action in FATA and PATA---to the aftermath of J&K elections, Omar has all indicators of the situation in his favour. He seems to be more comfortable with his Big Brother in Delhi than Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mufti and Farooq Abdullah. Why should he be more loyal than the king that once was?
It does not need four eyes to see that PDP is failing even in making a big issue of the ban on prepaid mobile services that has directly affected over three million people in the state. More subscribers have perhaps realized that Home Minister Chidambaram’s decision has been seriously influenced by security concerns New Delhi would hardly compromise. They seem to be more concerned over poor connectivity and speech quality in J&K than an end to prepaid services.
On the other hand, Geelani has successfully hijacked Mufti’s slogan of demilitarization and his call for district-wise shutdown has evoked some response but, for the time being and months of near future, a major turbulence in the Valley is nowhere in sight.
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