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| GM Sofi: An icon and iconoclast | | ET OBITUARY | | AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 16: After reading him regularly for nearly three decades, it was in 2004 that I discovered in him as a good human being and neighbour when we shared a room for about a week at a hotel in London. Until then, I knew Sofi Ghulam Mohammad as an extremely ambitious journalist who had mastery in making the powers that be bow. Inspite of being impressed with his powerful editorials and earlier day scoops---blindness disease in Karnah and selling of Bengali women in Valley---I often thought that his without his brother Bashir Ahmed Bashir’s cartoons, ‘Srinagar Times’ would have been nothing different from Nand Lal Wattal’s ‘Khidmat’, Aziz Kashmiris’ ‘Roshni’ or his old colleague G R Irfani’s ‘Naya Sansar’. Then I learned how Sofi was not only born great but also how greatness does follow such people in all times.
On a couple of occasions, I felt nervous as the 80-year-old did for me (in my absence) what only your caring mothers and domestic helps do. I had little knowledge how great a neighbour he was for her at Buchhwara but, thousands of miles away from home, he looked like father of a broadcaster working at the BBC. Close to his check out, he took out a meticulously preserved container and told me that it had to be delivered at Bush House at any cost. Then I learned that it was a pack of sumptuous Kashmiri waazwaan Sofi had carried all the way from Srinagar. I knew its importance as I had the experience of such things being thrown away by even one’s family members due to time constraints.
Even as he could not visit Bush House and his neighbour could not come to the hotel due to a sprain, Sofi Sahab did not take rest until the gift from home reached the broadcaster.
My 31-year-long association with Sofi Ghulam Mohammad had begun in late 1970s when as a rebel student at the school I took strong objection to ST’s edit page assault on Maulvi Iftikhar Hussain Ansari for having walked out in protest at an official function. Ansari had left the auditorium at Women’s College when a group of the girl students presented a dance item before President of India and then Chief Minister Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah. I penned a ripper on Sofi’s column “Iftikhar ka Ehtijaj” and went straight to get it published in Shameem Ahmed Shameem’s “Aayina”. I knew Sofi and Shameem were at draggers drawn.
Contrary to my high expectations, Shameem brought it home to me that the reaction needed to appear in ST alone. “If Sofi Sahab does not publish, come back to me”, Shameem advised.
Getting upstairs, I was certain that the cantankerous editor would not only tear my papers but would also thrash me to pulp. Captioned “Srinagar Times ek baday jurm kii parda poshi kar raha hai”, the two-part write up made Sofi read up to the end. “Excellent. Excellent. Keep it up young boy”, he exclaimed in appreciation and gave me a pat. I still apprehended it would follow with a slap and abuse. It really didn’t. Next morning, I was taken aback to find the piece without editing a punctuation in the ST. Part-2 appeared the day after but stirred a hornet’s nest as Sheikh’s aficionado Sadiq Ali wrote a bitter rejoinder. It was soon followed by a battery of ghost writers.
That Sofi was an indomitable journalist was proved when the gunmen claiming to be representatives of the Kashmiri people began targeting him, first with threats and later with guns and grenades. He had the distinction of being the first journalist to receive a bullet wrapped in a piece of paper. Azam Inquillabi’s note to the editor---perhaps days before Rubaiyya Sayeed kidnapping--- asked Sofi Sahab to choose between death and publishing the militants’ statements verbatim.
Sofi’s half-heartedly toeing the militants’ line failed him to get the recognition of a “freedom loving” scribe. As he began showing limits to his bending and taking the diktats blindly---and set up parallel office at his home---, he was subjected to at least four unsuccessful attempts on his life. The last one happened at his home office when the octogenarian scribe had a physical scuffle with the armed assailant. Pushed to the wall, Sofi developed interest in active politics, was nominated as Member of Legislative Council by then Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed but restricted himself to projecting only the matters of high public interest and importance.
While being a nominee of then ruling coalition, Sofi launched a bitter campaign against Mufti’s powerful ministerial colleagues, notably Ghulam Hassan Mir and Hakeem Mohammad Yasin.
Sofi Sahab revealed to me on more than one occasion that he had been reading my previous newspaper for two things: “Your incisive reports and Page 2, that tells me who among the Kashmiri Pandits has passed away in the last 24 hours”. Notwithstanding his 1990-days phrases like “mafroor Pandit”, “Mukhbir” et al, I had discovered a passion in Sofi Sahab for Kashmir’s composite culture and plural society.
“I feel as if our arms and legs have been amputated”, he told me once while bemoaning on the mass migration of Kashmiri Pandits. “It will be a great favour if you carry my brother’s obituary on page 2 of your newspaper”, he said on the day of journalist-historian Sofi Ghulam Mohiuddin’s demise three years ago and made it a point that the news of his death reached every member of the displaced Pandit community in Jammu, Udhampur, Delhi and other places.
It is definitely not for nothing that Kashmir’s who’s who from Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Syed Ali Geelani to Yasin Malik and Shabir Shah, from Chief Minister Omar Abdullah to a number of his ministerial colleagues today joined the ranks of Sofi Sahab’s Namaaz-e-Janazah on the Boulevard.
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