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| In Kashmir’s changing climate, JKLF chief rubs shoulders with Ministers | | YouTube, Reliance radio to carry Terra Naomi’s call beyond Copenhagen | |
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Dec 7: With the fast changing political climate in this troubled Himalyan state, Kashmir’s separatist leaders have begun to throng hubs of cultural activity, including concerts of Western entertainers---perhaps much more than visiting the tombs of their “martyrs of azadi”. Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) Chairman and the Valley’s pioneer of armed insurgency, Yasin Malik, was today conspicuously in attendance, alongwith a number of pro-India politicians and Ministers, at Terra Naomi’s concert on global warming at Sher-e-Kashmir International Conference Centre.
Attending the YouTube sensation’s show is definitely not the first for one-time dreaded terrorist Yasin Malik whose transformation has been meticulously illustrated by one of USA’s best read writers a couple of years back. Many at home find it hard to reconcile to Malik’s “transformation”. His nonagenarian mentor and father of America’s celebrated poet, Agha Ashraf Ali, had taken umbrage to Governor S K Sinha’s reference to the book “Transformation of a Terrorist” at the same spot two years ago.
Even as Malik was not among the selectively invited guests and speakers of a conference co-sponsored by J&K Police, months later he broke the ice by attending the Golden Jubilee function of the influential Urdu daily “Aftab” at SKICC. Notwithstanding the first ever CRPF bunkers around a media organization coming up on the Aftaab premises in March 1990, Malik used to treat its editor Khwaja Sanaullah Bhat as his father and godfather. He would certainly the occasion wherever held.
This was dramatically followed by Malik’s attendance at Tagore Hall of Jammu & Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture & Languages. What attracted him to the show was the eminent theatre activist Mohammad Amin Bhat’s two-act play “Chhal” (The Trap). It was a wonderful metaphor on developing and flourishing of the vested interest in the armed insurgency. Detractors of “cultural aggression” chose to be mute on Malik’s infidelity as it came in just a couple of years of the separatist hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani marking his presence at Tagore Hall on occasion of jurist-writer Ghulam Nabi Gauhar’s book.
Spitting on the cultural programmes of the state-run Akademi, Geelani had positively responded to Gauhar’s invite after a long absence at Tagore Hall. He had never been seen at this venue after a memorable conference he attended in 1989 with a number of National Conference (NC) leaders, including late Hakeem Habibullah---former Chairman of J&K Legislative Assembly, who successfully and unsuccessfully contested a number of Assembly elections against the senior Jamaat-e-Islami ideologue in home constituency of Sopore. Both men of intellectual pursuit, Geelani and Hakeem had posed for photo-ops with their last hug.
In recent times, death of senior journalists, namely founder-editor of Aftaab Sanaullah Bhat and founder-editor of Srinagar Times Sofi Ghulam Mohammad, has brought together Kashmir’s mainstream and separatist politicians inspite of a bad taste show between the supporters of Malik and Geelani at Lalchowk. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and a number of his senior party colleagues and Ministers attended the funeral at both places alongwith who is who of the Valley’s separatist camp.
Many of them have also been making a bee-line to the wounded Hurriyat leader Fazal Haq Qureshi at SKIMS. Even as Geelani’s anti-dialogue brigade kept shouting in Soura “Bharat ka jau yaar hai, gadaar hai gadaar hai (Anybody soft to New Delhi is but a traitor), Geelani walked straight into the ICU at SKIMS and enquired about Qureshi’s health.
At today’s concert on Global Warming, there were no speeches---political or otherwise. Those who enjoyed the thrill with thousands of ecological enthusiast included Minister of Tourism, Nawang Rigzin Jora and his deputy Nasir Aslam Wani Sogami. An Omar Abdullah-confidante, Sogami played a key role in organizing the show. Many in the audiences believed that Malik attended courtesy longtime friend, Usman Raheem. Usman, an American national claiming that his grandfather and great grandfather had migrated to USA from Kashmir, happens to be the Regional Director of the non-profit Mercy Corps that had organized Terra’s show.
Even as Terra mesmerized her audiences with her globally popular “Say It’s Possible”, her meticulously composed mixture with the Kashmiri fusion “yi chhu bilkul mumkin zenau jang, asi zenai jang, asi zenau jang, yi chhu jang asi panas seet karun” was a great attraction. Shehnaz Rasheed’s appeal against Global Warming and meltin g of glaciers in the Himalayan state was performed with Terra by Waheed Jeelani and a beautifully costumed troupe of a dozen of male and female artistes, supported by an orchestra of six instrumentalists, all from the Valley.
Video of Terra’s song, which was picturized by cameraman Shafquat Habib with her on the alpine slopes of Afarwath and Kongdoori, beyond Gulmarg, yesterday, would be shortly available for millions of viewers on the YouTube. It will be also dominating day and night entertainment programmes of FM 92.7 in Srinagar, Jammu and a few of other cities of the popular radio network which has 47 stations in India
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