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| Bilal Lone: Omar Govt supporting hardliners for vested interest | | |
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Dec 10: Hitting hard on the separatist hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani, senior leader of Hurriyat Conference (Mirwaiz faction) and Chairman of a faction of Peoples Conference, Bilal Gani Lone, today said that the mass agitation in the Valley in 2008 had failed because of the fact that “extremists and fundamentalists’ had tried to exclusively impose themselves on the Kashmiris to hijack the show. He said that everybody in the mainstream politics, from Mehbooba Mufti to Omar Abdullah and his government, had joined hands to provide one or the other support to the Kashmiri hardliners and they were all “at war with the moderate leadership”.
Breaking his 18-month-long silence and responding to questions in an interview to this writer, 46-year-old separatist leader Bilal Gani Lone observed that all of the pro-India politicians, from PDP’s Mehbooba Mufti to NC’s Omar Abdullah, and his government, were in a race to provide one or the other support to the separatist hardliners like Syed Ali Shah Geelani. “They have a strong vested interest in it. They have all launched a war against the moderates. They are, in fact, creating holy cows to keep the moderates and pro-dialogue leadership at bay”, Lone said of the mainstream politicians.
Lone referred to Ms Mufti’s assertion that no resolution of the Kashmir problem would be complete without Geelani’s signatures on it. According to him, Omar Abdullah’s government had outsmarted that of Mufti Sayeed’s in extolling the hardliners and lending them undue space on the Valley’s political landscape.
“But, I have not given the role of a political martial to Geelani Sahab. Martials are in the Assembly and I have never been to that. I accept him as the representative of a particular political ideology. There is no Sheikh Abdullah in today’s politics in Kashmir. He is being created into a holy cow but I don’t accept him one as he was in Assembly even when Sheikh Abdullah was in jail”, Lone added. “This is an age old political rivalry. Geelani Sahab and my father (Abdul Gani Lone), have been together in the Assembly. I fail to understand how one of them was a good MLA and other a bad MLA”, he asserted with a painful reference to the circumstances that led to his father’s assassination in 2002.
Lone suggested that much more than political ideology, it was the “Pir versus non-Pir” conflict in Kashmir’s society that was behind a many politicians’ animosity to his father and the party. “It is rather a hard fact that the Jamaat-e-Islami cadres in South Kashmir voted for Mufti Sayeed’s PDP in the recent Assembly elections”, he said. When it was pointed out to him that Chairman of his Hurriyat Conference, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, was himself a cleric-politician, Lone quipped: “He is a better Pir”. “I’m not afraid of saying this truth. What can they do other than firing a bullet on me?” asked he.
Lone alleged that Mr Geelani and other hardliners had been calling all those who did not toe their line as “traitors” and raising the bogey of “sell out”. He asserted that there was no question of the Mirwaiz-led Hurriyat comprising the interests of the Kashmiris in any dialogue process. He said that there was no other way than a dialogue with New Delhi and Islamabad but sought to make it clear that Hurriyat had neither established any contact with the Government of India nor received any offers or assurances for participating in a dialogue process. According to him, Mr Geelani and other hardliners had vitiated the atmosphere with their statements and the same had provoked gunmen to strike on a dove like Fazal Haq Qureshi.
“My father became the target and casualty of an identical situation in 2002. But I have left the matter of his assassination to God. I hope He will do justice one day. We are not holding arms, nor do we know to use them”, Lone added.
Lone claimed that neither Mirwaiz nor his colleagues in the Hurriyat had ever talked of bilateralism. He believed that there was little possibility of tripartite talks at this stage between New Delhi, Islamabad and the Kashmiris and Hurriyat was committed to talking to both India and Pakistan. “Yes, there is bilateralism between India and Pakistan. And I strongly believe that most of our advocates of tripartite talks would jostle to lay their thump impressions on any kind of a deal struck between New Delhi and Islamabad”, he added. He said that certain countries had been persuading India and Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir crisis in a bilateral process but emphasized that there was absolutely no world pressure on New Delhi.
“There’s no way other than dialogue. For how long could we afford to enjoy the luxury of being leaders of the followers whose children were dying for a penny? Have we got to turn Kashmir into another Afghanistan? Honestly speaking, we have all created fortunes for ourselves and miseries for the poor, ordinary people. He said that pro-India politicians were exploiting their artificial sympathies for the hardliners to the hilt as, neither they nor their counterparts in the separatist movement, wanted to see their shops shut.
“In this kind of a free-for-all, you don’t need any followers. You just need a Chairman, a General Secretary and perhaps one more to launch a party. Extremists and hardliners are the most relevant in such a situation. Money and fortunes flow to most of them from two tracks. We have been on the single track and taken (money) only from one side. That too has been stopped one-and-a-half years ago”, Lone said candidly. “I see the day nearer when everybody of us will be held accountable”. He observed that hardliners were enjoying a field day in the Valley with overt and covert support from pro-India politicians and the government while as the moderates were being selectively attacked and eliminated.
Asked why four particular separatist leaders---Bilal Gani Lone, Prof Abdul Gani Bhat, Maulvi Abbas Ansari and Fazal Haq Qureshi---had distanced themselves from the mass agitation in Kashmir over Amarnath land allotment row in 2008, Lone asserted that hardliners had hijacked the show with their jingoism and left little space for reason and moderation. According to him, the Kashmiris had got a “blank cheque” in the form of the land row but their leaders had failed to cash it in the interest of the people.
“Extremists and fundamentalists tried to thrust themselves and their own political ideology on the people, which was not acceptable. They played the spoilsport and failed this nation with anarchy and jingoism”, Lone said.
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