New J&K government: A wobbly CM, his guarded daughter and the BJP
The newly anointed Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed looked tired and over cautious at the oath taking ceremony of his government in Jammu on Sunday. As he spoke, his voice was feeble, pitched low and speech not so coherent giving many of us watching the function on our television sets a feeling that all was not well with this painstakingly cobbled coalition in the border state. His gaze was unsteady as the 79-year-old Kashmiri leader was unable to mask his discomfort of being with his new found partner - the BJP.
Even if one were to ignore this, Mufti's daughter Mehbooba Mufti's countenance and body language was no different. Sitting next to the BJP veteran LK Advani, Mehbooba was seen with her arms crossed and close to her body. She remained in the same posture (standing) even when the national anthem was being played. The PDP chief and the heir apparent to her father's politics, Mehbooba Mufti, betrayed a guarded look.
Soon after the function, Mufti chose to speak to journalists when he made those controversial remarks about thanking "people across the border" (the Pakistani establishment) for allowing a peaceful election in the state. The red-faced BJP leadership had to swallow a bitter pill as its loudest spokesperson Dr Sambit Patra dismissed Mufti's utterances as inconsequential emotions of an individual as against the groundswell of people's support for the elections. A day later came the demand that Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru's body buried in Tihar be brought to Kashmir. By now the worry lines had appeared on the faces of the BJP leaders in Delhi.
It is now clear that in spite of the right numbers, a wobbly alliance is in charge of Jammu and Kashmir. While it's too early to evaluate the new government, one cannot ignore the pressure on the father-daughter duo against an alliance with the BJP. The Muftis are aware that social media originating in Kashmir is full of condemnation accusing them of "betraying" Kashmir's cause and "selling their soul" to the BJP for the sake of power. Initially, many of the party MLAs had openly spoken against the alliance.
To be fair to Mufti, the veteran leader is not a press conference person - he opens up and is more comfortable briefing a few of his chosen journalists in one-to-one interactions. So, this idea of addressing a press conference post a high octane media event was a bad PR exercise by his spin doctors. The fact is that the growing cynicism of Kashmiri people is too overwhelming and scary even for a politician of the stature of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and perhaps explains his behaviour on the first day and his anxieties and fears.
To put things in context one has to look at the rise of the Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP), an alternative regional force in the border state. The PDP had emerged out of a political vacuum left by the virtual flight of mainstream political parties mainly the National Conference from the Valley during the initial years of pro-Pakistan insurgency in early '90s. The NC, led by Farooq Abdullah, was unprepared for the onslaught by the terrorists, who targeted its leaders and workers throughout the Valley, making most of them flee in panic.
Optically too, the Kashmir Valley was changing - from a citadel of sufism and the Rishi cult it was turning into a hub of puritan Islamic society. Conveniently, Mehbooba's daddy chose a green flag for their nascent party while she draped herself in an abaya and a head scarf, and decided to flow with the current for launching the campaign for their party. Perhaps, the PDP's idea worked for its timing and also for the charm of a young Kashmiri woman. Mehbooba spoke to people about mundane things - like their troubles due to being caught between the armed terrorists and the security forces. However, as the PDP became a formidable force and stood up to the age-old National Conference, the Muftis started believing more in the magic of the abaya (a full length black gown), green flag and all other imagery of Islam than in the hope that they had given to the people in distress.
The Muftis then took this business of imagery to a next level bringing in Pakistan, azad Kashmir, and Line of Control in it and frankly now they do not know where to stop. It should be of interest to social scientists to fathom the linkages between the PDP's surge and the optics of a more Islamic Kashmir.
In exchange, the PDP was spared by the terrorists making its rivals like the NC allege a terrorist-PDP link up. Muftis continued to use soft and conciliatory language on Pakistan with reference to the Kashmir dispute, while the NC leaders would huff and puff abusing Islamabad and accusing them of bringing miseries to the people of Kashmir. "Pakistans dakh (Doom to Pakistan)", I remember Farooq Abdullah, now ailing and virtually out of the Valley's political scene, thundering this once popular Kashmiri slogan in one of the last political rallies he held in Srinagar's Lal Chowk before his party shut its office in early '90s. Later while on a visit to Kashmir's villages, women, uncorrupted by the political environments used this phrase often with reference to Pakistan.
However, as the PDP-BJP government is in command, it remains to be seen as to how far the PDP will be able to carry on its soft-talk on Pakistan and terrorism.
Again, the BJP's ambitions on Kashmir scare the people threatens the common people tend to believe that the saffron party has a diabolic plan of changing the demography of Kashmir from a Muslim-majority to a Hindu-majority region. The vested interests from within the PDP and outsiders will keep pin-pricking to keep the BJP and Mufti on his toes.
Looking at the PDP-BJP alliance with optimism, one can not overlook a fact that this arrangement is a perfect reflection of people's mandate. In what was a fractured mandate the November-December elections had seen people of Jammu region favouring the BJP while the people in Kashmir, by and large, favoured the PDP. The two regions had been drifting apart since 2008, where the Hindu-majority Jammu had erupted in an anti-Kashmir agitation on the issue of allotment of land for the Amarnath pilgrimage. The BJP being in the saddle should narrow the chasm that divides the culturally and politically opposite parts of the state.