NC's story through eyes of a loyalist

As an old-war horse of the party, Mir Ghulam Mohammad aka Saki is very critical of its 

present day leaders

Daanish Bin Nabi

National Conference, Jammu and Kashmir’s largest regional political party, may never ever find a die-hard fan and loyalist like Mir Ghulam Mohammad, aka Saki, who talks, eats, drinks and sleeps National Conference.

For the last five-and-a-half decades Saki’s pro-Sheikh Abdullah stance has remained unwavering, even when in the peak of anti-India armed rebellion in the early 1990s many NC stalwarts announced their resignations after being coerced by Kashmiri militants to publicise their non-affiliation in the local newspapers. 

Saki, however, remained defiant as ever.

Sixty-nine year old Mir Ghulam Mohammad Saki originally belongs to downtown Srinagar’s Nawab Bazar area. As a foot-soldier and a staunch sympathiser of NC, Saki is an eyewitness to many a political upheaval and paradigm in turbulent Kashmir.

Not only Saki but his entire family is NC-sympathiser by conviction.

During the extreme violence in 1996 Saki’s family had to shift to Bemina area of Srinagar.

Nothing deters Saki.

He remains a darling of every leader of his party, National Conference, right from Sheikh Abdullah’s days. He admires all Abdullahs — Sheikh Abdullah, Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah.

He claims to know the in and out of the National Conference.

Saki himself belongs to a political family. His grandfather was one of the first martyrs of Kashmir’s freedom struggle.

Giving a brief background of his family’s political history, Saki says that, “my grandfather, Khazir Mir Saki, is one amongst those killed in the 1931 anti-Dogra uprising in downtown area. He was hit by a bullet in his abdomen, a bullet fired by Dogra soldiers. In all, five people were killed from Nawab Bazar locality. My grandfather was one among them.”

Both his father and grandfather were involved in the first Kashmir uprising.

Saki further says: “Right from the very beginning our entire family was involved with the freedom movement of Kashmir, be it the Resham Khan Tehreek or Zaldagar Mazdoor Tehreek.”

Saki’s childhood is a story of pain and tragedy, very little triumph. Those days there were hardly any school-going Muslim student in Jammu and Kashmir.

But Saki is one of the few Muslim students who went to school in his era.

“I have studied at one of the Jabri schools (an official policy initiated by Maharaja Hari Singh to coerce people to join schools). Afterwards, I went to Hamdaniya High School. Pandits were in the majority in all the schools. Hardly any Muslim could be seen in our schools. Only six per cent of students were from the Muslim community. And of those majority belonged to elite Muslim families,” he says with a sigh.

Unfortunately, Saki lost his father in 1960.

He had an opportunity to work in J&K Information Department, but his affiliation with the National Conference could not be altered. Saki kept working for the Abdullah party in capacity of an enthusiastic ground worker.

Lamenting his stint with Information Department he says: “In Information Department I worked under Bakshi Ghulam Ali who was among very few Muslims working in a government department in that period. This was the time when only Pandits were given preferential treatment in the government departments. My entry to the department was a miracle. Only because of Ghulam Ali many more Muslims got opportunity to work with Information Department.”

With conviction, like any loyalist would do, Saki defends the infamous Sheikh-Indira Accord (1975) by claiming that Abdullah was deceived by then Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi.

“Sher-i-Kashmir was always in favour of an independent Kashmir. The accord with Indira Gandhi in no sense was a sell out as projected by today’s generation. His accord was all about to restore the 1953 constitutional position of Jammu and Kashmir. In the end, Indira Gandhi ditched Sheikh Sahab,” he says.

Recalling Sheikh Abdullah’s death, Saki says with lot of emotions: “Sheikh Sahab’s Namaz-e- Jinazah was offered at Polo Ground Srinagar amid tears and sobs. Everyone was in tears. Dignitaries from around the world were also present to pay respect. By the time Indira Gandhi and Zail Singh (then Prime Minister and President respectively) arrived at Polo Ground, an estimated crowd of eight lakh people had assembled there. Entire Kashmir was present there. Abdul Gani Lone (slain Hurriyat chairman) and Mirwaiz Molvi Farooq (slain head priest), Maulana Yaseen Hamdani and Sadr-ud-Din Mujahid were also present. They were all in the same truck in which Sher-i-Kashmir’s body was to be taken to Hazratbal, Dargah.”

I still remember Gani Lone and Mirwaiz Molvi Farooq saying to me, recalls Saki, that “it will not send a good signal to people if we will wrap Sheikh’s body in Indian tri-color.”

But we did it, he adds, only when Indira Gandhi was about to arrive to have the last glimpse of Sher-i-Kashmir.

“Molvi Farooq said to Gani Lone that with Sheikh Sahab’s death Kashmiris are left alone and are more vulnerable to India’s aggression. He also said that whatever differences we had with him (Sheikh Abdullah), in times of any aggression from the Indian side we looked up to Sheikh Abdullah to be at the forefront to take India head on,” Saki says.

Saki remembering Sheikh Abdullah’s “golden words”: “When Dr Farooq took over from Sher-i-Kashmir as President of NC, a grand rally was held at Iqbal Park, Srinagar, which was attended by more than three lakh people. Sher-i-Kashmir in his concluding remarks said that if you want to do any favour to me, remember two things: first, join National Conference en masse; and the second, uphold the dignity of Kashmir’s flag and its constitution.”

Sheikh, according to Saki, also said that “Until our flag is up, our identity, dignity, our constitution and culture and traditions are all safeguarded. You should give up everything to uphold the dignity of our (Kashmir’s) flag.”

Defending Farooq Abdullah’s decision to participate in the 1996 elections Saki says something very interesting: “Without a whisker of a doubt I say this with some confidence that had Dr Farooq not taken over the reins of Kashmir in 1996 there would not have been a single Muslim alive in Kashmir today. New Delhi was ready to change the demography of Kashmir in 1990s by killing as many Muslims they could under the garb of militancy. So that whenever a plebiscite was held in Kashmir India would have achieved an easy victory. The migration of Kashmiri Pandits was also a pre-planned ploy of New Delhi. It was also done by their successive Governors so that they could kill Kashmiri Muslims without any hindrance,” he continues.

As an old-war horse of the National Conference Saki is very critical of present day NC leaders.

He concedes that his party NC has not been able to maintain grassroots connection with the people. He, however, does not blame Omar Abdullah for that.

“Yes, the gap between the people and the party widened after Afzal Guru’s hanging. As a witness to the entire episode I am telling you that Omar Abdullah did not know about the Afzal’s execution beforehand. It was on the morning of February 9 that he got a call from Home Ministry, informing him about the execution and how to deal with the law and order situation. Even Dr Farooq is on record warning New Delhi against hanging Afzal Guru. Kashmir is yet to come to terms with the hanging of Maqbool Bhat. Do not even think of hanging Afzal. But India did not listen to him either.”

Lashing out at NC’s coalition partner, Congress, Saki says that his party lost elections only because of this “crooked coalition”.

He holds Saif-ud-Din Soz responsible for the loss in 2014 elections.

“We lost elections because of the Congress. Soz turned out to be a snake. He even did not want Mufti to come to power. Our coalition with the Congress did more damage to our party than the September floods, 2010 summer agitation or Afzal Guru hanging,” he analyses.

Like many other NC veterans, he also thinks that the new generation of leaders in the party is responsible for the decline. He opines that the new generation leaders are not connected with the people at the grassroots level and remain unaware of the party’s aims and objectives, what NC stands for.

He laments: “The new generation of our party doesn’t know the real meaning of the National Conference. The severe jolt to NC after the death of Sher-i-Kashmir was the demise of stalwart, Shiekh Nazir. After Sher-i- Kashmir it was Nazir Sahab who kept the party together. He knew every trick of the trade. We lost a great leader in him.”

He is of the view that the void left by Nazir’s death would be difficult to fill.

“A sort of veil is lifted. Even Dr Farooq did not know as much as Nazir sahib did. He was everything to us. Our party does not have people of Nazir Sahab’s wisdom anymore. He was the backbone of National Conference. The new generation does not know anything about ‘Naya Kashmir’ or our flag or constitution, how can they make the party grow?” he questioned.

As the rift between the regions of Kashmir and Jammu keeping on widening mostly on communal lines, it remains to be seen, how the grand old party of Jammu and Kashmir — National Conference – which was the epitome of secularism can bring the secular fabric back to Jammu and Kashmir.

Published in DailyO on October 25, 2015