South Kashmir: The Graveyard Of Mainstream Political Workers
By Daanish Bin
Nabi
Published by News
Central 24/7 on
The BJP has rattled PDP in its own backyard – south Kashmir.
Had PDP not betrayed its own workers, things might have been different this
time for the party.
With the security situation in southern Kashmir remaining on
edge as the daily civilian and militant killings go unabated, the mainstream
political space in the region is fast shrinking. This has adversely affected
the space occupied by the ground workers and polling agents of mainstream
political parties in the area. Danish Ganai, on behalf of News Central 24×7,
travels to various areas of the region to understand the pulls and pressures
faced by political workers in the Valley.
Social boycott
In south Kashmir, one of the main challenges was identifying
grass-roots workers. One after the other refused to talk to News Central 24×7,
but we managed to speak with a BJP worker in the volatile district of Pulwama.
Muhammad Naveed (name changed), 42, agreed to speak with us
only on condition of anonymity. He had joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
around 2009-2010. An ardent follower of the BJP, he has an interesting tale to
share about the social boycott that he and his family is facing.
Sitting in the veranda of his two-storey house, Naveed
says,“Our neighbours don’t talk to us. We are outlaws in our own backyard. We
can’t face people. We don’t talk to anyone. People look at us with suspicion.
We don’t know who is going to kill us and where we would be killed”,he says.
Naveed, in a precarious situation with his family, says,“I
don’t believe my own family now. Forget my own brothers, I even fear my wife.
She might kill me. The relation between husband and wife is something unique
but things have come to such a low ebb that I don’t have faith in even her. I
don’t know who is going to ask or force her to kill me.”
To save himself and his family from the wrath of the locals,
Naveedhas had to migrate to Srinagar. The city is relatively safer. He added,
“I come to pay a visit to my parents occasionally. I don’t come here. I am
afraid of everyone.”
Regarding the house in Srinagar where Naveed has been
putting up along with his family, Naveed says, “It is my own rented place. BJP
has not provided me with accommodation in the city.”
One of his school-going children has to face hostility from
his classmates. The child is taunted because of Naveed’s affiliation with the
BJP. “One day, he came to me and asked, Papa are you an Indian? I was taken
aback. I asked him who told you this. He said, my friends told me that your dad
is an Indian”,says Naveed grimly.
“Being an Indian is a curse in Kashmir,”says Naveed.
When asked if he took these issues up with his party’s high
command, Naveed said “They don’t differentiate between their own party workers
and common people. For them every Kashmiris is a traitor. I want to weep
loudly. I am fed up of everything here. Neither my family nor my people belong
to me.”
When asked if he would leave the BJP or continue to help the
party in south Kashmir, he answered “I can’t tell you anything right now. The
situation is really very tense. The best thing right now is to keep mum.”
He repeatedly told us to not to mention any names or
addresses. He also asked us to share the story link with him, so he could be
sure that his personal details are not being revealed.“You don’t understand the
hell we are going through. Please don’t mentionnames or the address,”Naveed
told News Central 24×7.
The dilemma
Political workers in these areas are still conflicted about
why PDP allied with the BJP, as the former had sought votes from an anti-BJP
plank. The workers also think that the security situation would not have
worsened to this extent, had the PDP not joined hands with the BJP.
Aslam Khan (named changed), a PDP worker, has been
associated with the party since 2003. Khan, in his mid-50, is a staunch
supporter of the late Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, the PDP patron.
He explained how they had managed to win the 2014 assembly
elections, “On the instruction of Mufti Sayeed, we went to from one village to
the other, telling people to come out and vote or else the BJP will come in
power. We, being on the ground, promised people that if they cast their vote,
they will be able to keep the BJP out of the state. But what happened in the
end? We were left red-faced among our own people and in our villages.”
Khan, a resident of district Shopian, says that Mufti
Sahab’s first term a chief minister were the best years that Kashmir has
witnessed in the recent past, “It was the only reason we were ready to
sacrifice everything for him again. However, we are still in a dilemma about
why he went for an alliance with them (BJP). We had even asked him to contest
the elections again. Had he done so, we would have won hands down.”
The Betrayal
The entry of the right-wing BJP, on Kashmir’s political
stage, turned the political work of the workers upside down. One political
worker from the restive town of Sopore termed the PDP-BJP coalition a ‘mental
clash’.
Peerzada Asim, who was associated with PDP before he joined
Congress, told News Central 24×7, “We should not hide it anymore and one should
not be ashamed in saying that the PDP-BJP coalition was bad for all political
workers in the entire Valley. The coalition was a mental clash between two people.
In other words, the coalition partners were two banks of the same river,
running parallel to each other. BJP’s entrance in the state has shaken up the
entire system in Jammu Kashmir.”
On November 8, 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited
Kashmir and announced Rs 80,000 crore package for the state. On its part, the
PDP ensured that the rally was well attended. Rough estimates suggest that
between 15 to 25 thousand people attended the rally. What many don’t know, is
how the workers of PDP managed to reach the rally held in Srinagar’s
Sher-i-Kashmir Cricket Stadium.
A PDP worker in Kulgam was tasked by the zonal president to
gather people for Prime Minister’s rally. “We started to plan for the rally at
our village at least a week back. One day before the scheduled rally, around 50
people registered with us. But on the rally day, only seven people came.
Remaining 43 didn’t show up due to fear of life. We left Kulgam at five in the
morning and reached Pampore market around six. We stopped in main Pampore
market to get something to eat. On this wintry morning, only one shop had
opened by the time. The shop-keeper was a woman. Seeing a vehicle (Tata Sumo)
full of people, she asked me are you going to Modi’s rally. I was yet to nod in
an affirmative but she already had a rod in her hand and was ready to hit me. I
ran for my life and at once and we left for Srinagar. She did not sell us
anything. We went hungry the entire day”,he recounts.
On January 7, 2016, Mufti Muhammad Sayeed breathed his last
at All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS). Given the resentment against
PDP’s betrayal by allying with BJP, his funeral prayer was attended by a few
thousand people, at the same venue where only few months earlier, Mufti Sayeed
had ensured that Modi’s rally was attended by many more.
The Migrant Association
Chairman of the Jammu Kashmir Political Migrant Front For
All Parties All Communities, Sheikh Mohiuddin Shabnum, is working for the
safety of political workers in Srinagar.
Shabnum, a resident of south Kashmir’s Anantnag district, is
living in a hotel in an upscale area of Srinagar. He had migrated to Srinagar
city after the advent of militancy in the 1990s.
Talking to News Central 24×7, Shabnum says, “We have been
residing in these hotels in Srinagar for the last thirty years, due to the
threat to our lives. For thirty years, we have been asking successive
governments to provide us colonies. Name it anything like Modinagar or
Muftinagar, but we need separate colonies so that we don’t have to live in
fear.”
“My house in Anantnag is in total shambles. I am not able to
visit the place. It has been locked for the past thirty years.”, he added.
Shabnum says that Jammu Kashmir Political Migrant Front has
accommodated political workers from areas like Baramulla, Doda, Kupwara,
Kulgam, Pulwama and Bandipora.
These political workers, from across Kashmir, have been
accommodated in around 18 hotels in Srinagar.
When asked what work he does for the migrant political
workers, he said, “I provide registration, Personnel Security Officers and
provide them (political workers) hotel rooms in Srinagar.”
Shabnum said that he was interrogated by militants in the
early 1990s for carrying out mainstream activities in Kashmir.
He explained that violence was not an option for the people
of Kashmir and that New Delhi should start a dialogue process with the Hurriyat
so that the situation improves.
“I met Rajnathji twice in Srinagar. And on both occassions,
I told him to talk with Geelani Sahab, Molvi Sahab (Mirwaiz Umar Farooq) and
Yasin Sahab. A solution will come when they (New Delhi) will talk to Hurriyat.
We are on the ground and will do everything under our command to normalize the
situation, only if New Delhi starts a dialogue process.”
Tailpiece
In 2014, Mufti Sayeed decided to join hands with the BJP,
aiming to connect the people of Kashmir with the rest of India. During his
swearing-in ceremony as the chief minister, Mufti uttered these words,“We want
to connect Kashmiri people with rest of the country. History has given us a
chance. We have a majority in Kashmir, BJP has got the majority in
Jammu.”However, only three and half years down the line, Mufti’s vision has
come crumbling down in front of his daughter’s eyes. Not only has she lost
power, but is also on the verge of losing her party.
The BJP has rattled PDP in its own backyard – south Kashmir.
Had PDP not betrayed its own workers, things might have been different this
time for the party. “Our party was 100 percent popular among masses in 2014.
Our popularity came down drastically in only three and a half years. In 2018,
our popularity is only five percent in 2018. We had to pay a heavy price for
joining hands with BJP. Things are back to 1990s,”says a PDP sympathiser from
Pampore.
Given the duress under which the political workers are
working and living in south Kashmir, the region has become no more than a
graveyard for mainstream political workers.
Note: Some of the names and places have been changed to hide
the identity of the political workers given the volatile situation in Kashmir.
