Games that Mehbooba Mufti is playing

Dear community members,

Namaskar,

I have been keenly watching PDP MP Mehbooba Mufti's moves for about a month now since the day her Chief Minister father Mufti Sayeed passed into history. She says that if her party forms the government in Jammu & Kashmir, it cannot ignore the separatists' interests. In simple commonsense language this means that she wants separatists to be made stakeholders in the new government when it is formed.

She, also, says that she will be able to form the government if only the Centre is ready to come up with some confidence-building measures in the state. One fails to understand what she means exactly by the term "confidence building"? Surrendering to the diabolical designs of those who want to destroy India and snatch it from India's lap? But she has not cared to explain so far, keeping everybody in Jammu & Kashmir, and the country at large, guessing about what her next move could be It is, however, not difficult to make conjectures about her game. It is all about power and pelf and an agenda that could be disastrous for the nation On November 27 last year as an MP of PDP, the ruling party in Jammu & Kashmir, Mehbooba had told the Parliament that "this country owns. Muslims and Muslims own this country. Indian Muslims, she said, had rejected the two-nation theory and stayed back in India at the time of partition. She told the House: "Let us make our country a showcase window of harmony" Now, when the time has come and she has got an opportunity to make her state a showcase of harmony, she is dallying. When she asserts that Muslims own this country, why doesn't she say that KPS, also, own Kashmir and they should be brought back and settled in the Valley in conditions where their life, property and honour will be safe?

Muslims, she claimed, have rejected the two-nation theory and rightly so. That was the reason why in 1947 when Azim Premjee's father was offered by M. A. Jinnah, the Finance Minister's post in Pakistan, he refused to leave India. Similarly, Dr. Zakir Hussain, Rafi Ahmad Kidwal, Ghulam Sayidain and numerous other Muslims who had the opportunity to go to Pakistan on high positions, refused to go there. They preferred to live in democratic India-in a pluralist atmosphere. At that time, even, some secular Muslims left Pakistan and came over to India. Among them was the nephew of the Frontier Gandhi, Abdul Gaffar Khan,

and a Kashmiri Muslim who left Lahore and settled in Delhi where he was appointed on a high post in the Delhi University and whose sons today are top-class engineers.

When Mehbooba talks of the making Kashmir a show-window of harmony, why does she not start the process from her own state and make KPS a part of that pluralist harmony, one would like to ask.

Ten months ago, when the Assembly election results were announced In Jammu & Kashmir, Mehbooba's father, Mufti Sayeed, thanked the separatists and Pakistan for having allowed the election process go on in a peaceful atmosphere. The fact is that it is the Election Commission which deserved thanks for conducting the polls there in an impartial manner, and the security forces, who helped to maintain peace at the polling stations. It was the voters of the State and not Pakistan or the separatists who facilitated the PDP obtain 28 seats in the state assembly. Pakistan and the separatists were bitterly opposed to democratic elections being held in the state. They termed elections as a farce. There were many times when the separatists openly called for the boycott of the elections.

PDP sources now say that the party is finding it difficult to work with the BJP. How, one would like to ask, can it work in cooperation with the Jehadists who dislike democracy and pluralism and to have equal respect for different religions? What PDP seems to be trying is to grab Indian tax payers' money while kowtowing to the separatists' agenda of turning the state into a zone of unhindered Islamic supremacy and letting it assume the powers of the executive, legislature and judiciary all in one. The party seems to have sympathy for people who set a building on fire and then play the role of fire brigade as well. If you call it a game of standing on two boats at the same time you are free to do so. However, everybody knows that such people are likely to fall into the raging waters of the river flowing below and drown.

I have been watching the goings-on between the PDP and BJP with a sceptic mind having premonitions of a disaster very likely to happen. Leaders of the two parties may talk with each other about devices to keep their alliance afloat, but it is difficult to see them succeeding till the trust deficit between them remains at the present level. Whatever be the consequences of the game that Mehbooba seems to be playing, the sufferings of the common people are bound to cross all limits. So far as the Kashmiri Pandits are concerned, they are the only nationalist force in the true sense as they alone have the interests of the nation uppermost in their hearts. The political leaders have their own games to play, their own manoeuvres to make. But is there anyone who is talking about the KPs? They seem to have become an insignificant and dispensable commodity, though they have their whole destiny at stake. Sad indeed.

But right now we are having Herath coming on March 6. I pray that this auspicious night of Shiva and Shakti's union brings them all the happiness, all the peace they so badly need.

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Courtesy: Vijay Raina  and Koshur Samachar 2016, February