Part 12 (1/2)

'Don't worry,' Moosa said, looking worried. 'I know he says these things and we often have to later contradict him. What I'll do is that from now on I'll give him some points from which to speak or to refer.'

The next time Farooq had a public meeting, Moosa went along and gave his chief minister a piece of paper with five or six points written down. Farooq put the slip in his pocket and began speaking. After a while, Farooq was back to saying whatever he felt like saying; so Moosa, who was sitting in the front row, frantically began to point with one finger to his pocket, gesturing that the chief minister should reach into his own pocket and pull the slip out. Farooq looked at Moosa and Moosa's finger. He then continued without ever referring to that slip of paper. As I mentioned, Farooq never liked being told what to do.

During those years in Srinagar when I got to know Farooq, I saw that he was not non-serious, as many people claimed. The fact of the matter was that he did not suffer fools and he did not waste time on fools. Also, he did not like negativity. When militancy was hotting up, the police chief, Jeelani Pandit, got on Farooq's nerves because he would every day go to his chief minister with a list of bad news, of terrorist incidents. Farooq wanted to hear about militants getting caught or about a police plan to combat militancy. So Jeelani Pandit got the sack and was replaced by J.N. Saxena, who had been my predecessor K.P. Singh's predecessor in Srinagar.

The other thing was that there was no hypocrisy about Farooq. Early on, after my first few interactions, I wanted to call on him. 'What is this ”call on you”?' he said. 'Come home and have dinner.'

There was one other couple there and as soon as we sat down Farooq said, 'Will you have a drink?'

'Sir,' I said. 'If you have a drink then I'll have a drink.'

'Of course I'll have a drink,' he said.

I was once asked that since I knew so many Kashmiris, could I say how many liked to have a drink? I replied that I could say who liked his drink, but I couldn't say who didn't. That's how the Kashmiri is. And that's how Farooq is: he loves doing everything and people talking about it. He does not hide who he is. Being a doctor he was always careful about his health and his drinking was restricted to entertainment with friends.

Farooq was also very much a family man. I joined in May 1988 and in March my wife and I had to send our daughter off to boarding school since there was no place to send her to school in Srinagar. She went to Sanawar, where Farooq's son Omar was the head boy. The founders' day at the Lawrence School is early October and Farooq asked me if I was going. I had planned on taking leave to do so, so Farooq said, 'Come with me and tell your department that you're keeping a watch on the chief minister.' Of course I didn't take him up on his offer.

His wife Mollie was very much a part of things and despite all the talk of his womanising, she put up pretty well with him. She was totally apolitical and stayed in the background, busying herself in work at the nearby hospital on Gupkar Road. She was civilised and though she never took interest in politics, if she needed to accompany the chief minister somewhere, she would. No doubt she enjoyed being the chief minister's wife, but she left Srinagar in 1990 when things went out of control. It had become too much for her and she told her husband that it was no place for their girls to go to school. (Omar was already in college in Bombay.) First she spent some time in Delhi, at her mother-in-law's house in Safdarjung Lane; then she left for England.

After Rubaiya's kidnapping, Farooq repeatedly told the new prime minister, V.P. Singh, that he would resign the moment Jagmohan was brought back as governor. The BJP, which along with the Left supported the National Front government from outside, was demanding the deployment of Jagmohan to combat the militancy, which had gone out of control. Farooq obviously had bitter memories of Jagmohan, who had dismissed him in 1984 and had Gul Shah installed in his place. 'Anybody but Jagmohan,' Farooq told the prime minister. Railways Minister George Fernandes a.s.sured Farooq that it wouldn't happen, but in the end neither he nor V.P. Singh could stop Mufti, Arun Nehru and Jagmohan from having their way, and true to his word, Farooq resigned.

I was jettisoned then from Srinagar in March 1990, nearly two months after Farooq quit, because the governor thought I was Farooq's man and home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed did not disagree. It took two months to replace me because things were so bad in Kashmir that IB officers were reluctant to be posted in Srinagar. As I mentioned in chapter four, R.C. Mehta took up the a.s.signment, and when he reached he asked me if I would introduce him to the former chief minister.

Farooq was still in Srinagar. I rang him up and told him that my successor had arrived. 'You're leaving?' he asked.

'Yes, sir.'

'Oh, boy,' he said. Those were his exact words.

Farooq agreed that I could bring R.C. over for tea but asked me to come an hour earlier. I did and found myself chatting with a relaxed man, a man who spoke in an absolutely open way. And he said something to me that was crucial to understanding his politics.

'I'm not like father,' Farooq said. 'I'm not going to follow my father's politics.'

It was quite an admission because Sheikh Saheb had been the last word in Kashmir. But he had also spent decades imprisoned. 'I don't intend to spend twenty-three years in jail,' Farooq said. 'I've figured out that to remain in power here you have to be on the right side of Delhi and that's what I'm going to do.'

There it was in a nutsh.e.l.l: the simple and straightforward politics of Farooq Abdullah.

He then thanked me and said it was sad that I was going, that it was all a part of the job. Frankly, I was happy to get out of there because militancy had made the stress unbearable. I was relieved to be going.

The irony is that once Farooq decided to resign he got a frantic message from Rajiv Gandhi, conveyed by Rajesh Pilot. Rajiv wanted to meet Farooq before he resigned, because the Congress party did not want Farooq to resign. Pilot came to Jammu and picked up Farooq and flew him to Delhi, but Farooq stuck to his guns and said, 'No, I'm resigning.'

From that day on, Farooq's worth went up many times in Rajiv's estimation, and Rajiv was always saying Farooq, Farooq, Farooq. In March 1990, Rajiv went with Deputy Prime Minister Devi Lal on an all-party delegation visit to Kashmir, and the Congress president had a lot to say on that trip. He told the media that there was a great mess in Kashmir; that the National Front government did not know what it was up to; and that it was responsible for Farooq's resignation.

Here's another irony: the man with a key role in Farooq's resignation and Jagmohan's appointment was Home Minister Mufti Sayeed. Once V.P. Singh's government fell in November 1990, till Farooq was re-elected chief minister in 1996, Mufti had only one refrain: that there was no other solution to Kashmir but Farooq Abdullah. I remember at least six occasions on which he said this, all reported by the media.

Farooq went to England and would come to Delhi when he thought that something was going to happen. But he was mostly abroad and I met him once, in 1993, at his Suss.e.x home. In the early 1990s, in fact, there were only three constant visitors to Farooq at Safdarjung Lane. One was s.h.i.+a cleric and Congress leader Moulvi Iftikhar Hussain Ansari (the other two were a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi named Riyaz Punjabi, and A.S. Dulat). Like Abdul Ghani Lone, Iftikhar had been with the People's Conference and done a bit of party- hopping. As Kashmir's top s.h.i.+a leader he had extensive contacts with the Iranians, who gave him a lot of respect. His cousin, Abbas Ansari, would later be one of the stalwarts of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference.

In those lonely days of the early 1990s when no one would even visit Farooq, Iftikhar was closer to him than even Farooq's fellow partymen. As a mainstream leader Iftikhar was the most outspoken against the separatists and would repeatedly tell me, 'Why are you wasting your time on these fellows, yeh kissi kaam ke nahin.' On this, his and Farooq's thinking matched, except that Farooq understood Delhi's compulsion in reaching out to separatists and was fine with itso long as it didn't compromise him. Iftikhar, on the other hand, was much more suspicious of our hobn.o.bbing with separatists.

As mentioned, Iftikhar was closer to Farooq at the time than even the National Conference people, because the NC leaders had all but disappeared due to militancy and the threat to their lives. (Several were killed.) With Farooq away from the scene the party was hollow. For all the talk of it being a cadre-based party spread all over the state, it was nothing without Farooq. It was demoralised, and the only person flying the party flag in Srinagar, besides Farooq Abdullah on Gupkar Road, was Syed Akhoon from Budgam. Otherwise, there was no NC. There was only Farooq.

We were trying to get the NC back in business in the early 1990s, telling its leaders that it was high time they came out of hibernation and began getting politically involved. This was particularly so in 1994 and '95, when separatists like Shabir Shah and Yasin Malik were released and talking peace and Delhi was talking politics. The NC leaders would always respond: 'You get our leader back and then we'll talk politics.'

By then Farooq also got wind that change was in the air and that he was needed in Delhi, so he came back and stayed instead of returning to England.

There is a telling anecdote that concerns a London-based Kashmiri named Dr Siraj Shah, director of a human rights group called Kashmir Watch. Several expatriates were getting involved in 199394 and trying to get things resolved in Kashmir. Like Narasimha Rao, Dr Siraj was also hooked on Shabir Shah, believing him to be the ultimate solution to Kashmir. Perhaps he had heard on the Kashmiris' network that the government of India was more interested in Shabir.

So Dr Siraj met Shabir a few times, and then one day approached me and said, 'I've had enough of him.' He had become disillusioned with Shabir and thought the separatist to be a waste of time and money. 'Can you introduce me to Dr Farooq Abdullah instead?' Dr Siraj asked me.

The three of us had breakfast together and Dr Siraj came away impressed with Farooq. 'This is the right man for Kashmir,' he said to me. 'Why are you wasting your time on these other idiots?' he added, in reference to the separatists.

Dr Siraj said even he wanted to come back to Kashmir. 'When are elections going to be held?' he asked.

'Doc, you won't fit in here,' I said.

'No, I'm familiar with Srinagar,' he said. 'I've lived there all my life.'

'What about your European wife?'

'She can stay in London,' Dr Siraj said, without missing a beat. Now I'm told he dumped her and married an English girl.

The point was that Kashmiris of all hues, whether abroad or here, found Farooq indispensable to Kashmir. Indeed, till Farooq returned in 1995 and revived his party, there was no political mainstream in Kashmir. Which is why Irshad Malikthe militant whom I wish I had brought back to India when I was R&AW chief and who is now in Londonsaid that the 1996 a.s.sembly election was a masterstroke, because it revived the political process and broke the back of militancy. It could only revive the political process because Farooq jumped into the fray, which he had reservations about right till the last moment; in fact, he did not partic.i.p.ate in the 1996 Lok Sabha election in June, because the NC had not made up its mind about taking part. A lot of effort went into persuading Farooq to agree to take the plunge.

Farooq's party, of course, won the a.s.sembly election and was invited to form the government. A week before the swearing- in he was busy mustering his troops and we met for lunch at the Taj. 'Doctor Saheb,' I said. 'I'm told that in 1983 when you formed your first government you had only a handful of ministers and it made a huge impact. Why not do that again, keep the cabinet small, and afterwards you can expand it?' He agreed.

The swearing-in ceremony was held in the Sher-e-Kashmir auditorium and was attended by the Congress president, Sitaram Kesri, along with other opposition leaders. I also went, and I took along my IB colleague Ajit Doval, who was being posted in Srinagar and whom I wanted to introduce to the new chief minister. It was a moving ceremony. While he was being sworn in, the audience stood up and gave him a standing ovation. He became emotional. He was on stage and he began calling people on stage, 'tum bhi aajao', and in the end around twenty fellows got sworn in.

Among them was one non-NC member: Iftikhar Ansari, who was in the Congress party. During the ceremony, Farooq asked Kesri: 'Inko hamare saath aane dijiye.' Such was the goodwill that Kesri immediately agreed, and said, 'Inko National Conference mein le lijiye.'

Another irony is that Farooq and Iftikhar parted company over cases of corruption that were lodged against Iftikhar; the cases involved a scam in the cleaning of the Dal Lake. The two fought against each other in the parliamentary election of 2009, and in his campaign, Farooq took a few cracks at his former friend. 'Thankfully Iftikhar is not a woman or you can imagine the number of husbands he would have had,' Farooq said on the campaign trail, lampooning Iftikhar's past party- hopping.

Iftikhar pa.s.sed away in September 2014, while this book was being written. I went to see him in May; he had been suffering from cancer and had gone to the US for treatment. 'Your friend is going to lose,' he said.

'He is your friend too,' I said.

'That he is, I acknowledge,' Iftikhar said. 'But he doesn't.'

'Are you serious about his losing?'

'He will lose,' Iftikhar said. 'But even so, Farooq's place in history is a.s.sured.'

When Farooq returned to power, H.D. Deve Gowda was the prime minister and Farooq was most comfortable with him. There was no meddling in J&K's affairs and that was the best thing from Farooq's point of view. There was no panic in Delhi when Farooq's government set up the State Autonomy Committee because for somebody like Deve Gowda, who came from a state, and whose government was a United Front of regional parties, discussing how to expand a state's autonomy was the most natural thing in the world.

Those were also the best years I had with Farooq. It had to do with the fact that when I returned to the IB headquarters in 1990, the normal course of things would have been to go on to other a.s.signments. I started on that track, but thanks to my DIBs, Jos.h.i.+ and Narayanan, I headed the Kashmir group for eight years, till I joined R&AW. Perhaps Farooq felt that unlike other officials I wasn't a guy who had disappeared from the scene. We would thus meet often, either when he was in Delhi or when I went to Srinagar, and had many a drink together. Those were the days he relied on me.