Part 15 (1/2)

15.

THE HARDLINER AND THE HURRIYAT.

After the 2002 J&K a.s.sembly election was over and as the year was drawing to an end, I went to Brajesh Mishra and said: 'Now what?' 'Now nothing,' he said. 'For the time being.'

'How can you say that?' I asked.

'You tell me.'

'Sir, this is not the end, this is the beginning. We must start talking,' I said. 'Everyone who comes here enquires why we are not talking.'

'Okay,' he said. 'Let me talk it over with the PM.'

That announcement took too long a time in coming: almost a year. In the meantime, though, Prime Minister Vajpayee made a speech at a public rally in Srinagar on 18 April 2003 which changed many, many things. Possibly this speech needed to be made before the talks began; in any case, a lot of valuable time was lost because in May 2004 the ruling alliance did not get re-elected.

Vajpayee had visited Srinagar three times before 2003: in 1999, 2001, and then in May 2002 for a meeting of the unified command. At the time the tension from the military build-up on the border was at its peak so his visit was welcome from the troops' point of view. After his visit was over and as he was leaving Srinagar, a journalist questioned him at the airport. 'Aapne kaha ki sab se baat karenge,' the journalist said. 'Toh kya yeh hogi within the Const.i.tution baat?'

Vajpayee was one step ahead. 'Uski baat kyon karte hein, hum insaniyat ke dairey mein baat karenge,' he said, side-stepping the question of talking within the Const.i.tution by talking of discussions within the framework of humanity.

Kashmiris went jubilant beyond bounds over his 'insaniyat ke dairey'.

And then came his public rally in 2003, the first by a prime minister since Rajiv Gandhi, and which made his prime ministers.h.i.+p, especially with his policy of 'insaniyat ke dairey', a benchmark for future administrations in the eyes of Kashmiris.

I was not asked to accompany the prime minister on the earlier visits, but for the April visit I was specifically asked to go with him. What happened on the earlier visits was the PM's speechwriter, Sudheendra Kulkarni, would come to my room and ask me: 'PM is going, what should be said?'

I would say 'let's think', and then we would discuss it.

This time I went to Kulkarni's room and asked him just one question: 'Political?'

'Don't worry,' Kulkarni said. 'This time it's only political.'

I went to Brajesh Mishra and told him I'd like to go a couple of days earlier, just to see the mood. I did and I think by then the prime minister had thought it through.

When he arrived at Srinagar we drove from the airport to Sonawar stadium. As everyone was settling down, I took a moment to ask Kulkarni, 'Let me have a copy of the speech at least now.'

'There is no speech today,' he said. 'Boss ne bola hai, koi speech nahin chahiye, main khud bolunga.'

And then he extended his hand of friends.h.i.+p to Pakistan, which kickstarted the process in which India and Pakistan came closest to an agreement on Kashmir. Once bitten, twice shy, Vajpayee said, but though he'd been bitten twice he did not hesitate to extend his hand in friends.h.i.+p again. The Kashmiris went crazy with happiness. As mentioned before, there is nothing that makes the Kashmiri feel better than good relations between India and Pakistan.

Frankly, I had no idea what the prime minister was going to say. It was something he and Brajesh would have discussed, as with everything else. Whatever happened between Brajesh Mishra and A.B. Vajpayee, only those two knew; there was no third person. Sometimes you would get a feel of it, as I mentioned their disappointment after the Agra summit. Otherwise it was very tight between these two. So who decided all important matters? As I have said Vajpayee spoke very little at formal meetings and Brajesh even less.

We returned from Srinagar and a few weeks later, in May 2003, I had dinner with Mirwaiz Umar Farooq. He had sought the meeting ostensibly to get his pa.s.sport renewed, but that would have got renewed anyway. So we got down to some talking.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq became the chief priest of Kashmir at the age of seventeen when his father, Mirwaiz Moulvi Mohammed Farooq, was a.s.sa.s.sinated in May 1990. The Mirwaizs had their base at the Jamia Masjid in downtown Srinagar, whose surrounding areas have traditionally been a hotbed of pro-Pakistani sentiment (in 1947, Umar Farooq's granduncle migrated to Muzaffarabad). They and other prominent families of downtown Srinagar were known as the Bakras and they were in political opposition to Sheikh Abdullah and his family, which is why Sher-e-Kashmir had the Hazratbal mosque built as a platform to rival the Jamia Masjid (hence their rivalry was known as the Sher vs the Bakras). The Mirwaiz also headed his own separatist organisation, the Awami Action Committee.

You may recall that I used to occasionally meet Mirwaiz Moulvi Farooq when I was posted in Srinagar, and he lent his help during the Rubaiya kidnapping by publicly denouncing it as un-Islamic. He was a.s.sa.s.sinated by Hizbul Mujahideen gunman Mohammed Abdullah Bangroo because he was in touch with the National Front railway minister George Fernandes; the militants b.u.mped off several people they suspected to be parleying with Delhi in those days.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq was a student of Srinagar's Burn Hall school and was planning on becoming a software engineer and all of a sudden he became the chief priest. Though he did complete his studieshe has a doctorate in Islamic Studieshe had no choice but to get involved in separatist politics and in 1993 was one of the founding executive members of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. Because he was so young, the other Hurriyat foundersSyed Ali Shah Geelani, Abdul Ghani Lone, Abbas Ansari and Prof. Abdul Ghani Bhatfound him to be most acceptable as the chairman (rather than each other, that's how high the intra-Hurriyat trust level was). The other thing with Umar Farooq was that having seen his father a.s.sa.s.sinated, at home, he was always reluctant to speak too forthrightly against the militants.

Over the years, the young Mirwaiz has impressed a lot of people with his good looks, his youth, his articulation in English, his dress sense. He has been rated very high by everybody, the Pakistanis, the Americans, the British, other foreigners, and by us. It has helped that he remained chairman of the Hurriyat for so long which, as Prof. Ghani once put it, is because Umar Farooq is the only one of the Hurriyat leaders with some standing. The Mirwaiz by virtue of being the Mirwaiz is somebody in his own right. He has the advantage of his position and platform, ideology and const.i.tuency. He's been Pakistan's blue-eyed boy. We've also pampered him. He is, among the Hurriyat, a big player.

But the Mirwaiz lacks political courage. Sometimes he gives the impression he's quite happy just being in a mosque or being at home, leading the Friday prayers; but at some point he needs to decide whether he wants to be pope for life, or he also wants to be chief minister. The fact is that he has told people that he would not mind being chief minister. His tragedy, though, is that he doesn't realise how highly he is rated, and that too, by everybody. But staying confined to your mosque has got him nowhere and will get him nowhere. It is just a matter of marking time, which eventually doesn't escape the notice of others. Or, as Prof. Ghani put it: 'Like all rich people the Mirwaiz wears silk pajamas, and the strings open easily.'

The Mirwaiz on one visit to Delhi in 2001 attended a rally of the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind, India's leading Islamic organisation. He spoke very well.

'You can become a national Kashmiri leader, and you should aspire to that,' I told the Mirwaiz. 'There's a huge shortage of Muslim leaders. There's Farooq, and there's you. You should come out more often.'

The problem, though, is that Muslims in India never speak up for Kashmiris. I once met Maulana Mahmood Madani at the India International Centre. 'You never think about Kashmir,' I said.

'Sochte hain,' he countered.

'Kya sochte hain?'

He thought for a few seconds, but then admitted it was true. 'Yeh hamari kamjori hai.'

'Kamjori ko theek kijiye,' I said. 'Na Kashmiri yahan ke baare mein bolta hain, na aap waha ke baare mein bolte hain.'

One of the telling episodes about the Mirwaiz took place in early 2007. He and the other Hurriyat members met Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf, who told them a few fundamental truths: that no one could remove India; that India would not compromise on its sovereignty and that boundaries can't be changed; and that he had found a formula for Kashmiris. Then, it is said, Musharraf told the Hurriyat leaders to go back to Kashmir and prepare for elections. This diktat to the Hurriyat by Pakistan to get out of its comfort zone was a shock to the Hurriyat.

But our dinner in May 2003 was one of those few occasions when the Mirwaiz provided hope. 'Is Delhi sincere about doing anything?' he asked.

'Of course we are,' I said. 'Why shouldn't we be?'

'Can Kashmir get autonomy?' he asked.

'Why not?'

'Can borders be opened, and can coming and going be easier?'

'Of course.'

'Can we have a bus from Srinagar to Muzaffarabad?'

'Of course,' I said. 'If we can have a bus from Delhi to Lah.o.r.e, then we can have that too.' (Incidentally, it was aboard this bus that the Hurriyat went to Pakistan in 2007 and were told by Musharraf to prepare for elections.) I had a counter-question for the Mirwaiz. 'If all this is okay then the Line of Control should be good enough?'

'Yes, it is,' he said.

'Are you willing to say all this publicly?' I asked.

'No,' he said. 'Not publicly.'