Mehbooba and Omar should welcome a third force in Kashmir
But the emergence of Sajad Lone is making both the PDP and the National Conference anxious
His father was assassinated by Pakistan-based militants; his wife is a Pakistani citizen; his father-in-law was a founding member of the 29-year-old violent Kashmir secessionist insurgency, his brother is with the Hurriyat Conference and until he blamed Pakistan’s Inter-services Intelligence (ISI) for the murder of his father, Sajad Lone, 51, was also a separatist who sought freedom for Kashmir.
Today, he has emerged as the leading face of what’s being called the ‘Third Front’ in the Kashmir Valley. He is also one of the most outspoken and unequivocal critics of militancy, making him a high-security target and perennially vulnerable.
The one thing Sajad Lone is not scared of is risk. In the two decades I have known him as a reporter, Sajad has always rolled the die on the board game of chance, changing the rules of play, with altering circumstances. In 2002, he was the first separatist to flirt with electoral politics by fielding a proxy candidates in a poll widely considered a watershed moment for its absolute fairness. His vision document on “achievable nationhood” may have graduated into an altered and more pragmatic version of itself. But you have to credit Sajad Lone for constantly reinventing and readapting to the shifting sands of a volatile ground situation. Once dismissed as a floating and fickle individual vote, his attempts to build a third force today - one that his supporters say will take Kashmir politics beyond the “Mufti and Abdullah dynasts” – has obviously caused enough anxiety for both Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah to be worried, angry and a tad nervous.
Confronted with outspoken rebels who have questioned her style of leadership, the former chief minister - who was summarily dumped by the BJP - is now warning of more ‘Salahuddins’ if “New Delhi” tries to break her party. Her analogy is absolutely misplaced. Her outburst refers to the 1987 election in which Syed Salahuddin, the militant chief of the Hizbul Mujahideen, was a candidate and Yasin Malik, today a secessionist with the JKLF, was his polling agent. The elections were marred by allegations of widespread rigging which delivered the win to the National Conference candidate.
But how does Mehbooba’s example apply today? There are no manipulated campaigns or captured booths. There are no candidates who have slipped in through the backdoor. The political impasse in the state today is because of the fractured mandate of the 2014 assembly election results and because of the short shelf life of her coalition. Both she and the BJP must carry the cross for that.
Yes, there may be nothing especially charming about parties splitting, politicians flipping sides and coming together to cobble together new entities. But it is absolutely legitimate politics. It happens in every other state of India. Why should Jammu and Kashmir not be allowed its share of vanilla number-crunching?
It is irresponsible to suggest - as Mufti has – that the mere galvanisation of a third party – would push militancy higher. In fact, in Kashmir, it is mainstream party workers whether from her party or that of the National Conference or from smaller groups like Sajad Lone’s People’s Conference - who face the biggest threats from terrorism. Why would the routine unveiling of politics spur on militants any further?
Her angry comments betray a visible anxiety and simultaneously convey an obvious warning to intelligence agencies whom she clearly blames for these developments. This tendency to blame Delhi’s covert agencies for political churning is exactly how the Abdullahs-led National Conference explained their own cataclysmic defeat after 16 years at the hands of Mehbooba Mufti and her father in 2002.
Naturally, Omar Abdullah, her main opponent, has pounced on Mufti’s comments and slammed them. But a few days ago he too seemed exercised at a possible split in Mehbooba’s party going on the record to call it a threat to democracy. This was intriguing. Why would Mufti’s main challenger and the leader of the National Conference be concerned about the PDP? Perhaps, because a third party challenges the hegemony of the two-party status quo.
But for now Delhi should sit out this one and let it conclude naturally. The BJP attack on Mehbooba Mufti’s soft separatism is as disingenuous as her criticism of their policies - they were eyes-wide-open partners till a few weeks ago.
If a new political force is born from the chaos and contradictions of Kashmir politics today, Delhi should welcome it. If Delhi is to blame for the lack of forward movement in Kashmir today; so are they. cial boss of Croatian football, was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for diverting some $18 million from players’ transfer fees. Dinamo sold its top players, including Luka Modric, the star of the current national team, through an agency run by Mamic and his brother. Mamic fled to Bosnia, which doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Croatia.
Indirectly, the corruption may have contributed to the current national team’s strength. It’s been in Croatian club bosses’ interest to sell them off at the best price rather than to retain them, and the players ended up getting varied experience in Europe’s top football leagues. Today, they are confident pros without any inferiority complexes linked to their country’s size.
It’s unclear whether Croatia can be as strong when this generation of stars retires. The country’s economy is suffering from years of mismanagement. With all their nationalist warts and anti-capitalist pathos, the fervour of the 1990s no longer determines the political landscape.
Yet that fervour appears to be back to some extent as the country celebrates the team’s victories. This may be the last war for a while that the national squad is winning, but the memories of the time when football was more than a game still live. That’s why Croatian president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic is the only national leader at the World Cup to wear the national colours and make a convincing show of supporting the team rather than carrying out a diplomatic function. The Tudjman-era legacy isn’t quite gone. Croatia’s success lies at the crossroads between professionalism forged in English, German, French, Italian and Spanish leagues and the fierce spirit of the 1990s. This is a combination that left England by the wayside and can be fearsome even to the seemingly unbeatable French squad in Sunday’s final.