Jammu & Kashmir National Conference (NC) leader Farooq Abdullah, who got himself elected to the Lok Sabha from Srinagar in a byelection in April this year, in which only 2% of the electorate turned out to vote, has now chosen to play to the gallery with statements on the status of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK), which run contrary to the all-party unanimous resolution adopted by both Houses of Parliament of India on 22 February 1994. NC was represented in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha in February 1994. Faced with the threat of cross-border terrorism engineered by Pakistan, Parliament reiterated India’s stand on the unity and integrity of the nation and resolved to vacate the occupation by Pakistan of territories of the erstwhile princely State of Janmmu and Kashmir—the area Pakistan calls “Azad Kashmir” and India demarcates as POK. By some strange coincidence, Abdullah’s statements come within less than a fortnight of a formulation on the status of Kashmir by the Pakistan Prime Minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, at a seminar at the London School of Economics on 6 November.The stand of Abdullah, first enunciated at the conference of NC and then reiterated at a public meeting in Uri (where he said that Pakistan is “not wearing bangles” to let India take POK from Pakistan) comes at a time when the Union government’s initiative of appointing Dineshwar Sharma as the points-man for J&K has received positive response from a wide section of opinion in that state. The separatists have not sounded happy. The opposition of NC to Sharma’s mission has been open: Abdullah has expressed his “hopelessness” with the dialogue process.
Farooq Abdullah’s father, Sher-e-Kashmir Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah had, in 1975, given up his belligerence and signed an accord with Indira Gandhi’s government (represented by G. Parthasarathy). Following the accord, Sheikh Abdullah became the Chief Minister and was in power till he breathed his last on 8 September 1982. Farooq succeeded his father. During his regime, the first signs of separatist militancy appeared. Sheikh Abdullah, all his dilly-dallying notwithstanding, had been a pillar of secularism. “Shere-Kashmir ka kya irshad, Hindu-Muslim-Sikh ittehad” was the NC battle cry, which ensured that in 1947-48 the state of J&K was left unscathed by the communal frenzy which overtook the rest of the Indian subcontinent. The legacy of Farooq Abdullah’s rule was the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in January 1990, when, post his ouster, Governor’s Rule was in vogue. In the past 27 years, the plight of the Hindus who had to flee their homes has not been a centre-stage issue for NC. Or for that matter the PDP.
The Line of Control (LOC) is a legacy of the Shimla Agreement of 2 July 1972. A victorious Indira Gandhi met her Pakistan counterpart Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto post the Bangladesh war at Shimla. India had decided that the humiliation meted out to defeated Germany by the victorious Allies in the First World War by the Treaty of Versailles would not be the model at Shimla. The 93,000 troops held in prisoner of war camps were sent back home. India withdrew from the areas it had occupied in West Pakistan and the Ceasefire Line of 1949 (reiterated at Tashkent in 1965) was redrawn and LOC emerged. At Tashkent, President Ayub Khan had raised Kashmir with Lal Bahadur Shastri as an “issue” and “problem”, but not as a dispute. Bhutto’s Pakistan, six years later, was disinclined to flag Kashmir. It was decided in July 1992 that Kashmir was to be settled “bilaterally”, while the LOC was defined. There have been suggestions that the LOC be recognised as the international border. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and General Pervez Musharraf grazed at the solution, but it could not be taken further due to change of regimes in New Delhi and Islamabad which followed.
Farooq Abdullah, at one stage, had come to occupy a centre stage position in national politics. The bid for anti-Indira Gandhi unity of parties opposed to Congress saw Opposition conclaves (BJP was not part of it) in the 1980s. One such conclave attended by party leaders and Chief Ministers of states like West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, etc, was hosted by NC in Srinagar. Later, when the NDA government was formed, Omar Abdullah was part of the BJP-led alliance at the Centre. Farooq Abdullah later joined the UPA as a Cabinet minister under Manmohan Singh. The present sectarian stand taken by him, therefore, begs the question: is he trying to encroach on the turf of ageing Hurriyat chief Syed Ali Shah Geelani?
The Abdullah family had its way in browbeating the Centre in the Congress days. Filial ties with the Nehru family played a role. (After releasing Sheikh Abdullah in 1963, Jawaharal Nehru hosted him at the Teen Murti House; Rajiv had a friendly relationship with Farooq and the relationship is respected by Omar and Rahul Gandhi.) What perhaps Farooq Abdullah is tending to overlook is that he is now dealing with a much different New Delhi. The political heirs of Shyama Prasad Mookerjee are in power and that changes the paradigm on J&K.