AIP is weaponizing its separatist narrative against NC, PDP, but analysts feel this sentimental call will be detrimental to Kashmir’s interests
Sringar: Nearly two years after Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed to have resolved the Kashmir issue during a public meeting in the Anand district of Gujarat on October 10, 2022, the Kashmir valley, witnessing elections to local assembly after 10 years, is reverberating with the roars of resolving the same issue.
At the centre of reinvigoration of the issue is Lok Sabha member Engineer Rashid, who has been lodged in Tihar jail for over five years and is out on temporary bail till October 2 for campaigning.
“For me, the issue is not assembly elections but to find a solution to Kashmir,” Rashid told reporters on September 11 soon after stepping out of Tihar jail where he is an undertrial in a “terror-funding” case.
The next day, in the Delina area of north Kashmir’s Baramulla district, Rashid raised the pitch again claiming that by now Prime Minister Narendra Modi must have realised that his slogan of “Naya Kashmir” has completely fallen apart.
“There wasn’t a ‘new’ Kashmir at all – it was a Kashmir of oppression, a Kashmir of suffering, a Kashmir of calamity, a Kashmir under UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act),” he added.
“You will have to talk to Kashmiris. We did not turn our backs. It is time to talk and resolve the Kashmir issue,” Rashid said.
However, his opponents are accusing him of being a proxy of the right-wing Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP). Many analysts feel he is whipping a dead horse by raking up an issue that will eventually help the BJP fragment the votes in Kashmir Valley.
Political pundits opine that Rashid’s pitch for resolution of the Kashmir issue hasn’t just turned the politics of the ongoing J&K elections upside-down but has also led to the breaking of the lull around the issue. Probably viewing it as an imprudent political line to adopt in the changed reality, not many politicians have openly spoken about the Kashmir issue after the reading down of Article 370 in 2019.
Reminiscence of 1987
Reflecting on the Rashid phenomenon, journalist and author David Devadas says that the state apparatus has opened the door for MUF 2.0 (Muslim United Front).
“The resurgence began even earlier than the current elections. It began during the parliament polls of 2024,” he says.
The Muslim United Front, an odd conglomerate of several religio-political bodies, was formed by Professor Abdul Gani Bhat, Ghulam Mohammad Bhat, the then Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) head, Moulvi Abbas Ansari and Dr Ghulam Qadir Wani on September 2, 1986. The now-banned Jamaat was seen to have spearheaded the creation of the MUF and provided the glue to hold it together.
Exactly 37 years later, a group backed by Jamaat, which boycotted elections citing rigging by the Congress-NC alliance in 1987, is again in a coalition with Rashid’s AIP. Devdas sees this as a revival of the same MUF strategy.
Rashid’s ‘separatist’ narrative
The unionist parties, always opposed to the separatist camp, had also let the dust settle in on the opposite camp and it is this silence that Rashid has vehemently captured on and is weaponizing it against the traditional Kashmir based-parties.
“Geelani sahib (Syed Ali Shah Geelani) and Sehrai sahib (Ashraf Sehrai) both died in a jail-like atmosphere. They were buried in the dead of the night. Nobody among you (Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti and Sajjad Lone) even consoled their families,” Rashid has said while campaigning.
A senior Valley-based journalist, wishing anonymity, said that it is this similar line of politics from Rashid that is resonating with the youth who feel that he (Rashid) has become the voice of Kashmir’s disappointments (post-2019) against the BJP-ruled federally administered region.
“You have to see that people used to talk in hushed tones about separatist politics since 2019. He is openly taking up issues that had become a sort of political taboo. Young people see him as a free voice,” the journalist added.
Fragmenting Valley Vote
However, prominent academician and activist Siddiq Wahid opines that Rashid may be a “proxy” of the BJP and has instead detracted from the Kashmir “issue”.
Some analysts agree with this view and reason that Rashid’s entry into the fray may suit the BJP as it will fragment the Kashmiri vote bank.
While raising the voice for the jailed Hurriyat and other separatist camp leaders, Rashid has also challenged BJP’s new Naya Kashmir narrative, which he says won’t be allowed to get implemented in Jammu and Kashmir.
Till his release on September 11, the dominant narrative had been around Article 370 and statehood with the National Conference, Congress, Peoples Democratic Party, Peoples Conference and Apni party having their varied pro-restoration formulas while the BJP opposed all of it barring the statehood. The discourse had stayed around the fight for issues within the ambit of the Indian constitution.
However, Rashid’s narrative is pivoted to a reinfusion of politics around the resolution of Kashmir. By doing so, he has bracketed all other parties in an anti-Kashmir league and positioned himself as filling the void left behind by separatist politics.
David Devadas says there was no void in the separatist camp as they had started to become less relevant towards 2008 with the youth gradually taking over.
“In the minds of the people there was no void but now there is a regeneration in that space,” he says, adding, “In the same manner, militancy was down towards 2005 but then in 2008 the situation again changed in the Valley.”
He says the Kashmir issue rhetoric raised by Rashid hasn’t evoked a response from the other regional players as they seem to be doing well in the elections without raking up any controversial issues.
Author Rekha Chowdhary says there is pressure on NC, PDP and PC because Engineer Rashid enter electoral politics but that pressure is not because of the narrative that he is trying to build, but because of the recently held parliamentary elections in which he won with a massive mandate against Omar Abdullah and Sajjad Lone.
“His entry in parliamentary elections and his campaign has certainly changed the electoral equations in Kashmir. His narrative, however, hasn’t impacted the nature of political debates in Kashmir. Every political party is sticking to its political agenda,” Chowdhary said.
Rashid’s entry has also brought a group from the banned Jamaat-e-Islami, fighting elections, in an alliance with the AIP. The alliance, dubbed as BJP’s proxies by the NC and PDP, is seen as the beginning of the coming together of the anti-traditional political forces.
Interestingly, these forces had earlier been accused by the BJP of being the fountainhead of separatist politics in the erstwhile state.
Recently, Rashid said that he would talk to banned groups like the Hurriyat and Jamaat-e-Islami along with talking to Mirwaiz Umar Farooq.
David Devadas says the alliance between the AIP and a group of Jamaat-e-Islami is only to stop the secular alliance of NC-Congress from coming to power.
Emotion-driven support or fluff
“The memory of 2014 election results and its aftermath is still fresh in the minds of our people,” he added.
A Srinagar-based journalist says that barring the PDP, to some extent, nobody was talking about the Kashmir issue till Rashid came into the picture.
“He sensed the void and started talking about the Kashmir issue, Pakistan, the referendum and separatists. His alliance with a splinter group of JeI is a move to align with that politics at least for optics.”
Rashid’s politics is also bringing back Pakistan into the debate, which otherwise was only mentioned by the BJP in the post-2019 era, concerning either “terror” or the Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s future.
However, during his election campaigning, Rashid has been calling for a referendum across both sides of the Line of Control (LoC) to decide the future of the region, a call he has been romanticising since joining politics in 2008.
“Union Home Minister Amit Shah has been saying that Kashmir with Pakistan is ours, I would like to humbly submit to Amit Shah sahib that Pakistan won’t withdraw its forces from the LoC. The only way to know their choice is by asking them, but there is a caveat, you would have to ask the people on this side of the line as well,” Rashid said.
David Devadas says that former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee brought peace to the region in 2004 through “backbreaking” efforts by talking to Pakistan under Parvez Musharraf.
David Devadas says former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee brought peace to the region in 2004 through “backbreaking” efforts which led to an agreement with Pakistan under Parvez Musharraf.
“But during the 2008 Amarnath land row, the Muzaffrabad Chalo call from some nondescript traders group brought Pakistan back into the picture. Through this (Rashid’s referendum call), it seems there is an effort to revive that sentiment all over again. But, as far as voters on the ground are concerned, there seem to be no takers for this.”
Siddiq Wahid says the value of rhetoric about holding a referendum across the LoC is nothing more than sensationalism. “It is a patently impractical proposition.”
Meanwhile, Rashid, who is making the crowds in his road shows chant “Kashmir ka masla hal karo (solve Kashmir issue)”, is claiming that he would be the “king and not kingmaker in the next assembly.”
Would he? The answer will be revealed when the final counting of votes is over. Source
