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Friday March 29, 2024

Fifth column: A comeback for the NC?

By Murtaza Shibli
November 08, 2017

The Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (NC), one of the oldest political parties in Jammu and Kashmir is back in news. The week before last, after more than 16 years, the party held its convention at Srinagar’s Sher-e-Kashmir Cricket Stadium. The convention was attended by more than 20,000 delegates from all the three regions of the province – Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir. This gave a clear indication about the state-wide appeal of the party. Besides, no pro-India political party in recent memory has been able to gather so many people, that too in the heart of Srinagar.

The delegates included the Brogpa, tall and fair-skinned with green eyes, high cheek bones and blondish hair. On the Indian side in Leh province, they live in five villages collectively known as the Aryan Valley. This is based on a mistaken notion that they are Aryan descendants; they are, therefore, marketed as ‘pure Aryans’. This has helped drive tourism to their area, including odd visits from enthusiastic Western women driven by their exotic ambition to carry forward the Aryan gene. The presence of the Brogpa denoted a powerful symbolic value about the reach of the NC across cultural and linguistic geographies.

Buoyed by the public enthusiasm and reception, Farooq Abdullah, the party president and the former chief minister, said the gathering was a message to political opponents, adding: “they had thought that the National Conference was nowhere now. We have been facing conspiracies and problems since 1938, but we have emerged successful each time”. Omar Abdullah dwelt upon attacks and conspiracies “by the government of India, neighbouring country [Pakistan] and political forces from within the state to try to remove the National Conference flag from the state”. According to him, all that has failed.

While the history of the National Conference and its struggle for the identity of the Kashmiri people remains highly contested and controversial, there is no denying that the party has a considerable base of workers whose loyalty has spanned generations. The Indian government and its security agencies have worked overtime to discredit and destroy the NC and the sentiment that it represents, but it has shown remarkable resilience and always made a comeback. Commenting on the meeting, Dr Bashir Veeri, a senior NC leader said: “We are the oldest grassroots party with a strong presence in every region of the state. Today, we have proved we are not only relevant, we are the only party that represents the public aspirations and can keep the state united against all the divisive forces”. While Veeri has a point, it must be qualified with the fact that in the post-1990 scenario, there is an overwhelming sentiment against the NC, more so among the new generations, who consider it a group of opportunistic turncoats and its founder Sheikh Abdullah as a traitor for endorsing Kashmir’s controversial accession with India.

Much of this sentiment is a result of India’s continued aggression and misdemeanours towards Kashmiris of every ilk. Despite supporting Kashmir’s accession with India, the NC was unceremoniously thrown out of power and Sheikh Abdullah was humiliated and arrested by Jawaharlal Nehru, barely six years after assuming office. Abdullah would remain incarcerated for the next two decades till considered tame enough to accept the post of the chief minister – a demotion from his earlier position of prime minister, with a constricted remit under the watchful eye of an entrenched control mechanism that New Delhi had installed in his absence.        

When Farooq Abdullah became chief minister following the death of his father, he had to endure similar conspiracies as India dismissed his government    within two years       after assuming office. Farooq was a staunch Kashmiri nationalist and, at one time, a member of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), and had reportedly taken oath to defend the cultural identity and political integrity of Kashmir. The dismissal forced the junior Abdullah to follow his father’s trajectory – from a staunch pro-Kashmiri politician he would work overtime to appease New Delhi, at the cost of the dignity and honour of the very people that he had pledged to serve. Many years later he would tell me that he had no choice but to do New Delhi’s bidding not only to ward off the conspiracies but also to be able to conduct the business of the government without any major hiccups.

The pro-freedom resistance militancy that started in 1990 posed the biggest challenge to the existence of the NC. In August 1990, the NC’s Muhammad Yusuf Halwai was killed amid dire threats to party workers; hundreds of party workers were targeted and summarily executed. Thousands of members had to distance themselves from the party through paid newspaper advertisements. Many of them had to migrate from Kashmir, including Farooq Abdullah and his family.     

The recent day-long convention seemed quite daring and close to the sentiments of the Kashmiri people. It took a strong exception to the current stance of the Indian government and called for “the restoration of autonomy and restoration of the Article 370 to its original, pristine form”, while demanding a sustained and meaningful dialogue between India and Pakistan to resolve the festering Kashmir problem.         

The octogenarian Abdullah sounded like his previous and youthful self – a confident and fiery Kashmiri nationalist willing to speak his mind. He warned New Delhi that the “people of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh will never raise your slogans till you win their hearts”. He challenged the Indian army chief, Gen Bipin Rawat and his militaristic approach: “How many people will you kill? You can’t crush the people with gun[s]”. Referring to the indomitable spirit of Kashmiris, he told Rawat: “We are alive today and we will be alive tomorrow to fight you”.

Twitter: @murtaza_shibli