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This Will Rebound on You, You Will Have to Answer for Your Misdeeds: Farooq Abdullah
Courtesy: Sabrangindia
3 Aug 2020: Jammu and Kashmir’s seniormost, and most outspoken political leader, former chief minister of the then state, Farooq Abdullah, spoke at a webinar organised by a Epilogue News Network on Sunday. His critique of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) revoking Article 370, the lack of promised development in J&K, and the demand for an enquiry into the Kashmiri Pandit exodus has been reported in some sections of the media.
However, a closer study of Farooq Abdullah’s speech during the webinar, now available in public domain has once again shown that his voice is perhaps the loudest political protest to have come from the valley at the moment. Dr. Abdullah, a Lok Sabha member, and president of the National Conference (NC), has laid bare the claims of the union Government and said the abrogation of Article 370 was done arbitrarily, and has not brought development to the UT, nor has it curbed terrorism.
“It was passed in one day in Rajya Sabha and another day in Lok Sabha,” he said and added that the “narrative sold by the government” is that Kashmir would now become a part of India. “We were always part of India, holding the tricolour,” Abdullah said adding that many were “very excited about it. Thinking ‘My God, Kashmir will now become a part of us!’ I want to ask those people… were we not part of India…?”
With that he lobbed the ball back in BJP’s court. His words were a lesson in history as he reminded viewers about why J&K’s special status was even granted. It was , “to guarantee that the Muslim majority state that had joined a Hindu majority India feels safe. This was done by the great Indian leader Sardar Patel, and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee was also a part of it. And this was conveyed to Jawaharlal Nehru who was on tour probably in England or America… to get his approval also…”
“We always said we are a part of the nation, only a special status was guaranteed to us…” Abdullah asserted that the removal of Article 370 was on BJP’s “agenda from the beginning. They projected it was that ‘development will be pouring from the top’, industrialists will come in… the whole map will change…?” The map did change, he said, as “Kashmir disappeared overnight.” He termed it unfortunate, and added that “ union territories become states, states don’t become union territories.”
He said Kashmir was doing better than Gujarat, to drive home the point that ‘development’ could not have been a reason to make it into a UT. He recalled a Rajya Sabha speech by Ghulam Nabi Azad in Rajya Sabha where he compared Gujarat,to Kashmir. He said Abdulla “proved to them that Kashmir has progressed much better than Gujarat… So where did we lack? We fought militants. My own party has lost top leaders to militants, my ministers died… because we held the Tricolour high.”
He said Kashmiris are bitter today and asked if the BJP, “won the hearts of the people? Those of us who stand with the nation are looked down upon. The very man who said ‘Bharat mata ki jai’ is in jail… arrested… for what? All others are still under house arrest. Are we enemies of India?” Even though he did not name the party directly at this point he said that a “wave of destruction,” had been started, “they are no winning people… I wonder to what direction they are taking this nation… what is to be the outcome of this nation?”
He also called out political claims that stone throwing, and political agitations have ceased in the Valley, “everybody was in the lockdup, forces were flown in… every street, every gully had soldiers standing with AK` 47s. They were not able to bulldoze us, thus there was no agitation. Wonderful of them to lie. As they are lying about Ladakh today, [that] the Chinese have withdrawn…”
Dr Abdulah hinted that Kashmir was still not considered a part of mainland India as it was still deprived of basis, “Where is that 4G which you enjoy in the rest of the country? Do our children not [want to] benefit from it so they can study? Use a faster medium? While schools and colleges have closed? Are they not human beings? Are they not a part of the nation? You deny them this. You think the world does not know what is happening here? Just because you deny them 4 G? Every country in the world knows what is happening here.”
According to the veteran leader, media was being gagged in many ways in the Valley, too and ‘favourable’ media was being used to put out “false stories.” He warned that all this will come back to haunt the government in power eventually. “One day this will rebound on you when you will be sitting in the opposition and you will have to answer for your misdeeds.”
As he went on to lay what he has termed unfulfilled promises, he hoped he would at least be “alive to see” the tunnel project where the foundation stone was laid in the Congress rule, “and to this day not a stone is moved. Now they say a new contract has been given and the tunnel will be ready in 2026.”
However, one of the sharpest, and perhaps most likely to generate controversy, was when he spoke about terrorism in the Valley. He alleged that the then BJP government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and LK Advani as Home Minister had not heeded his advice when handling the hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane in 1999, and released Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad leader Maulana Masood Azhar. “We could not fight terrorism becuase you wanted to bring that damn plane [back]… could we not sacrifice for this nation 200 people? And you talk of the great India that you are going to build? You can never build India unless you sacrifice yourself. You want others to be sacrificed… while you enjoy glory… I told the then PM, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and Advaniji was HM, I told him very clearly and categorically not to do it. You are destroying the nation forever. Did they listen? Are they listening now? I don’t think they learn… they are the wisest of wise… that nobody knows better than them…it is unfortunate.”
While demanding a probe by a retired Supreme Court judge, into the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the valley in the early 1990s, Abdullah said “an honest investigation [will] clear the air that the Muslims of Kashmir are responsible. All over the world Kashmiris have this image that it was the Kashmiri Muslims who threw them [Hindus] out.” He said the probe was essential. “Were we not the same Mulisms who protected them when Pakistani raiders came in? We did not have guns. With lathis we stood, and kept a watch all night.”
The NC leader also said it was the then governor Jagmohan who was responsible for the exodus. “Ask the truth, it was Jagmohan who took them away… saying ‘I will be hard on the Muslims, repercussions may be on you, but I’ll bring you back in three months.’ Today, I think it is 29 years, and they have not come home. We have always said Kashmir is never going to be complete unless the Hindu brethren come back and live in peace with all of us.”
It was perhaps for the first time that he also spoke about the Prevention of Genocide and Atrocity Bill that is said to have been proposed by Kashmiri Pandits. He said he was open to it, “Why not? They are part of this land. They own this land as much as I do. We tried to bring a bill to save their temples. They were under one authority called dharma trust. Who could not care… Who scuttled that bill?”
It was almost a year ago that Dr. Farooq Abdullah was taken into custody on August 5, 2019 when the Center abrogated Article 370 revoking special status granted to Jammu and Kashmir. He was formally arrested under the provisions of the draconian Public Safety Act (PSA) on September 15, 2019, and placed in detention for a period of three months that was extended for another three months first on December 13, 2019 and then again on March 11, 2020. The Jammu and Kashmir administration eventually issued a Revocation of the Detention Order.
However, it is only recently that he is being seen and heard in the state. With these recent, and so far strongest remarks, perhaps Dr Abdullah has set the stage for a political battle, and may even voice a demand for elections soon. August 5, 2020, will mark one year since the Center abrogated Article 370 of the Constitution, and bifurcated the state of Jammu and Kashmir into union territories of Ladakh and Jammu-Kashmir by passing the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Bill.
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‘I Will Raise My Voice, I Will Fight, but I Will Not Give Somebody in a Uniform with a Gun an Excuse or a Reason to Kill One of Us’: Omar Abdullah
Written by Bashaarat Masood, Naveed Iqbal, and P. Vaidyanathan Iyer, 29 July 2020
(Omar Abdullah’s first interview to The Indian Express since the abrogation of the special status of Jammu & Kashmir and his release from detention.)
IE: It’s almost a year since August 5. This time, last year, did you have an idea of what was coming?
OA: Last year, this time we were trying to figure out what was coming. Everyone would speak to everybody else: Aapne kya suna? Kya ho raha hai? Kya lagta hai, kya karenge? That was all we were discussing. Because those orders had started coming, about Railways — we foresee a prolonged disturbance, we had heard that satellite phones were being ordered… one didn’t know what to take as truth and what to take as the usual sort of speculation and rumour-mongering.
The heightened speculation started in July. I think we all knew there was something, we didn’t know what.
Like I said, there was speculation that the gender issue in 35A would be tackled. That some aspects of Article 370 would be downgraded. Two days before all this happened, we had one last meeting in the party office…by then disinformation had been conveyed that there’s a serious threat to the (Amarnath) yatra and that completely misleading, untruthful bit of news they planted everywhere, to get all the yatris and the tourists out.
So, of course, we were trying to understand whether there was an element of truth to that. We were all like: OK, maybe it’s 35A, maybe it’s 370 and there’s one colleague of mine, (who for the time being will remain unnamed) who said: Nahin inko sab kuch karna hai. Ye 370, 35A hatayenge, ye UT bhi banayenge aur ye riyasat ko todenge bhi.
Humne kaha ki itna toh nahin karenge. We all thought they wouldn’t go this far… And then, on August 5, when I switched on the TV and I heard it all rolling out and, one by one, each of these things happened, I said, bloody hell, you were the only guy in the meeting who actually, he had nothing to base it on, just his premonition that it will all happen. Lo and behold it did. That’s exactly how it played out unfortunately.
IE: Can you give us a prelude to the Gupkar Declaration?
OA: There was no prelude to it. We were trying to pre-empt it. There was this need that was felt for a meeting of like-minded political parties occupying the mainstream space. It was felt that meeting should be called by my father. But he, actually, was going through a pretty bad bout of health…bit of problem with his heart. So weren’t able to, for those few days, but then after he came back from Delhi and this was on the evening of August 4. In the morning, Mehbooba Mufti sahiba called a meeting and then Dad spoke to her and said look that’s fine if the meeting goes ahead. After the meeting, since I can’t leave the house, if you would come here, then we can continue the meeting here. And that’s pretty much how it played out. Of course, nobody knew that was going to be the last time we would be sitting in one place.
So there was no sort of prior preparation for it. It’s not like we had an agreed text before the meeting. It was during the meeting while everybody was speaking, it was felt that there needed to be a common statement and I don’t remember who it was, but somebody said that it needs a name.
Since Gupkar Road was where we were all meeting, that seems to be the standard pattern, so it became the Gupkar Declaration. That’s pretty much how it came about. And then that night we were all detained in our own respective places of residence and some of us were shipped off to other places.
IE: Looking back, could you have rallied harder or done more pre-August 5?
OA: No, because this government had made up its mind way back in April. We only started hearing speculation in July but I have it on very good authority from officers in the J&K administration that some of them were sounded out as early as May, that the Article 370 move is in the offing. It’s not like we didn’t try and raise those concerns at various levels. And when the Governor of J&K, sitting in Raj Bhawan can lie to people, in the blatant manner that he did, then what’s left. We, rightly or wrongly, took him at face value and I still have screenshots of his interviews to television where he says there’s no threat to Article 370, go about your normal business.
Now, either he had no idea what was coming, which I don’t believe. Or then, he happily went along and sat in that high office and lied to people. The government had made up its mind that this is what they were going to do. So as much as I’d like to believe that we could have done something about it, honestly, truth be told, No.
IE: After you were released, why would you not want to step out, meet with people, party leaders?
OA: That was always going to be the idea. During my period of detention, I was always clear that once we were out, it would be important for the party to sit down, take stock of where we are and then chart out our own course of action. Two things came in the way of that; one, the day I was released, that night itself we had the first phase of the Covid lockdown. And, second, most of the my colleagues weren’t free to meet and, in fact, a lot of them are still under detention, illegally. We are fighting their detention now in J&K High Court.
IE: So these are leaders under the so-called house arrest?
OA: Yes, basically you sit at home and your guards at the gate are told that you are not allowed out. So there’s no formal detention order and so when the government goes to the High Court we haven’t arrested them, technically the government is not lying to court because, there are no formal detention orders. But the police at the gate and the local thana, are told that these chaps are not allowed out.
You’re not allowed out of your house. One colleague of mine needed a medical check-up. He said that he would use his own car to go and he was told categorically that we will send you a vehicle, you will travel in it. The vehicle will take you only to your medical check-up and bring you back home. You will not stop anywhere else, you will not visit anybody. And that’s it. There is no formal detention order against this person. He has been sitting in his house since August 5 and this was the first time he went out, in a police escort. That is illegal detention.
IE: Does that stop you from going to the houses of party functionaries? Do they stop you from going to your colleagues’ houses?
OA: No, in most cases they don’t. I have met some of them, some I haven’t because either I don’t want to put my father at risk of the Coronavirus or I don’t want to risk them. So that’s another reason. Some of them are not detained in Srinagar, they are detained out.
See, that’s part of the cleverness. You allow people in, but you don’t allow these people out. Personal liberty means I should be able to leave my house when I want to. Not just about people visiting me. It’s about my choice to leave when I want to, which has been taken away from them.
IE: At several places people told us they are waiting for Omar to speak. Some said there is no person to rally or no person to provide leadership…
OA: We are voicing our resentment. I haven’t so far, for two or three different reasons. The first being that when I came out, as I said, Corona was the one thing everybody was talking about. Well, first of all, we all bought this argument or this line that a couple of weeks of lockdown and the threat of corona will dissipate. So I assumed that it will be a few weeks and that will be it. And that two weeks has now stretched to where we are now.
Second was, that knowing that I had colleagues under detention. Some under formal PSA (Public Safety Act) and some under informal detention, I didn’t want to say or do anything that would jeopardise their liberty. Because we kept being told, bas ab aap nikal gaye ho, ab inki bari hai. Just a few days and they’ll be out. Those few days kept stretching. Finally, as I said, we decided that we are not going to wait for them to be released on their own, we will have to force the issue.
That’s the only way to get out. If you don’t force the issue, you don’t. That’s how Sagar sahab (NC general secretary Ali Mohammad Sagar) got out, that’s how I did and that’s how these colleagues of mine will finally get out.
If you don’t force the government’s hand, they’re quite happy to leave you sitting in detention for as long as they require.
IE: Would you say that people are right to be disappointed in waiting for you to speak up on their behalf?
OA: Well, I can understand where that disappointment comes from though as I said, I had very good reasons not to speak. These are the same people who, in the beginning, appreciated that during this Corona pandemic, I wasn’t indulging in politics.
And that pandemic, if anything has gotten worse. So truth be told, I could very easily continue to take that line. But I believe that we can’t wait for this situation to pass before we speak up which is why…and also, I think we needed some sort of occasion around which, to speak.
Either it would have been our party meeting which is, ideally, where this would have come from. The National Conference would have met. Even now, when I speak to you, I speak to you as an individual. I am not speaking to you as the Vice President of the National Conference espousing what the NC’s view is. Because the NC has not had an opportunity to sit down and tell you what it wants.
When I tell you that I, as an individual, that I will not be fighting assembly elections, so long as J&K is a UT, it is Omar Abdullah. That’s not the National Conference.
IE: Your colleague and the party’s chief spokesperson, Aga Ruhulla, has clearly said that the party probably needs to meet to chart its future course. But what stops that party from talking about its agenda?
OA: We are talking about our agenda. The NC has also not hidden its agenda. We made our agenda very clear in the immediate aftermath of August when we went to the Supreme Court and we said that these changes to J&K are unacceptable to us. That we will fight them with every democratic means at our disposal. We stand by that.
So unlike other parties that may say something in the public sphere but have not mounted a legal challenge to what has happened, we are. Now if you are asking me whether the NC will take this battle to the streets, I think the time for that has passed. When in the immediate aftermath of what happened on August 5, the battle didn’t go out into the streets, why would it go down to the streets one year later. So we will fight it politically, legally. We are committed to do that.
We make no bones about the fact that everything that has been linked to what happened on August 5, we have voiced our opposition to, and we have resisted. Whether it be the domicile law or the delimitation commission. NC’s members of Parliament have refused to participate in the delimitation commission because we don’t accept what was done on August 5. So we are not shying away. What you haven’t heard is individual interviews from let’s say, myself or Farooq Sahab or may be one or two others. But that’s simply because, like I told you, and that has changed. That has changed with Dr Sahab’s interview to PTI and this, my first interview with all of you. And this will continue now.
IE: