‘Art 35A is offlimits; don’t play with it’
SRINAGAR: Three months after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ended its power-sharing alliance with the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Jammu and Kashmir, former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, 59, is picking up the lost threads. Facing the twin challenge of reaching out to the people of the state while keeping her flock together, she seems to have regained some of her political intuitiveness by swiftly making common cause with arch-rival National Conference (NC) on boycotting local elections over Article 35A, which guarantees special rights to people of the state. She spoke to
on Monday, at her serene but heavily secured residence on the edge of Dal Lake in Srinagar, about the alliance, the special provisions for the state, the local body elections, and the way forward for the state. Edited excerpts:
Vinayak Ramesh
I don’t think it will serve the purpose. Democracy is about electoral competition. When two main political players have opted out, what kind of competition is there going to be? We are the mainstream parties and do not belong to the other side (separatists).
We had valid reasons and good intentions behind flagging the groundswell against Article 35A. If not an all-party meeting, a consultative mechanism should have been followed to take everyone on board. That was not done. If the government is still going ahead, there is little we can do. It will not be a good election. It will not have the legitimacy that it should have. Only selective people are going to contest because of the fear psychosis. That may defeat the purpose. There are certain issues where you can’t compromise. Article 35A is one such issue. Our message to the Centre is loud and clear: Keep your hands off. This is off-limits; don’t play with this. Article 370 is not a separatist slogan. They don’t believe in the Indian Constitution. Only mainstream parties do. We swear by it and hold the Indian flag high. Bracketing us with separatists doesn’t scare us. We can’t keep our mouths shut. When my father Mufti (Mohammad Sayeed) saab forged an alliance with the BJP in 2014, his intention was to recreate the (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee era, when there was an internal dialogue with separatists and an external reconciliation with Pakistan.
After all, how many people are you going to put behind bars? How many can you kill? You kill two militants, four pick up the gun; kill four, eight take to arms. It (Kashmir’s secession) is an idea. It is in the minds.
You can’t kill or jail it. But you have to offer a better idea through political dialogue and reconciliation. That’s the only way forward. tively took a huge risk of sharing power with the BJP despite my stiff opposition. In doing so, he put everything at stake.
He believed, and rightly so, that internal dialogue, reconciliation with Pakistan and governance have to go hand in hand.
If there is no political process, everything goes haywire in Kashmir. After his death, I couldn’t abandon his commitment halfway. That’s what forced me into it. mir. He did try, and even went to Lahore. Then came the Pathankot terror attack, and things began falling apart. The consistency of Vajpayee’s time was missing. Perhaps we overestimated things. We were so much in awe of the Vajpayee era and felt things will be the same under Modi. That didn’t happen because the BJP’S thought process was different. Burhan Wani’s killing) became another trigger. All hell broke loose as the aftermath was orchestrated by certain forces. I don’t know who is calling the shots but the Vajpayee vision was missing. Every time there’s an election in any state, the impact of Kashmir is counted. Vajpayeeji didn’t chart his Kashmir policy through a poll prism. I’m not bitter about this — not at all. I was expecting it any time. I was adamant on the PDP agenda, and the BJP on its own. I’m not as large hearted as my father. We are not on any side. I can’t even say who will be the best for Kashmir. We had high hopes from Modi because of his huge mandate and the BJP’S nationalist credentials. Even the Opposition confines itself to condemning killings of security personnel in Kashmir.
Nobody really talks about or understands the pain of Kashmiris. Every party has problems. If a couple of your MLAS are unhappy or angry, you can understand.
If somebody claims that he has more than half of the party with him, it can’t be done without Delhi’s help. A lot of hard work has gone into restoring Kashmiris’ faith in the democratic process.
They trust that their vote can make or break a government. So if you are trying to break a party and then form a government which will have no legitimacy, it will wreck people’s faith that already stands shaken due to Article 35A.
That kind of adventure will harm the country.
Democracy is something that binds Kashmir with the country. If that is broken, what will be left? We will have to face elections sooner or later. Creating a government of ‘chun chun ka murabba (a hodgepodge)’ will not lead anywhere. It has due to the Centre’s stand on Article 35A. We stick our necks out here in Kashmir. Taking the mainstream parties for granted is not good. I have full faith in the DNA of India.
I don’t think it will allow any party to succeed in its designs. You will see that in 2019. If any party fights the election on the basis of religion, it will not succeed. That’s true (smiles). Everybody tells me I look relaxed now. Those two years were the toughest in my political life. It was like walking on egg shells all the time.