The flip-flop

people thought was the last great hope, the soft-separatist who would fight for them against Delhi, but doesn’t live up to that image, you have huge disenchantment.” Abdullah’s judgement may be a trifle harsh. Mehbooba Mufti had been chief minister for barely three months when the trouble over Wani’s killing erupted. She was yet to overcome the anguish of the death of her father, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, or get a grip over the administration.

Mehbooba had expressed reservations about the alliance with the BJP after the 2014 assembly elections threw up a split mandate. The PDP had a won a major share of the seats in the Valley, and the BJP triumphed in Jammu. It was the Mufti who persuaded her and the cadre that a tie-up with the BJP was inevitable. Sayeed, a former chief minister, saw his role as being a bridge between Jammu and Kashmir, between the state and the Centre, and between India and Pakistan. In a historic development that seemed to augur well for the state, the right-wing BJP tied up with the softseparatist PDP to form a coalition government after hammering out a ‘governance alliance’.

When Sayeed was sworn in as chief minister on March 1, 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the ceremony. Their warm hug on the dais was symbolic of the distance their parties had travelled. Pakistan, which initially cheered the divided vote, was clearly discomfited by the development. Islamabad had carefully cultivated the Mufti, especially after the Hurriyat was marginalised and the PDP moved towards soft separatism. Islamabad saw the PDP as the mainstream party that could push hard for autonomy and resist Delhi’s ‘integrationist designs’. But the BJP-PDP alliance upset their applecart. Pakistan began to immediately work towards disrupting the alliance. A goal that would be achieved more quickly and easily than it could have hoped.

Trouble began almost immediately. The Mufti, at a press briefing soon after he was sworn in, thanked Pakistan and the separatists for not disrupting the elections. That statement was played up by the national media, causing the alliance to teeter on the brink. Drabu claimed that the Mufti was quoted out of context, for he had added, “Pakistan has finally understood the values and virtues of democracy.”