Hurriyat Conference chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq during Friday prayers at the Jamia Masjid, in Srinagar, on September 22, 2023, the day he was released from house arrest four years after being taken into detention in the wake of abrogation of Article 370. ( Image Source : PTI )
So much focus has been put on faraway Canada in the last couple of weeks that most did not focus on what was happening right inside our country, inside what we call an “integral part of India” – Kashmir. After four long years, All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq stepped out of his Srinagar home in his bullet-proof white SUV car and drove to the historic Jamia Masjid amid loud cries of “Allahu Akbar”. But from the pulpit of Jamia mosque, he recalled what Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war that this is “not an era of war”, and in a matter of seconds, he made the issue of Jammu and Kashmir international, something that New Delhi has always tended to avoid.
The Mirwaiz, whose house arrest was called out by the US State Department in one of its human rights reports in March this year, aligned his fiery speech with that of Modi as well as Home Minister Amit Shah in a strategic move when he said that for the reunification of J&K, it is important to speak with Pakistan and China, who have been holding parts of its for decades. This can be seen by many as an implicit acceptance of the Centre’s viewpoint on the issue.
Making matters more complex for the government, the cleric-politician said he and his Hurriyat party would also like to see the Kashmiri Pandit issue being resolved “not as a political subject but as a humanitarian issue” and that “solving this particular issue will solve several issues of Kashmir” as he addressed the Friday prayers after missing 212 Fridays since he was put under house arrest in his Nigeen Lake residence – Mirwaiz Manzil. The Mirwaiz Manzil has been thronged by hundreds of visitors every single day since September 22, 2023.
The Mirwaiz was allowed to walk free only after he approached the J&K High Court like other political leaders who have been under similar house arrest since the abrogation of Article 370 and 35A. However, the separatist leaders were made to face stricter punitive measures owing to the 2019 Pulwama attack in which 40 Indian security personnel were killed. In fact, for the first time since 1990, the government even stripped these leaders of their VVIP status. But the way Mirwaiz was taken to the Jamia Masjid was nothing short of a VVIP treatment.
The move by the J&K administration could not have come at a better time. The Modi government had won half the battle in making the separatists irrelevant in the Kashmir dispute when top separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, now deceased, made an exit from the Hurriyat Conference – the radical arm of the Hurriyat while Mirwaiz continued to head the moderate faction.
What’s Next For The Hurriyat And Kashmir?
With Geelani now gone and Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) supremo Yasin Malik serving life imprisonment in Tihar Jail, this is Mirwaiz’s time to play the role the government wants him to keep J&K under some kind of normalcy.
The security situation in J&K of late has once again become concerning with intelligence reports suggesting that as many as 100 terrorists, foreign as well as local, are currently active in the Valley and the anti-infiltration grid is getting exhausted time and again. Earlier this month India lost four security personnel in the most deadly circumstances in the dense forests of the Pir Panjal range.
It is one thing to see the rapid changes in J&K but it is another saga to witness how the ruling BJP is playing its cards there, especially when it is gearing up to face a tough election battle in 2024. The BJP also knows that it is the Hurriyat which still has the power to mobilise the masses there even as the government has been able to effectively stop incidents of stone-pelting every single day there.
“Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has an important role in the society. The administration took the right step. Religious leaders do benefit society by showing the youth the correct path,” said J&K BJP leader Darakhshan Andrabi after Mirwaiz’s release.
Let us not forget here that in 2023 itself, the government allowed Muharram procession for the first time in 34 years after it was banned in 1989. All these moves taken by the Modi government, which is yet to deliver on its promise of holding elections there, are aimed at the fact that the government is seeking cooperation from all stakeholders in keeping Kashmir normal because this is not a bilateral issue anymore between India and Pakistan. This is an issue that needs urgent resolution and for the Indian government, this should get more priority than the Russia-Ukraine war, being fought far away in Europe. And, holding a G20 event in the Valley will not ensure peace.
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