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Journalism of Courage
SRINAGAR, Feb 2: Three weeks ago, a 27-year-old management executive with a Singapore-based multinational company chucked his job to follow a family tradition. Omer Farooq Abdullah began dusting his Anglicized Kashmiri to extend the hold of the Abdullahs over Kashmir to a third generation.
The 27-year old Omer, son of Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah and grandson of legendary Kashmir leader Sheikh Abdullah, is the National Conference candidate in the Lok Sabha elections from Srinagar constituency. “I think, I can interact with the youth and also help my Dad, for whom there can be no better and reliable confidante than me,” he says.
In his first-ever media interview to The Indian Express, Omer says: “I am the most proper candidate from the youth to be fielded by my party”. Omer does not hold any specific political opinions either on Kashmir imbroglio or violence. “I think I can convey to the youth that staying with India is the best option for Kashmiris,” he says.
How does he do it since he does notspeak in Kashmiri? “I am working on that. I know some Kashmiri. But please don’t ask me to speak for you,” he says.
Omer, a commerce graduate, began his management career with the Oberoi group and switched to ITC before joining the Singapore-based multinational. He is married to Payal Singh, his school friend, who he confesses had reservations about his joining politics.
This aspiring parliamentarian scion of the Abdullahs is mesmerised by the oratory of BJP leader Atal Behari Vajpayee. “If I am able to speak half as well as he speaks in Parliament, I will call myself successful.” He is even more charmed by the who-cares-for-media attitude of his father. “Only he can brush off all adverse things the media writes against him so coolly,” he says. Omer’s awe of his father ends here. “Sometimes he speaks without thinking.” This eldest child of Farooq Abdullah had been seen hovering around his father’s political functions for the past two years fuelling speculations about his imminent entry intopolitics. He has no qualms about it. “I am not seeking a nomination.” Omer claims the masses have higher expectations from people like him which makes his work rather challenging.
National Conference sources said Omer’s entry into politics was necessitated by the gradual isolation of his father from the partymen and the growing yet muted dissensions among its ranks. “Farooq Abdullah has no time for partymen and it was necessary to have his trusted person as a link,” a close confidante of the chief minister told The Indian Express
.Dr Abdullah had also started feeling insecure with the rise of some junior leaders as his opponents and a failed coup attempt by some of his trusted partymen in connivance with arch rival and estranged brother-in-law G M Shah some time ago. Omer’s entry, however, finds little favour with youth in Kashmir who feel he is getting a chance only because of his lineage.
“He will get elected to Parliament and stay in a secure and plush bungalow in Delhi,” says a bankofficial. “There is tremendous sense of injustice in the psyche of Kashmiri youngsters and this move will perpetuate it,” says a teacher.
Omer gets defensive when asked why the NC has become a family-controlled party. “Well, are they not capable men? Why resent them only because they are related to us,” he says when reminded about the `uncles’ who hold positions in the cabinet and the party.
