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Journalism of Courage
SRINAGAR, JULY 11: The 15-year-old daughter of a rich European businessman in Kashmir falls in love with a poor local teacher who has taken on the autocratic rule of a Maharaja. The teacher warns her that if she marries him, she will sacrifice a stable life for an uncertain future. But she goes ahead and never complains during the 49 tumultuous years of their marriage. The young girl was Begum Akbar Jehan, who died at age 84 today, and the school teacher was the towering Kashmiri leader, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah.
By the time they married in 1933, the Sheikh had quit his government job after being transferred to Muzzafarabad (now in PoK) for his activities against the Dogra rule. He began to emerge as a leader of Kashmiris, and as his barat returned from Akbar Jehan’s parents in Gulmarg, hundreds of people welcomed the couple in Srinagar.
For Jehan, it was the beginning of a public life that would veer from the heights of power to the ignominy and loneliness of a political outcaste. From the comforts of her family home, she moved into a few rented rooms in Srinagar. Not long after that, her husband began spending long stints in jail, and circumstances forced her into politics.
On May 19, 1946, the Maharaja’s regime arrested Sheikh for launching the Quit Kashmir’ agitation and sentenced him to nine years in prison for sedition. With all other National Conference leaders either in jail or exile, Begum Jehan took over the reins of the party to keep the anti-Maharaja movement alive.
Then in 1953, when Sheikh’s Government was toppled and he was put behind bars again, Jehan returned to their official residence to find her luggage tossed on the roadside. It is said even her relatives refused her shelter for fear of reprisals from Bakhshi Ghulam Mohammad, who had been installed as prime minister of J&K State.
Later she was at least twice physically assaulted by adversaries of her husband. As former State Cultural Academy Secretary M.Y. Taing says, “She looked after the mascot and flag of National Conference during most of its trying periods since the ’40s”.
In his autobiography, Sheikh made it clear how important a role Begum Jehan played in National Conference politics. He attributed to her the defeat of Bakhshi Ghulam Mohammad in the 1971 Lok Sabha polls, which he said gave the party a fresh lease on life. Later, Begum Jehan herself won parliamentary elections twice from Srinagar and Anantnag.
Begum Jehan is said to have refused to succeed Sheikh as party president in 1981, paving the way for her son, Farooq Abdullah, to receive the position. But gradually she became one of his harshest critics. In May 1999, in the last newspaper interview of her life, she categorically told this reporter that if the situation in Kashmir continued deteriorating, she would re-enter politics “to save her people”.
She complained that her son had let the party’s regional character become diluted and its strong grassroots base in the Valley erode, while displaying an ultra-loyal attitude towards the Centre. She said that she blamed Farooq for falling into the net of “intrigues” of the Centre, especially when officials promised to restore autonomy once NC contested the polls in 1996. “They should have immediately restored what they have snatched from us since 1952,” she said.
This correspondent was never able to meet Begum Jahan again, and she never gave another interview. But given the aggressive way the National Conference pursued the autonomy issue, she must have been finally pleased with her son.
