The National Conference over the years

My first impression of politics is a view from the window of my old home in downtown Srinagar. A group of children, waving red National Conf...

My first impression of politics is a view from the window of my old home in downtown Srinagar. A group of children, waving red National Conference flags and shouting slogans, were jeering at an elderly kiryana shop owner across the road. The merchant finally lost his cool and chased the crowd away with a lathi. My grandmother, a Kashmiri Hindu, was among the handful of bemused spectators watching the drama. She explained to me that the old man was the lone ‘bakra’ — a supporter of Mirwiaz Farooq — in a locality dominated by ‘shers’, the lions of the National Conference.

Such was the innocence of Kashmiri politics that the NC could loom over the valley like a Colossus. The Kashmiris hero-worshipped Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, their Sher-e-Kashmir. After all, he had with a single stroke of the pen changed the lives of lakhs when he introduced land reforms in the early fifties. When Sheikh Abdullah lay bed-ridden, people prayed and wept for him. I vividly remember Muslims women cooking yellow rice as thanksgiving for the improvement of their baab’s (father’s) health in all the narrow alleys of our locality.

The Kashmiri Hindu, though, had always regarded the NC as the party of the Muslims. They complained a lot about their feelings of insecurity with the Sheikh at the helm. Yet, after the NC’s comeback in 1975, Hindus began to feel that peace was there to stay and it was then that their slow exodus from Kashmir came to a halt. Ten years down the line and the Sheikh lies in a grave protected by the CRPF soldiers. The Kashmiris who had worshipped him in his lifetime were now threatening to plunder his grave, located on the banks of the Dal Lake. The gun had changed everything in Kashmir and the angry men who wielded it rose in rebellion to erase all the symbols of India. Since the Sheikh was a key player in bringing Kashmir into India’s fold, he was obviously their target. The tensions led to yet another wave of Hindu migration from the valley.

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These were hard times for ‘Nationalis’, as Kashmiris termed NC activists. Many lost their lives, others fled, some quit politics for good. The party leader, Farooq Abdullah, left for London, with wife and children. For five years, NC was virtually missing from Kashmir and the silence of the grave descended on the Valley’s political scene. But, after a while, the Kashmiris had had enough of militancy. This probably explains the NC’s return to power in 1996, with a massive mandate. But there was a new bitterness in the ties between party and people. Many leaders felt that the people had let them down. I remember a neighbour — an MLA — telling me, ‘‘The Kashmiris have betrayed us, so why should we care for them?’’ The NC leaders poured their bitterness around, made money, built safe houses in Jammu, secured cushy jobs for their children. Nobody seemed to care whether retribution was awaiting them in the next elections!

Today, as the party bites the dust, it may be forced to introspect on its opportunistic politics. Perhaps this experience will have taught it a lesson that you cannot turn your backs on the people if you don’t want them to turn their backs on you.

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