Watch out for this guy on the mobike, he’s got plans

Who, then, is the real Farooq Abdullah and what does he stand for? This, is a notoriously difficult question to answer.

All that can be said with a degree of certainty is that, with the state getting ready for assembly polls, Abdullah’s strategy is to keep power.

Yet what has he done for J&K in the five and a half years he has ruled it? There can be little doubt that his government failed a people torn apart by years of violence. His stint will be remembered more by the multi-crore golf course he built than by any drive or desire to change people’s lives.

His plans to anoint his son as his successor is indication that he is preparing for another dramatic interlude on Kashmir’s political stage. There is every likelihood of the National Conference (NC) now snapping ties with the NDA government and son Omar Abdullah being propelled to power in the state on the rhetoric of autonomy. As for Abdullah’s own career, well, he seems determined to make a bid for the office of vice president.

There is little doubt that Abdullah is one of the most colourful characters on the political stage. In Srinagar, his name conjures up the image of a happy-go-lucky motorcycle rider, with Shabana Azmi on the pillion, zigzagging his way through the pathways of Gulmarg.

While, on the surface, there is little to suggest that Abdullah is a serious politician, if you look at his profile more closely, he emerges out as one of the most astute players of the game.

A great survivor, his amiable personality has ensured that despite political animosity he enjoys personal friendships with every major leader. In the Valley, many term him Kashmir’s Laloo.

Abdullah’s journey to power has been exceedingly smooth. Being the son of Kashmir’s tallest leader, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, he was made chief of the NC’s youth wing even when he was just a young medical doctor.

Elected to Parliament, he was soon called back to serve as the health minister in his father’s state government. He was appointed president of the NC thereafter. Farooq Abdullah’s first stint as chief minister, after the Sheikh’s death, was marked by a careless approach to politics. He took too much for granted and lit his own fires. The dismissal of his government in 1984 was almost inevitable, when his own men defected and helped G.M. Shah, his estranged brother-in-law, to form the government with Congress support. That experience was to mark him permanently. The overnight dismissal seemed to have convinced him above all about the need to always remain in the good books of the Centre, irrespective of the party in power. He was convinced that it was this, rather than mass support on the streets, that guaranteed governmental stability. But the strategy was to change the character of his party.

Abdullah went a step further and began talking of shaking hands with his party’s arch rival in the state — the Congress. With this, the seeds of alienation were sown within the party, but Abdullah went right ahead.

The Farooq Abdullah-Rajiv Gandhi alliance ensured their landslide success in the 1987 polls but it also eroded the NC’s support base. The move fanned separatism because it left the majority of Kashmiris with no outlet for their anti-Centre feelings.

From this point on, everything changed. Militancy emerged in Kashmir and the gun took over politics. Abdullah got a bitter taste of the new reality when he attempted to address an Eid gathering at the Hazratbal shrine on May 7, 1989, and was shouted down — quite a change from the days when his father held people enthralled with his oratory at this very spot.

It wasn’t long before Farooq Abdullah was once again ‘‘forced’’ to leave his chair, thus paving the way for New Delhi’s longest stint at ruling the state.

Abdullah packed his bags and left the Valley for the UK. It seemed, for a while, that he had bid farewell to politics forever. But he was back the moment the violence eased a bit, vowing to redeem the lost honour of the Kashmiris.

Although the 1996 assembly polls were marred by reports of coercion, Abdullah did get votes for his greater autonomy plank and the NC swept the polls. But very soon Abdullah was back at golfing and partying with governance being left to a group of favoured bureaucrats.

The biggest blow Abdullah perpetrated on the party came when he joined the BJP-led government at the Centre. This did help him secure for his son a ministership, but it was a relationship that was even more opportunistic than the one he had with the Congress.

Last year, in a bid to retrieve lost ground, Abdullah resurrected the autonomy plank. But when he refused to end his ties with the BJP after the Centre summarily rejected the proposal, it was clear that, for this man, remaining in power was the only agenda. It is an instinct that will continue to drive him in the crucial months ahead.