‘Red over green’: In shadow of old Kashmir rivalry, how lone Communist leader trumped Jamaat face

Behind Tarigami’s long streak of wins are his development-oriented politics, support from the National Conference (NC) and the absence of the Jamaat, his main rival, from the electoral scene since the early 1990s.

The Left-Jamaat rivalry in Kulgam is as old as Tarigami’s electoral career. In the 1960s, the political ideology of Tarigami, then a college student, and many youth of his age was influenced by the socialist views of Abdul Kabir Wani, a Communist leader from Chawalgam in Kulgam. Tarigami lived just a few kilometres away in Tarigam, the village that gave him his last name.

The residents of the villages in Kulgam swear by Tarigami’s development work, especially the black-topped roads that snake through far-off villages, orchards and paddy fields. (Express archives)

Inspired by Wani and Ram Piara Saraf and Krishen Dev Sethi, socialists who were members of the Jammu and Kashmir Constituent Assembly, Tarigami joined the Revolutionary Students and Youth Federation in 1967 as a college student. The growing popularity of socialist ideals alerted the Jamaat, a deeply religious outfit that had a strong base in the neighbouring Shopian. Two of the Jamaat’s influential founding members, Ghulam Ahmad Ahrar and Hakim Ghulam Nabi, were from Shopian.

The Jamaat started working on the ground. It was then that Sheikh Ghulam Hassan, a fellow villager in Tarigam who later rose to become the Ameer-e-Jamaat (Jamaat chief) for two terms, resigned from his government job to focus on spreading the Jamaat ideology in Kulgam.

Around this time, the socialist leaders who influenced Tarigami switched sides to adopt Naxalite ideology. Tarigami and others followed, went underground and were arrested in 1970 under the Preventive Detention Act. While they were in jail, the Jamaat successfully worked on the ground and slowly turned its “red” villages into “green”.

In 1972, the Jamaat showed its presence in Kulgam when its candidate Abdul Razak Mir was elected to the state Assembly. The neighbouring Homshalibugh (then known as the Nandi constituency) was also won by the Jamaat’s Ali Mohammad Dar.

Tarigami jumped into the Kulgam electoral fray in 1983 but stood fourth behind the NC, Jamaat and Congress. In the 1987 Assembly elections, believed to have been massively rigged in favour of the NC-Congress alliance that led to insurgency in the Valley, the Jamaat wrested the seat from the NC while Tarigami stood third.

As militancy took root, the Jamaat legislators who had been elected as Independents resigned from the Assembly and the Jamaat decided to stay away from the elections. This gave Tarigami an opportunity to gain a foothold in Kulgam.

In the 1996 Assembly elections, the first since militancy began and after six years of President’s Rule, Tarigami contested his third consecutive polls. The NC, then the only viable political force in Kashmir, did not field a candidate against him, and Tarigami won the seat for the first time. His nearest rivals were from the Janata Dal and the J&K Awami League, a political party formed by counter-insurgents led by Kuka Parray.

Three years after the Tarigami’s first win, Kashmir’s political landscape witnessed another change – the formation of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. Within three years, the party, which was seen as a viable alternative to the NC, gained a foothold in South Kashmir.

In the 2002 Assembly elections, Tarigami was up against not just the NC but also the PDP. Since the Jamaat had stayed away from elections and their supporters stayed away from polling booths, the anti-Tarigami vote split between the NC and PDP, and Tarigami sailed through easily.

By 2008, the Jamaat sympathisers had a rethink of their boycott, especially in South Kashmir. While their cadres mostly kept away from the elections, a large chunk of its supporters rallied behind the PDP. This changed the equation for Tarigami. Though he scraped through in the 2008 and 2014 elections, by margins of 336 and 334 votes respectively, he was being strongly challenged on his turf.

After 37 years, in the current J&K elections, the Jamaat, rather a faction of it, had a change of heart and decided to participate in the democratic exercise.

While the Jamaat’s entry did not generate much interest in the Valley, in Kulgam, the old rivalry came to the fore once again. As the campaign started, Jamaat’s candidate Reshi targeted Tarigami’s socialist ideology saying it is against the principles of Islam, which could have been a rallying point against the Left leader. But by now, Tarigami has established himself in Kulgam not only as a Communist face, but also as a political leader whose single-point focus is on development and the day-to-day issues of the people.

The residents of the villages in Kulgam swear by his development work, especially the black-topped roads that snake through far-off villages, orchards and paddy fields.

While Tarigami’s manifesto has always been centred on development, in his campaign for this election, he also talked about identity, Article 370, alleged “anti-Muslim” policies of the Narendra Modi government and the larger Kashmir issue. The Jamaat candidates failed to counter him. A party that was at the forefront of separatism and militancy for three decades did not talk about the Kashmir issue, Article 370 or human rights. There was anger within its cadre and while some of them did not vote, some others supported Tarigami, who was also backed by the NC-Congress combine.

And this time, Tarigami did not squeeze through by a few hundred votes, but clinched his Kulgam bastion by over 7,800 votes.