‘At least tell me what I did wrong’: Partition survivor, Jana Sangh’s Muslim pioneer, and now a 92-yr-old out of detention

The constituency was earlier represented by Pandit Prem Nath Dogra, who was instrumental in the formation of the RSS-affiliated Jammu Praja Parishad in 1947 and called for the total integration of J&K into India. Dogra himself proposed Rehman’s name for Jammu North after deciding against contesting over his poor health. After Rehman visited Dogra to seek his blessings on being elected, the latter put his turban on the new legislator’s head, symbolically naming Rehman his political successor.

The same year, Rehman was unanimously elected president of the Jana Sangh’s state unit.

His 1973 re-election, however, was marked by trouble after party delegates defied the high command in the general secretary election. As a result, sitting general secretary Yagya Dutt Sharma, a founding member of the Jana Sangh, dissolved the party’s elected state working committee. Rehman opposed the decision as unconstitutional. When the party’s national working committee endorsed Sharma’s decision, Rehman resigned.

Rehman, who lost 16 family members, including parents, uncles, brothers and sisters, to riots in Bhaderwah following Partition, and could attend school only till Class 10, had an interesting path to the Jana Sangh.

As president of the National Conference’s (NC’s) Bhaderwah student wing when still barely in his teens, he was tasked with delivering to and receiving messages from NC founder and former J&K chief minister Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, who was lodged in a Bhaderwah jail around the time of Partition. Since Abdullah was allowed a limited number of visitors, Rehman would send his Hindu classmates on the pretext of offering prayers at the temple on the prison premises. During their visits, students would deliver letters to Abdullah and bring back his messages for party workers.

Rehman’s break with the NC came during the violence of Partition, when local party leaders apparently refused to take action on complaints of theft and an attempted abduction of a Hindu woman in Bhaderwah.

In October 1947, Sheikh Abdullah was appointed Head of J&K’s Emergency Administration, with Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad as deputy head. In March 1948, the administration got upgraded to a popular interim government headed by Sheikh Abdullah as ‘Prime Minister’ and Bakshi Ghulam as ‘Deputy PM’.

In 1948, Bakshi Ghulam visited Bhaderwah. When he was told that Rehman had left the party and returned to his native village Khalu, Bakshi summoned him. Rehman, however, said he would come only the next morning. Angry at this “snub”, Bakshi was said to have remarked, “The boy does not know that I am now the Deputy PM and minister in-charge of the Home Department. He is digging his own grave.”

The next day, as the story goes, a Jammu Praja Parishad leader, Swami Raj ‘Advocate’, met him and asked him to join the party, saying an Opposition was needed for a successful democracy. With Bakshi’s words ringing in his head, Rehman joined the Praja Parishad.

Locals say this made him somewhat of an outcast among Muslims, and he was barred for a long time from mosques and community functions, before finally coming around.

When an agitation began for the total integration of J&K into India, led by the Praja Parishad, the outfit made Rehman its Bhaderwah in-charge. There were incidents of police firing in Ramban and Kishtwar, and multiple arrests. Rehman evaded capture by going underground.

When the Praja Parishad merged with the Jana Sangh, Rehman did so too.

His falling out with the Jana Sangh over the state committee appointments followed barely a couple of years after he was made its state president. Rehman headed next for Chaudhary Charan Singh’s Bharatiya Lok Dal. In the 1977, post-Emergency Lok Sabha elections, he was fielded as the joint Janata Party candidate from Jammu-Poonch, but lost.

Charan Singh, who would go on to serve briefly as PM, later sent Rehman to the Rajya Sabha from his native Uttar Pradesh.

Rehman’s stint with Charan Singh’s party too didn’t last long. In 1990, he moved to the Bahujan Samaj Party, and was re-elected to the J&K Assembly from Bhaderwah in 1996.

Around 2011-12, when the NC was in power, Rehman did a full circle and returned to the party.

In recent years, with age catching on, Rehman has not been in active politics. His three sons too have no interest in politics.

BJP J&K president and former Nowshera MLA Ravinder Raina says he holds Rehman in “very high regard”, not just as a former Jana Sangh leader but also because of his age. But, he says, “Peace, communal harmony and brotherhood should also be everybody’s priority.”

The NC’s Jammu province president, Rattan Lal Gupta, calls Rehman “a good human being”, “an honest politician” and an “excellent orator”. Adding that he is still in the NC, Gupta adds that Rehman did not maintain political consistency and kept changing parties.

Now back home, Rehman refers to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People last year, where he said: “India’s ties with the friendly people of Palestine are rooted in our common history… We are hopeful that direct talks between the Palestinian and Israeli sides will resume to find a comprehensive and negotiated solution.”

Says Rehman: “Humney bhi to yahi kaha tha, ki aman kayam karo aur tashadudd bandh karo (We too said the same thing, that peace be maintained and the brazen violence be ended).”

SHO Mohd Rashid of Pirmitha police station, where Rehman was detained for a night and released after signing a bond the next evening, admits there is no formal FIR / case registered against the veteran politician. He was kept at the police station as a preventive measure, the police officer adds.

Rehman says he is now taking the RTI route to find out the case against him. “Hamein itna de do ki humara zurm kya tha (At least tell me what I did wrong).”