Understanding Kashmir’s tallest leader Sheikh Abdullah, and the region and its politics

Whether Sheikh Abdullah was a patriot or a traitor, a caged lion or a fearless figure depends on who is answering the question. Historian Chitralekha Zutshi’s layered biography of the man and the political leader, Sheikh Abdullah: The Caged Lion of Kashmir, offers answers in the form of a story of the leader, which is “very much the story of an entire generation of Kashmiris”. With the Supreme Court judgment last month validating the Centre’s August 5, 2019, move to abrogate Article 370 giving Jammu and Kashmir its special status, the book is a timely look-back at the journey that culminated here.

Zutshi, a professor of history at William & Mary, Virginia, who specialises in the history of South Asia, has written on regional and religious identities and nationalism among other issues, turning her lens often on Kashmir. Among her previous books are Kashmir’s Contested Pasts: Narratives, Sacred Geographies, and the Historical Imagination (2014); Kashmir: History, Politics, Representation (2018); and Kashmir: Oxford India Short Introductions (2019). Sheikh Abdullah is the second book in the Indian Lives series, edited and curated by Ramachandra Guha.

Early years

Abdullah was born in Soura, a small village of Muslim labourers and shawl workers outside Srinagar, with his father passing away a fortnight before his birth. Growing up, he saw crushing poverty and deprivation close up and it left a lasting impression. Witnessing the excesses of the Dogra rule, it became clear to him early “that the Dogra regime had little regard for its Muslim subjects, since it appeared in the lives of ordinary Kashmiris only in the form of ever-present petty officials, extracting from them and providing little else but abuse in return”.

The sentiment against the Dogra rule would only grow and take shape when Abdullah would join the Islamia College in Lahore in 1924, the first time that he would step out of Kashmir. It was also a significant year in Kashmir, marked by workers of the Silk Factory in Srinagar striking work, and resulting in prominent members of the Muslim community presenting Lord Reading with a memorandum of demands. In Lahore’s heady political environment, enlivened by fiery speeches and mushairas, Abdullah thrived. Here he came in touch with poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal, who remained his life-long inspiration. Later, while pursuing an MSc in Chemistry at Aligarh Muslim University, he got an opportunity to watch many nationalist leaders. “Lahore and Aligarh were political training grounds for not just Abdullah but an entire generation of young Kashmiri men,” Zutshi writes.

The Making of a Leader

On his return to Kashmir, Abdullah threw himself into the thick of things, organising rallies, stirring people into action. In the years leading up to India’s Independence, Abdullah was aware that “he was leading Kashmiri Muslims towards the Indian Congress, when Indian Muslims were decoupling from it”. His nationalist and socialist tilt also laid the ground for the conversion of the Muslim Conference to the National Conference in 1939. The Quit Kashmir agitation he launched to push the Maharaja to give power to people’s representatives, his subsequent arrest and years in prison, the accession, the choice of whether to join India or Pakistan, and his becoming the prime minister of J&K in 1948, the negotiations leading up to the adoption of Article 370, his relationship with Nehru and his clashes later with Indira Gandhi, delineate his dilemmas, the challenges and the churn.

Into the Wilderness

As the Praja Parishad movement raged in Jammu, challenging Abdullah to prove his loyalty to India, Nehru himself was concerned whether he had made the right decision in supporting Abdullah. Zutshi captures the charged environment, rife with rumours: did Abdullah no longer want Kashmir to remain a part of India? A chain of events followed which led to him being dismissed as prime minister of J&K in 1953 and being placed under arrest. The arrest forced another reassessment of the leader. “His colleagues overlooked his dictatorial ways so long as he remained a symbol of Kashmiri freedom. By 1953, however, his image had taken a severe beating. Ironically, his dismissal restored his position as standard-bearer of Kashmiri self-determination, but at the cost of removing him from active politics,” writes Zutshi.

The Legacy

In the challenging decade of the ’80s, in the eyes of the young in Kashmir, Abdullah was a failed hero who had “succumbed to the Indian state and sold out their dreams of dignity and freedom”.

The publication of his autobiography, Aatish-i-Chinar, in 1986 couldn’t resurrect his status either. But, writes Zutshi, “As Kashmir abandoned their former idol and the insurgency gathered force, the Indian state clung ever more firmly to Abdullah’s memory as an exemplary Muslim.” His son and successor, Farooq Abdullah, could neither match his charisma nor was he able to keep extremist forces at bay.

So, in the figure of Sheikh Abdullah come together various strands that criss-cross to stitch a complex map of a life, or even a nation. One drawn by regional and international forces of the 20th century, shaped by Islamic universalism, straddling regionalism and nationalism with its accompanying anxieties. As Zutshi points out, “The battle lines that both shaped and were shaped by his political life – between centres and regions, between religion and secularism, between the exploited and the exploiters, and between India and Pakistan – continue to haunt the subcontinent today.” .