How Mufti Mohammad Syed Became Delhi’s Man in Kashmir<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
ON 3 OCTOBER 2015<\/span>, the Jammu and Kashmir legislative assembly met for the first sitting of its autumn session. The day was to be spent remembering a number of prominent individuals who had died recently, most of them state politicians, such as the former ministers Mir Ghulam Mohammad Poonchi, Ghulam Rasool Kar, and Abdul Ghani Shah Veeri. Also on the list was the former president of India, APJ Abdul Kalam.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Towards the end of the session, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, and the leader of the assembly, rose to speak. Hawk-nosed and silver-haired, with heavy bags under his eyes and a slightly tense manner, Sayeed exuded the air of a disgruntled professor.<\/i><\/p>\n Sayeed began by paying warm tributes to the legislators, whom he had known, and outlived. He also paid tribute to the thousands of Hajj pilgrims who had been killed in a crowd disaster the previous month in Mecca, Saudi Arabia; two of them were from Jammu and Kashmir. Sayeed called for a \u201ccredible enquiry\u201d into the incident, and demanded that people not play \u201ca blame game on this tragedy.\u201d He then began to recite a verse from the Quran.<\/i><\/p>\n Soon after he began, however, his memory failed him, and his voice petered out. He flailed his hands as he struggled to remember the verse. Instinctively, he turned to his right to look for help from a fellow member of the house. But there, instead of a colleague from his own party, the PDP, he found Nirmal Kumar Singh, the state\u2019s deputy chief minister, a member of the BJP, the PDP\u2019s coalition partner in the state. Sayeed stared expectantly, not seeming to realise that Singh, a Hindu, was unlikely to know any of the Quran\u2019s verses. Singh stared grimly back at Sayeed. Smiles and muffled laughter spread through the assembly. Sayeed was saved by prompting from some of his own party members seated on the treasury benches behind him.<\/i><\/p>\n It was a minor impasse, but one unlikely to have occurred in the past. The Bharatiya Janata Party, or the BJP, became part of the state\u2019s government for the first time in 2015, when it partnered with Sayeed\u2019s Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party, or PDP, after two months of negotiations. In the assembly elections held at the end of 2014, the PDP had emerged in the lead, with 28 seats, and the BJP followed, with 25 seats. Both were well short of the required 44-seat absolute majority mark.<\/i><\/p>\n The two parties\u2019 decision to form a coalition, was surprising since they are, in many ways, fundamentally incompatible. And indeed, not only does the PDP draw its votes largely from the Muslims of Kashmir, while the BJP relies on the support of the Hindus of Jammu, the parties don\u2019t see eye to eye even on the basic question of the relationship between Jammu and Kashmir and the union of India. Since its inception, in 1999, the PDP has promoted an approach of \u201csoft separatism,\u201d favouring talks with separatists, militants and Pakistan, and demanding a high degree of autonomy for the state. The BJP, on the other hand, does not recognise the space for such negotiation. It has long demanded the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which guarantees special rights to the state, including some degree of autonomy.<\/i><\/p>\n Apparently undeterred by the gulf between the two parties, Sayeed pushed forward with the coalition, travelling to Delhi at the end of February to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, exchanging an awkward hug with him in front of waiting cameras. Afterwards, he bravely assured journalists that this was \u201ca historic opportunity with the government at the centre that has a clear mandate of people to deliver.\u201d The results had shown that \u201cthe PDP is the choice of people in Kashmir and BJP in Jammu,\u201d he said, and the parties had therefore decided to \u201cunite together to give a government which will give all-round development to all the regions in the state.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n The bonhomie was short-lived. In early March, at the press conference held after the new government was sworn in, Sayeed expressed his gratitude to the separatist group Hurriyat, as well as \u201cPakistan and militant outfits for the conduct of assembly elections in the state.\u201d It was a provocative statement, and was, predictably, met with outrage, as Twitter users took their cue from television hawks and declared that Sayeed was a \u201c#ProPakCM.\u201d Modi spoke out, and assured parliament, \u201cIf somebody makes such a statement, we can never support it.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Since then, the two parties have expended significant time and energy locking horns with each other. They have fought over the release of the jailed separatist Masarat Alam Bhat, a proposed tax on helicopter rides to the Amarnath shrine, a court ruling reviving an archaic beef ban, and the location of a medical college. Many of these disagreements have had religious overtones, and some have spilled over into violence on the streets. Sayeed had claimed in the early days of the government that the alliance was an opportunity to bring Jammu and Kashmir together. But as one issue after another exacerbated tensions in the state, the government seemed rather to be driving the two regions and their people apart. Sayeed looked helpless throughout.<\/i><\/p>\n It is an uncharacteristic situation in which to find Sayeed. For most of his career he has had a close relationship with the government of India, working as the centre\u2019s trusted man in Jammu and Kashmir, helping them exercise immense control over the state. He has also had his share of political rivalries, most notably with the Abdullah family, which has long dominated Kashmiri politics. But Sayeed\u2019s style has always been one of backroom plotting, rather than open conflict. To see him besieged, as he is now, it is difficult not to wonder whether, after more than 50 years in which he has executed every kind of intricate political machination possible, Sayeed has made his biggest miscalculation yet.<\/i><\/p>\n A RETIRED GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE<\/span> <\/span>I met in Sayeed\u2019s hometown of Bijbehara, who has followed his career, gave me an unflattering description of him. Sayeed, this person said, \u201cis what we Kashmiris call a<\/span> <\/span>choibaaz<\/span>\u2014a conspirator and a schemer.\u201d Over the course of reporting this story, I interviewed nearly 100 people to try and piece together a picture of Sayeed\u2019s personality and politics. I spoke to Sayeed\u2019s former and present colleagues; politicians from across the spectrum, from mainstream to separatist; members of his family; his closest friends; bureaucrats, journalists and security officers who have known him; and former militants, among others.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Though the image of Sayeed that emerged was consistent with that given by the government employee, what also became apparent was that he did not develop into that kind of a politician in isolation. Rather, it was in the context of the Indian state\u2019s crushing hold over democracy and politics in Jammu and Kashmir that Sayeed mastered the skills he needed to survive, and thrive. To understand Sayeed, then, is to understand how the government of India has, over decades, warped the very nature of democracy in Jammu and Kashmir, often distorting it beyond recognition.<\/i><\/p>\n Sayeed was born in 1936 in the town of Bijbehara, in the district of Anantnag, 40 kilometres south of Srinagar. He belonged to a family of Peers, an influential class of clergymen in charge of Sufi shrines and mosques, who are often described to outsiders as the \u201cMuslim Brahmins of Kashmir.\u201d He took an early interest in politics and was appointed president of his school federation, a kind of student union. \u201cOnce in our weekly meeting, when the teacher asked us about our ambition, I said \u2018I want to be an English teacher,\u2019\u201d recounted Maqbool Ahmad Nadeem, a classmate of Sayeed\u2019s from the time. \u201cBut Mufti said he wanted to be a leader.\u201d Sayeed went on to study Arabic and law at Aligarh Muslim University, before returning to Anantnag and starting a practice in 1959 at the district court.<\/i><\/p>\n But his passions lay elsewhere. The 77-year-old lawyer Abdul Majeeb Khateeb, who knew Sayeed, and whom I met in the Anantnag court complex last September, told me Sayeed \u201cwas an average lawyer because, like the rest of us, he was too focussed on politics.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n In 1960, Sayeed obtained his first political appointment, as the district convenor of the Democratic National Conference, or DNC. This party comprised a group of left-leaning leaders who split from the National Conference to form an opposition party. But though purportedly a rival, by most accounts the DNC was in fact a creation of the centre, to enable it to occupy the opposition space. All its leaders went on to have close lifelong relationships with the central government for the rest of their careers.<\/i><\/p>\n Two years after it was formed, the DNC disintegrated under pressure from Nehru, according to Sampath Prakash Kundu, a trade union leader who was active at the time, and had links to the party. Many of its prominent leaders, including Sayeed, joined the NC. Jawaharlal Nehru had thrown the NC\u2019s original leader, Sheikh Abdullah, into jail in 1953 for advocating freedom for Kashmir. (He would remain incarcerated for much of the next two decades.) Nehru appointed Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad as the head of the NC, and Jammu and Kashmir\u2019s prime minister\u2014the original title for the state\u2019s highest elected office. This NC, which Sayeed joined, was effectively a shell for the Congress.<\/i><\/p>\n Given the Congress\u2019s total control over elections in the state, when the party granted Sayeed his first assembly nomination, in 1962, as the NC\u2019s candidate from Bijbehara, he was assured of a victory. Two years later, Nehru did away with the pretence of the NC functioning as a separate party. With the cooperation of the state\u2019s then prime minister Ghulam Mohammad Sadiq, the NC was merged with the Congress.<\/i><\/p>\n In his spells outside prison, the Sheikh, who was known as \u201cthe lion of Kashmir,\u201d kept up a furious attack against the Congress. He railed against the party\u2019s top leaders in his public speeches, and called on the public to ostracise them. Sayeed was among those who faced his wrath. Ahmadullah Shah, a long-time resident of Bijbehara, remembered a public rally in the village at which the Sheikh said, dismissively, \u201cI heard some malla kot<\/span>\u201d\u2014son of a mullah\u2014\u201chas come up as a Congress leader here,\u201d referring to Sayeed, who was an MLA at the time. Sayeed also became the target of a popular slogan, \u201cMuftian kabar Kasheer-e-nebar<\/span>\u201d\u2014Mufti\u2019s grave outside of Kashmir, suggesting that he did not deserve the dignity of being buried in his homeland.<\/i><\/p>\n Still, Sayeed\u2019s fortunes within the Congress rose steadily, even as Indira Gandhi assumed charge of the party after Nehru\u2019s death in 1964. He maintained strong ties with key leaders, such as Makhan Lal Fotedar, a politician from south Kashmir known to be close to Indira. In 1967, Sadiq, as chief minister\u2014as the post was now called\u2014appointed Sayeed, his old DNC colleague, to serve as the deputy minister for agriculture and cooperatives.<\/i><\/p>\n But his ties with Sadiq did not dissuade Sayeed from participating in a plot to topple him. It would be the first of several such conspiracies Sayeed signed on for over the years, targeting different leaders. The coup was led by Sadiq\u2019s rival Syed Mir Qasim, who headed the party\u2019s state unit. Ghulam Nabi Mir Lasjan, a veteran Congress leader who was close to Sayeed, told me that it was Sayeed who \u201chatched the plan.\u201d He recounted that a group of 32 MLAs loyal to Qasim \u201cwent to meet the high command to seek permission to go for a no-confidence motion\u201d against Sadiq. \u201cMufti was the first to resign as deputy minister,\u201d Lasjan said. Indira, however, scotched the plan, Lasjan said, telling them to \u201creconcile\u201d and keeping Qasim happy by appointing him the minister for public works.<\/i><\/p>\n Combating the Sheikh\u2019s influence was the Congress\u2019s single most important goal in Jammu and Kashmir. To this end, Sayeed, who was given a state cabinet position in 1972, evolved a strategy of cultivating potential rivals to the Sheikh. Kundu, the trade union leader, told me that Sayeed allowed trade movements to grow \u201cdespite the fact that we were getting adventurous in a sensitive state.\u201d According to him, Sayeed had a clear aim in mind. He \u201cguided Mir Qasim not to crush our trade union movement because we could take on Sheikh later.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Given the Sheikh\u2019s massive popularity, Indira probably knew that any realistic long-term plan for the state\u2019s politics had to include him. His long incarceration was probably a way to soften him, and make him more amenable to cooperating with the Congress. Fotedar, the leader who was close to Indira, told me that he had been \u201cworking on the Sheikh\u201d through the Sheikh\u2019s lieutenant Mirza Mohammad Afzal Beg, to convince him to cooperate politically with the Congress. Fotedar said, \u201cBeg told me, \u2018Mahaul banao<\/span>\u2019\u201d\u2014create a conducive environment\u2014\u201c\u2018we will come.\u2019\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n The result of these efforts was the 1975 Indira-Sheikh accord, after which the leader was freed from internment in Delhi and returned to the state as chief minister\u2014but he was installed at the head of a Congress government. Many separatists saw the Sheikh\u2019s move as a betrayal. \u201cSher ko geedad bana diya<\/span>\u201d\u2014the lion was turned into a jackal, Ashraf Sehrai, a senior separatist leader who was active at the time, told me.<\/i><\/p>\n Congress leaders told me that the Sheikh suggested to Indira that he also be given charge of the Congress in the state, but that she refused. Instead, she gave Sayeed that responsibility, appointing him president of the party\u2019s state unit, and the leader of the party\u2019s legislators. In some ways, this was a counter-intuitive political move for Sayeed. Executive power lay not in party posts, but in ministries, which the Congress filled up with loyalists. \u201cHis juniors also became ministers, but he refused,\u201d Mohammad Yousuf Taing, a scholar who worked with the Sheikh on his autobiography, told me. According to Taing, Sayeed told Indira that if he worked under the Sheikh, he would lose his own political identity and strength.<\/i><\/p>\n The Congress\u2019s compromise with the Sheikh didn\u2019t last long. The lawyer Khateeb, who was a young Congress leader at the time, recounted that the Sheikh took decisions without consulting the Congress. Worse, he \u201cused to abuse the Congress though he became CM on our shoulders,\u201d Khateeb said. \u201cWe youngsters revolted against the central Congress.\u201d For some time, Indira ignored disgruntled local leaders who wanted the Sheikh sacked. But her own discomfort increased as the Sheikh\u2019s clout grew.<\/i><\/p>\n In 1977, the foundations of Indian politics shifted after the Congress lost a national election for the first time ever, to the newly scrabbled-together alliance led by the Janata Party, which won 271 seats and formed the government. Realising that she was vulnerable and insecure, superseded Congress leaders in the state saw an opportunity to convince Indira to try and wrest power away from the Sheikh.<\/i><\/p>\n Sayeed was a key player in this plot. \u201cLocal Congressmen began hawking the idea that the resurrection of the party in the north could begin from its base in Kashmir where the party had a majority in the assembly already,\u201d the journalist and author MJ Akbar wrote in his book Kashmir: Behind the Vale.<\/span> \u201cIt could withdraw support from Abdullah, form a government of its own, and relaunch Mrs Gandhi by getting her elected from a Lok Sabha seat in the state.\u201d Indira, Akbar wrote, was \u201cuncharacteristically uncertain\u201d and \u201cdepressed by defeat,\u201d and did not stop what he described as \u201cthe Phoenix plan put into operation by the Congress chief in the state, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n On 16 March 1977, the Congress MLAs withdrew support from the Sheikh, and Sayeed asked the governor, LK Jha, to permit him, as the state leader of the majority party, to take over as chief minister and form the government. But the canny Sheikh executed a counter-manoeuvre and asked the governor to dissolve the house and call for fresh elections. Reviving the NC ahead of the polls, he prepared to battle the centre.<\/i><\/p>\n The 1977 elections, conducted under the Janata government, were widely believed to be the first fair elections to be held in the state. \u201cFor the first time, there was no mass rejection of nominations, no disappearance of nomination papers, no forced withdrawal of candidatures and no eve of the poll ban on political parties,\u201d reported India Today.<\/span> The Sheikh had last led the state in 1952; there had been three successive Congress governments after him. Still, the Sheikh won seats in all the three regions of the state, a feat that has not been repeated since, by any party. The NC won 39 out of 42 seats in Kashmir, seven out of 32 seats in Jammu and one out of two seats in Ladakh. The Congress drew a blank in the valley, won ten seats in Jammu and one seat in Ladakh. Sayeed lost from his hometown, Bijbehara. It was a humiliating defeat for the Congress, for Indira, and for Sayeed.<\/i><\/p>\n THE 1977 ELECTIONS MADE CLEAR HOW FEEBLE <\/span>the Congress\u2019s party structure in the state was and how popular the Sheikh\u2019s NC, which had a strong cadre base. After the debacle, Sayeed rolled up his sleeves and got to work to build the Congress\u2019s base in the state from the grassroots.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n I interviewed several Congress members from Kashmir, all of whom spoke highly of Sayeed\u2019s work during this period. \u201cCongress party in Kashmir has been built up by him,\u201d said Ghulam Nabi Monga, currently the vice president of the Congress in Jammu and Kashmir, who joined the party in 1975 and worked with Sayeed. \u201cHe wouldn\u2019t let anybody rest. The credit goes to him for what you see today.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n In the last week of August, I visited the crumbling two-storey Congress office building in central Srinagar, and met veteran party workers who remembered Sayeed with affection, describing him as \u201cjurratmand<\/span>,\u201d or brave, and \u201cworker-parast<\/span>,\u201d or pro-worker. Up a creaky staircase was a room whose walls were lined with photographs of past presidents of the party\u2019s state unit. A sullen Sayeed was among them.<\/i><\/p>\n \u201cNobody had the guts to fight the Sheikh,\u201d Nazir Bhat, a senior Congress worker, told me. \u201cAfter 1977, we neither had power nor government but Mufti fought alone and became the unopposed leader.\u201d Many Congress members I met told me that Sayeed would go from village to village trying to find people who would join the party. \u201cHe knows every house in every village of south Kashmir,\u201d Abdul Razaq Wagay, the former MLA of Shopian, told me.<\/i><\/p>\n \u201cSheikh saab<\/span> was like the big tree around which nothing else grows or attempted to grow,\u201d Vijay Dhar told me. \u201cAnybody just keeping the base was a great achievement.\u201d With Indira providing backing from the centre, as the president of the state party unit, Sayeed ran a kind of parallel administration in the state. \u201cFor instance, under Hajj quota of the central government, if the state got a sanction for 4,000 people, then Mufti would get 500 separately,\u201d Sheikh Ghulam Qadir Perdesi, the district commissioner of Srinagar at that time, told me. \u201cIf the government has to give some permits, 25 percent would be given to Mufti. If Sheikh gave freedom-fighter pension to the NC members who fought in 1947, Mufti, though nobody fought for Congress here, would get some pensions granted for Congress workers.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Sayeed also attacked the Sheikh directly. He organised strikes regularly, and brought out what the Congress called a \u201cred book\u201d containing charges of corruption against him. \u201cHe brought him down from the tower of unreasonable height,\u201d Kundu told me, \u201cIf not for Mufti he would have been a demigod.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n In September 1982, after the Sheikh died of a heart attack, leadership of the NC passed onto his son Farooq, who was the state\u2019s health minister at the time. With the approval of Indira, who was now back in power at the centre, Farooq was sworn in as the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir. For the next several years, he would be Sayeed\u2019s political nemesis.<\/i><\/p>\n Indira probably hoped that the son would be a more amenable politician than his father. They shared a fond relationship, and Farooq addressed her affectionately as \u201cmummy.\u201d But she soon realised that when it came to politics, he was just as combative as his father. Ahead of the state elections in 1983, when she extended an offer of alliance to Farooq, he refused.<\/i><\/p>\n Furious, Indira unleashed the full might of the centre against him, campaigning for six days in the valley using an army helicopter, accompanied only by Sayeed, in whom it was clear she placed considerable faith. \u201cToday, next to Mrs Gandhi, it is Mufti who is being touted \u2026 as the vote-grabber,\u201d the India Today<\/span> journalist Inderjit Badhwar wrote. \u201cQuarter-page advertisements, being inserted every day now in all important dailies of the state \u2026 include only a photograph of Mufti.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n But at the end of this bitter battle, it was the NC that emerged victorious, with a total tally of 46 out of 76 seats, giving Farooq a majority in the assembly. Sayeed had contested two seats\u2014Bijbehara again, as well as Homshalibugh\u2014perhaps in the hope of winning at least one, after his embarrassing loss in 1977. He lost both.<\/i><\/p>\n Indira soon began to plot her revenge against Farooq. Over the next year, she targeted him with allegations that he supported the Sikh militants of Punjab. Sayeed accused him of having links with the militant group the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, or JKLF. In his memoir, My Dismissal<\/span>, Farooq recounted that the efforts to brand him a secessionist were \u201ca ruse to inflame the minds of the majority community in the rest of country to justify action against me and secure public support for it.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n In the summer of 1984, Sayeed found himself once again at the centre of a plan to pull down an elected government, this time orchestrated by Indira. In his memoir, Farooq said that the plan was codenamed Operation New Star. \u201cThe plan to overthrow my government, was given final shape \u2026 in Delhi when Mufti Sayed [sic] was summoned there,\u201d Farooq said in his account. The strategy entailed bribing MLAs to defect from the NC, and then asking the governor to dismiss Farooq. When the governor BK Nehru refused to be party to the scheme, Indira replaced him with the more pliable Jagmohan. The new governor dutifully summoned Farooq and told him that 13 of his MLAs had defected, and that he was dismissed.<\/i><\/p>\n \u201cThe new government was formed by spending a lot of money,\u201d wrote AS Dulat, the former chief of the Research and Analysis Wing, in his memoir, Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years<\/span>. Dulat, who, from the late 1980s, worked in several high-ranking government offices in the state, had a ringside view of its highest political circles. According to him, \u201cThe money went in an IB [Intelligence Bureau] bag, and was distributed by a big businessman who used to be a Congress MP.\u201d It was difficult to doubt that the defectors had been bribed when, after taking power, the new chief minister, Ghulam Mohammad Shah, made all 13 MLAs cabinet ministers.<\/i><\/p>\n In 1985, Sayeed managed to enter the state assembly after winning a by-election in Ranbir Singh Pura in Jammu. But his greatest ambition continued to gnaw at him. BK Nehru, the former governor of the state, in his memoir, Nice Guys Finish Second<\/span>, wrote, \u201cThe fact that the National Conference had won 38 seats in the valley and the Congress had won only two did not deter Mufti Sayeed from dreaming dreams of becoming chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n This relentless drive may have led Sayeed to resort to a sinister strategy. In 1986, after the locks of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya were opened, riots broke out in some parts of the country. While Kashmir was largely undisturbed, violence did break out in one district: Anantnag, Sayeed\u2019s stronghold. Here, a number of temples were desecrated, and houses of Pandits were attacked.<\/i><\/p>\n During my reporting, I heard allegations that Sayeed himself had organised this violence. Yusuf Jameel, a senior Kashmiri journalist, who covered the riots, told me he heard that \u201cCongress was behind it because they had problems with GM Shah and wanted to get rid of him.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n \u201cAn atmosphere of insecurity was created against Kashmiri Pandits,\u201d I was told by Ghulam Hassan Mir, one of GM Shah\u2019s defectors in 1984, who later co-founded the PDP. \u201cMufti saab<\/span> was behind it,\u201d he added. Pandit community leaders I met in Jammu concurred on the question of Sayeed\u2019s involvement. \u201cMufti engineered the riots,\u201d Ajay Kumar Chrungoo, chairman of Panun Kashmir, an organisation of exiled Kashmiri Pandits, told me. He claimed that the Congress \u201cconstituted a committee that indicted Mufti, but the report was never made public.\u201d Monga, the current vice president of the Congress in the state, said, \u201cMufti wanted to be the CM,\u201d and that he \u201chad an understanding with Gul Shah\u2019s MLAs,\u201d who agreed to support him. \u201cHe was building pressure,\u201d Monga claimed. \u201cHad the central leadership agreed, he would\u2019ve been the CM.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n But Rajiv Gandhi, who had taken over the Congress after his mother\u2019s assassination in 1984, had a different plan. Appointing Sayeed chief minister would have meant slighting Farooq Abdullah, with whom Rajiv was friends. On 7 March 1986, Rajiv had Shah sacked and imposed governor\u2019s rule on the state. Instead of appointing Sayeed chief minister, Rajiv shifted him out to Delhi, giving him a seat in the Rajya Sabha and the post of union tourism minister. Moving Sayeed out was a step towards bringing Farooq back to rule the state. Abdul Gaffar Sofi, a long-time associate of Sayeed from Anantnag, and a co-founder of the PDP, told me, \u201cRajiv and Farooq\u2019s friendship came in between Mufti saab and his ambition.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n IN NOVEMBER 1986, RAJIV AND FAROOQ<\/span> signed an accord that reinstated Farooq as chief minister, and proposed a roadmap for stabilising the state, with the centre\u2019s cooperation. When Farooq was asked why he needed the Congress\u2019s support at all, when he had won a comfortable majority in the state, he replied, \u201cThe Congress commands the centre. In a state like Kashmir, if I want to implement programmes to fight poverty and disease and run a government, I have to stay on the right side of the centre. That is a hard political reality that I have come to accept.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Many senior Congress members in the state, including Sayeed and Arun Nehru, were opposed to the accord, no doubt fearing that Farooq\u2019s return would diminish their influence. \u201cMufti opposed the accord tooth and nail,\u201d Sofi told me. \u201cHe said, \u2018People upset with the NC would go to Congress and vice versa, now where will they go if they join hands?\u2019\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Farooq probably also had revenge on his mind when he took up Rajiv\u2019s offer. Badhwar wrote in India Today<\/span> that one of the reasons for his \u201cquick embrace of the centre\u201d was probably to \u201censure the quick political demise\u201d of the NC MLAs who had defected in 1984, as well as Sayeed, \u201cwhom Farooq blamed for engineering the defections that toppled his government.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n The new chief minister sent a clear signal of antipathy towards Sayeed by appointing to his cabinet Mir Lasjan Mir, a long-time political rival of Sayeed\u2019s. Lasjan Mir had only recently written \u201ca lengthy confidential memorandum to the prime minister outlining corruption charges against Mufti,\u201d Badhwar wrote. Farooq underlined his message by giving Lasjan Mir charge of the ministries of civil supplies and transport, \u201cwhich have traditionally been the strongholds of patronage dispensed by Mufti\u2019s group,\u201d Badhwar wrote. An embittered Sayeed walked out midway through the swearing-in ceremony of the new government.<\/i><\/p>\n Though he was unhappy with the party, as the senior-most Congress leader in the state, Sayeed probably could not avoid campaigning responsibilities ahead of the 1987 elections. But a high-ranking government security officer who was present at one rally that Sayeed addressed, in the town of Khanabal in Anantnag district, told me how, at that rally, Sayeed promoted a new coalition, the Muslim United Front, whose symbol was a pen and inkpot, even while pretending to campaign for the Congress. Also present was Najma Heptullah, then a Congress leader, who was overseeing the party\u2019s campaign in the state. According to the officer, Sayeed told the audience, \u201cNo need to tell you who to vote for, my Congress people, there is a tradition.\u201d But even as he said this, the officer added, \u201che took out the pen from his pocket, holding it and repeatedly shifting it from one hand to the other.\u201d As he did this, he used his \u201cfree hand to touch an imaginary flowing beard.\u201d The gestures, the officer said, were a clear \u201creference to the pen and inkpot, and the beard of the MUF candidates.\u201d According to the officer, Heptullah, who is from Madhya Pradesh and does not speak Kashmiri, \u201chad no clue\u201d what Sayeed said.<\/i><\/p>\n The MUF was the closest group the state had ever seen to a spontaneous local political formation. The Congress, NC, and even the Janata parties, were all parties from the centre, or with strong links to the centre. The MUF was the first local challenge to this order.<\/i><\/p>\n After weeks of campaigning, votes were cast on 23 March 1987. The next day, counting began. As the numbers were tallied from districts across the state, it started to become clear that the MUF had received an encouraging response from voters. To date, there is no precise information available about exactly how well the MUF performed in the elections. Most estimates put their final tally at a maximum of 15 or 20 seats, a potentially impressive debut for a fledgling political formation. But before the results could be known, the government, threatened by the prospect of a new political force, snatched the election away from the people.<\/i><\/p>\n \u201cAs the results came in, the victorious new government was busy arresting top MUF leaders \u2026 on charges of anti-national activities,\u201d wrote Badhwar, who witnessed the rigging firsthand. \u201cChunks of the valley \u2026 were under virtual curfew even as votes were being tabulated at some counting stations five days after they had been cast.\u201d The political scientist Sumantra Bose wrote, in the book Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace<\/span>, about a key contest featuring the MUF\u2019s Muhammad Yusuf Shah. His opponent, Bose wrote, \u201crouted in the contest, leaves the counting center in a visibly dejected mood and goes home. But he is summoned back\u2014to be declared the winner by presiding officials.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Taj Mohiuddin, a senior Congress leader, who was initially part of the MUF, told me, \u201cThe elections weren\u2019t rigged by the NC but by the government of India.\u201d Even Farooq, though he initially denied allegations of rigging, came to accept that it happened\u2014even if he deflected the blame away from himself. In 1993, while the state was in the grip of militancy, Harinder Baweja of India Today<\/span> asked him, \u201cDidn\u2019t the problem start largely because you rigged the elections?\u201d \u201cI am not saying the elections weren\u2019t rigged,\u201d Farooq said. \u201cBut I didn\u2019t rig them.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n The crushing of popular will in 1987 is considered a turning point in the history of Jammu and Kashmir. It is widely agreed that the repression played a part in setting off the waves of militancy that flooded the state in the years that followed. Many of those who joined the militancy were MUF supporters who saw armed revolt as the only way forward against repression. Muhammad Yusuf Shah would take on the name Sayeed Salahuddin, and rise to head the Hizbul Mujahideen. His election manager from 1987, Yasin Malik, would go on to head the JKLF.<\/i><\/p>\n TOWARDS THE END OF THE 1980\u2019s, SAYEED, DISGRUNTLED<\/span> with his position in the Congress, sought an opportunity to reinvent himself politically. He seized an opportunity after communal riots broke out in Meerut in May 1987. Resigning from his post as union tourism minister, he deplored Rajiv\u2019s \u201cinsensitive\u201d approach to the violence, and returned to Jammu and Kashmir.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n In an interview with Badhwar later that year, he criticised Rajiv\u2019s leadership of the party. The Meerut riots had left him feeling that there was a \u201ccommunal divide\u201d in the country, he said. But he found that Rajiv was \u201cincapable of reacting emotionally.\u201d He ranted against the Rajiv-Farooq accord, and the sidelining of the old Congress guard. \u201cNo one consulted me\u201d on the accord, Sayeed said. The prime minister, he insisted, had failed loyal party workers. Rajiv \u201cis not like his mother,\u201d Sayeed said. \u201cShe consulted us on every issue as she did a cross section of people. But now, after our sacrifices, we\u2019re thrown away like flies, reduced to the status of pygmies.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n In the same interview, Badhwar asked him if he would start a new party. Sayeed replied, \u201cThe ball is in the leadership\u2019s court. I\u2019ve simply come back to square one.\u201d While he would continue to address national-level issues, he said, \u201cI will welcome VP Singh or for that matter, even leaders of the opposition, if they wish to address issues in this state.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n The nod to Singh wasn\u2019t incidental. In July that year, Singh had been expelled from his post as defence minister in Rajiv\u2019s cabinet for speaking out against the Bofors gun scandal. He seemed well positioned to emerge as the leader of an anti-Rajiv brigade. Sayeed\u2019s strong stand against Rajiv paid off when Singh\u2019s Jan Morcha movement transformed, in October 1988, into a political party, the Janata Dal. Singh appointed Sayeed to the new party\u2019s steering committee.<\/i><\/p>\n In the next general elections, in 1989, Sayeed contested from Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh. He had never won a fair election in his life. Riding the wave of popularity for Singh in Uttar Pradesh probably seemed a safer bet than trying his luck again with the voters of Kashmir. Indeed, the Janata Dal won a huge majority of the seats in the state. Sayeed was one of the 54 successful candidates, out of a total of 85 seats.<\/i><\/p>\n In December, the National Front government came to power in the centre\u2014a coalition of national and regional parties led by the Janata Dal, with the Left and the BJP providing outside support. Singh was sworn in as the prime minister, and chose Sayeed to be his home minister, usually considered the second-highest post in government. Sayeed was the first Muslim to ever head the ministry. According to Mohan Guruswamy, who was Singh\u2019s close associate and informal advisor, Sayeed\u2019s appointment was Singh\u2019s way of showing that his was a secular government. \u201cVP Singh wanted to send a signal that he is not concerned about the BJP giving support from outside,\u201d Guruswamy said. Sayeed, too, spoke in support of this political vision. \u201cTo fight communalism and extremism is my first motto,\u201d he said in an interview to India Today<\/span> after he was sworn in. \u201cWhile we believe that there is no problem which can\u2019t be solved through negotiations, we will never compromise with those who divide the country.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n The challenge before Sayeed was enormous, largely owing to the strife in his own home state. Jammu and Kashmir was by then in the throes of full- blown secessionist militancy. A number of armed groups had sprouted, whose members crossed over to Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and returned, after training, to wreak violence in the state. \u201cThey have lost their fear,\u201d a deputy superintendent of a newly formed commando unit told India Today<\/span> in May 1989. \u201cThey stand right in front of your guns and dare you to shoot them. How can you fight people like these? In the past the most they did was pelt stones or set off crude home-made bombs and then ducked for cover. This behaviour is new, it is almost un-Kashmiri.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n As it turned out, Sayeed\u2019s first major crisis as India\u2019s home minister was also a deeply personal one. Six days after he was sworn in, his second daughter, Rubaiya, a medical intern, was kidnapped in Srinagar by the JKLF, which demanded the release of five militants incarcerated in the city, in exchange for her safe return. Guruswamy, who met Sayeed during this time at his house at 10, Akbar Road, in Delhi, recounted that he used to be \u201cvery quiet\u201d while \u201cpeople around him would talk a lot. He knew that the boys wouldn\u2019t harm her and she would be looked after well.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Farooq, as the chief minister of the state where the militants were incarcerated, took a firm stand against giving in to the kidnappers\u2019 demand. He told the media that even if his own daughter had been kidnapped, he would not agree to releasing militants. Nevertheless, all five militants were released after six days, on 13 December 1989. They were greeted with jubilation in Srinagar.<\/i><\/p>\n Sayeed has always maintained that releasing the militants was the state government\u2019s decision. \u201cNeither I nor the centre was in the picture when the state cabinet decided on the release,\u201d he told India Today <\/span>in January 1990. But recently, at the launch of Dulat\u2019s memoir in Delhi, Farooq presented an alternative version of events: he recalled that the union ministers Arif Mohammad Khan and IK Gujral had travelled to Srinagar during this period, with the intention of dismissing him if he resisted the release. \u201cThis will be the last nail in India\u2019s coffin, I told them,\u201d Farooq said.<\/i><\/p>\n Guruswamy said that Sayeed, \u201cbeing the home minister, he had a chance to say no and come out a strong man, but he didn\u2019t.\u201d The decision to release the prisoners is believed to have been a key factor in boosting militants\u2019 morale. \u201cIt was a turning point,\u201d the senior journalist Yusuf Jameel told me. \u201cIt was seen as a victory of people over India, the government and its security forces. It had a tremendous impact.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n The prime minister believed that the crisis couldn\u2019t be resolved militarily. Singh appointed a Kashmir Affairs Committee headed by the railway minister, George Fernandes, to tackle the crisis. According to India Today <\/span>reports, Sayeed resented this. Possessive of his political terrain even in the backdrop of such a serious crisis, he continued to involve himself in the state\u2019s affairs. \u201cDifferences between the railway minister and the home minister escalated, with the former accusing the union home minister of creating confusion and of resisting a solution to the Kashmir problem,\u201d the journalist Seema Mustafa wrote in The Lonely Prophet<\/span>, VP Singh\u2019s political biography. Fernandes was in favour of talks with the militants, and established contact with some, but Sayeed didn\u2019t allow him to work freely, wrote Mustafa.<\/i><\/p>\n Jammu and Kashmir\u2019s insurgency took an even more grave turn when the government responded with brutal repression. Sayeed was a key player in enabling this response. Mustafa wrote that at one point, faced with a spiralling violence in the state, Singh considered appointing Jagmohan (whom Indira had deployed in 1984 to topple Farooq\u2019s government) as the state\u2019s governor, since he had a reputation as a firm administrator who could rein in difficult situations. Singh encountered opposition immediately from the Left MPs, who alleged he was anti-Muslim. Singh changed his mind, wrote Mustafa, but Sayeed and Arun Nehru stepped in to ensure that his original plan was carried through. Jagmohan was sent to the state in January 1990. Farooq, who had opposed the move, saw this as an opportunity to leave the state.<\/i><\/p>\n Under Jagmohan, Jammu and Kashmir entered a period of unfettered repression. Two days after he took over, the valley witnessed its first bloody massacre after the outbreak of militancy. Fifty protestors were killed in Central Reserve Police Force firing in what is now remembered as the Gaw Kadal massacre. Other killings followed\u2014the Hawal massacre, the Bijbehara massacre. Militants targeted Kashmiri Pandits, leading to an exodus of hundreds of thousands from the valley.<\/i><\/p>\n As home minister, Sayeed played a vital part in enforcing this bloody regime. He defended the decision to deploy Jagmohan to Kashmir in a June 1990 interview to India Today<\/span>, neatly glossing over the killings and massacres of people. \u201cBy sending Jagmohan to Kashmir we made major gains,\u201d he said. \u201cHe set up this nucleus of officials to fill the administrative vacuum. And we established the authority of the state.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n On 5 July 1990, Sayeed implemented the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in the state. The dreaded law gave sweeping powers to security forces. It set off years of widespread crackdowns, detention and torture. I asked Ved Bhasin, the former editor of Kashmir Times <\/span>and a close friend of Sayeed, if the politician ever regretted the decision later, after seeing the effects the law had. \u201cHe was happy with AFSPA because he consolidated his power,\u201d Bhasin told me.<\/i><\/p>\n Sayeed soon came to be criticised for his performance as home minister. \u201cMufti hasn\u2019t really got off the ground in his ministry,\u201d Seema Mustafa wrote in India Today <\/span>in July 1990. \u201cHe has emerged as a home minister who can\u2019t see beyond Kashmir.\u201d At one point in his tenure, Sayeed was heckled in parliament during a speech. At another, 50 Janata Dal MPs submitted a memorandum demanding his removal.<\/i><\/p>\n One reason Sayeed survived this phase was Singh\u2019s dogged insistence that retaining his Muslim minister was crucial to demonstrating his secular politics. As a cabinet minister told India Today<\/span>, \u201cThe country\u2019s secularism hinges on whether it is able to keep Kashmir with it. And VP Singh\u2019s secular credentials hinge on whether he is able to keep Mufti in the north block.\u201d Sayeed\u2019s personal equation with Singh also helped. \u201cHe would carry tales to VP Singh,\u201d Guruswamy told me. \u201cHe is a real durbari<\/span> that way\u201d\u2014a real courtier.<\/i><\/p>\n In October 1990, Lalu Prasad Yadav, then the chief minister of Bihar, arrested the BJP leader LK Advani in Samastipur, where he had travelled on his \u201crath yatra<\/span>,\u201d canvassing support for the Ayodhya temple cause. In protest, the BJP withdrew its support for the government. Eleven months after it was sworn in, VP Singh\u2019s government fell from power.<\/i><\/p>\n Sayeed remained with the Janata Dal for the next few years, even as Singh\u2019s political star dimmed. In 1996, at Lalu Prasad Yadav\u2019s invitation, Sayeed contested the Lok Sabha elections from the constituency of Katihar in Bihar. Sayeed finished in the third position.<\/i><\/p>\n That same year, Sayeed parted ways with the Janata Dal and returned to the Congress. Back in the fold of the party in which he had built his political career, Sayeed next embarked on an extraordinary project. Wrecked by years of violence, democracy in Jammu and Kashmir needed to be resuscitated. Sayeed would play a crucial role in setting up a bogus electoral contest in the state to present a facade of democracy where none existed.<\/i><\/p>\n A CHILL HUNG OVER JAMMU AND KASHMIR <\/span>in the early 1990s. Militancy had spread across cities, towns and villages. Politicians had fled the state and all political activity had ceased.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Like every other family in the state, Sayeed\u2019s, too, had been affected by the violence. His brother, Mufti Mohammad Ameen, told me that their uncle was killed by militants in Bijbehara in 1990, after which the family left the town, to return eight years later.<\/i><\/p>\n \u201cWe bonded as close friends only on one issue,\u201d Perdesi, the former district commissioner of Srinagar, told me of his association with Sayeed during those years. \u201cFear brought us together during the militancy and we used to speak to each other secretly on phone, trying to find out whether we were alive or not. Then there was no question of which party you belonged to.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n It was in this troubled atmosphere that Sayeed set out to resurrect the appearance of a democratic process for the 1996 assembly elections. He talked a number of people into contesting, promising manipulated victories to some, and persuading others that their staged defeats would be in the best interests of the state. The numbers are difficult to confirm, as is the scope of the plan, and the extent of Sayeed\u2019s role in it. But anecdotal evidence leaves little doubt that the elections were staged, and that Sayeed played a major part in planning it. Among those that returned to participate was Sayeed\u2019s long-time foe, Farooq Abdullah.<\/i><\/p>\n Of course, managed elections had been common in the state for many decades. Even the Lok Sabha elections, earlier in 1996, were believed by many to be manipulated. Among those who said so was Farooq. \u201cThe Lok Sabha elections was a big fraud,\u201d he told Outlook<\/span>. \u201cThey told me that the actual ballot boxes were never opened and instead new boxes were counted.\u201d When wooed back to assembly elections with the promise of a pre-determined victory, however, Farooq appears to not have minded the use of underhanded methods. For his part, Sayeed probably recognised correctly that if the state\u2019s biggest party boycotted the assembly elections, it would be difficult to claim that they were held fairly.<\/i><\/p>\n And so it was that Sayeed, who is known for his outsized ego, temporarily set aside a long rivalry, and supported Farooq\u2019s candidature. In his book, Dulat wrote that after the fall of VP Singh\u2019s government, \u201ctill Farooq was re-elected chief minister in 1996, Mufti had only one refrain: that there was no other solution to Kashmir but Farooq Abdullah. I remember at least six occasions on which he said this, all reported by the media.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Perdesi was among those Sayeed persuaded to contest as a losing candidate. \u201cIn 1996, he wanted me to contest the elections against National Conference,\u201d Perdesi told me. \u201cI said, \u2018Jenaab<\/span>, what are you saying? We will be washed away.\u2019 He said, \u2018I agree with you but we have to fight elections to give credibility to the elections. We have to sacrifice as secular politicians.\u2019 So I fought against the NC on a Congress ticket from Sonawar constituency.\u201d Since it was difficult to find people willing to participate, Sayeed persuaded his wife Gulshan Ara, his daughter Mehbooba Mufti and two brothers-in-law to contest, Sartaj Madni, a senior PDP leader told me.<\/i><\/p>\n Ghulam Hassan Mir, a Congress politician, who described the 1996 poll as a \u201cmanaged election,\u201d told me that an appearance of electoral campaigning was created ahead of voting. Political activity had come to a standstill in the state, he said, \u201cexcept in my constituency where we had huge, very huge rallies.\u201d These rallies were used to project an impression of a functioning democracy. \u201cWhen they had to show the world and the country that the elections are happening, they used to show my rallies,\u201d he said.<\/i><\/p>\n The 1996 state assembly elections also saw the surfacing of a shadowy armed group that had come into existence two years earlier. This was the Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen, a counter-insurgent group made of renegade militants, intended to fight the state\u2019s insurgents. Ajit Kumar Doval, then the joint director of the IB, in Jammu and Kashmir, now the national security advisor, is credited with creating the group.<\/i><\/p>\n Though it had been formed to fight militants, common people also suffered immensely under the Ikhwanis. A 1996 report by Human Rights Watch observed that alongside Indian security forces, \u201coperating as a secret, illegal army, were state-sponsored paramilitary groups,\u201d many of whom were \u201cresponsible for grave human rights abuses, including summary executions, torture, and illegal detention as well as election-related intimidation of voters.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n The Ikhwanis played a key role in the assembly elections of 1996. \u201cI was one of those who can take credit for holding an election in Jammu and Kashmir in 1996,\u201d said Kuka Parray, the head of the group, in an interview to the website Rediff in 2002. Militant attacks were still common. Even if the elections were a sham, politicians had to be seen campaigning\u2014during which they made for high-profile targets. Parray said he \u201clost a number of men during the election campaign.\u201d Liaqat Ali Khan, the former south Kashmir commander of Ikhwan, told me that the group \u201cstarted operations against the militants in 1995.\u201d Till then, he said, \u201cthe militants had complete control.\u201d But with the Ikhwanis\u2019 support, \u201call the politicians who had run away from the valley came back.\u201d Leaders from across the spectrum sought the Ikhwanis\u2019 help, Khan said, including Mirza Mehboob Beg of the PDP, Ghulam Rasool Kar and Taj Mohiuddin of the Congress, and\u2014perhaps unsurprisingly\u2014Sayeed. \u201cSome of them wanted us to join their party,\u201d Khan told me, while some politicians struck other bargains in exchange for protection.<\/i><\/p>\n At the end of this fabricated election, the NC had 57 out of the assembly\u2019s 87 seats. Sayeed\u2019s strong support for Farooq did not go unappreciated. \u201cIn that election, as grace marks to Mufti saab<\/span>, who backed Farooq Abdullah, Mehbooba was allowed to win in Bijbehara,\u201d Perdesi told me. Her mother, Gulshan, however, lost from Pahalgam. The first-time MLA Mehbooba was appointed the leader of the Congress legislators in the assembly.<\/i><\/p>\n Once he was sworn in, Farooq launched a pitched battle to crush the militancy. His government quickly acquired a reputation for aggressive crackdowns. In particular, the Special Operations Group, an anti-insurgency force raised in 1994, became notorious for human rights violations. Simultaneously, Farooq also set about implementing his political agenda\u2014as he had promised to do in his manifesto, he set up a committee to examine the question of autonomy for the state.<\/i><\/p>\n Sayeed, meanwhile, saw an uptick in his fortunes when he won a Lok Sabha election in 1998 from the constituency of Anantnag. Now that the election had been successfully managed, he resumed his rivalry with Farooq. Along with Mehbooba and Ghulam Hassan Mir, he wrote a letter to the governor, KV Krishna Rao, criticising Farooq\u2019s \u201cbullet for bullet\u201d policy.<\/i><\/p>\n He was also preparing for the biggest political shift of his career. For decades, his position on separatists and militants had been concurrent with the Indian government\u2019s. But now, Mehbooba began to advocate a more open stance, supporting \u201ctalks with militants without asking them to first lay down arms,\u201d and saying, \u201ctalks must be held with the alienated Kashmiri people, and let the process of dialogue once begun throw up a solution.\u201d As Sayeed\u2019s political prot\u00e9g\u00e9 and heir, Mehbooba\u2019s statements and positions have always been consistent with her father\u2019s. Her statements, therefore, suggested that Sayeed had something up his sleeve.<\/i><\/p>\n Between May and July 1999, India and Pakistan fought the high-altitude Kargil War along the line of control between the countries. Two days after the end of the war, at the end of July, Sayeed made his dramatic announcement. After a lifetime of working with national parties, he was now forming a new regional party, to \u201cpersuade the government of India to initiate an unconditional dialogue with Kashmiris for resolution of the Kashmir problem.\u201d The NC government, he said, had \u201cfailed to provide a healing touch to the Kashmiris who suffered immensely.\u201d The state needed a new regional party, Sayeed said, and his Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party would field candidates from all six parliamentary constituencies in the state for the upcoming elections that same year.<\/i><\/p>\n AT FIRST, SAYEED AND HIS COLLEAGUES <\/span>considered naming their new party the Democratic Socialist Party. \u201cBut since \u2018socialist\u2019 is a much abused word, we opted for People\u2019s Democratic Party,\u201d said Ved Bhasin, who was a close friend of Sayeed\u2019s and among those Sayeed consulted closely in the late 1990s through the process of forming the PDP. (Bhasin died in November last year.) Though Bhasin was in frail health, he agreed to meet me for an interview; but after about 15 minutes, he retired to rest, and I continued my conversation with his daughter Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal, and her husband and the present editor of<\/span> <\/span>Kashmir Times<\/span>, Prabodh Jamwal, both of whom were also present through early discussions with Sayeed about forming the party.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n As we talked in the visitors\u2019 room of the house, over tea, Prabodh recounted that, \u201cThe decision to float the PDP was done in this very room in January 1998. There were a few close friends only.\u201d It was perhaps an indication of Sayeed\u2019s leadership style that other co-founders, Sheikh Ghulam Qadir Perdesi in Srinagar, and Abdul Gaffar Sofi in Anantnag, also made similar claims. When I met them in their homes, they, too, said that the PDP had been conceived in those very homes. Sayeed, it seemed, had ensured that everyone felt like they were central to the founding, while retaining firm control of the outfit.<\/i><\/p>\n Sayeed also has the reputation of being a good listener, and of letting people feel that their opinions are important to him. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t talk much,\u201d Anuradha said. \u201cHe will ask for everybody\u2019s opinion but he doesn\u2019t say anything.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n In the early discussions with the other founders, Sayeed said he wanted to form a new party because he felt under-appreciated by the Congress. Taj Mohiuddin recounted that Sayeed, soon after his win from Anantnag in the 1998 Lok Sabha elections, complained that \u201cthe Congress party doesn\u2019t listen to us,\u201d and that Sitaram Kesri, then the president of the party, meddled excessively in the party\u2019s affairs in the state.<\/i><\/p>\n Perdesi told me Sayeed was also disappointed that he wasn\u2019t being made the president of the party\u2019s state unit. \u201cWe were all behind him,\u201d Perdesi said. \u201cWe went to Delhi to meet Sitaram Kesri.\u201d According to Perdesi, the Congress high command gave Sayeed a choice: either his daughter Mehbooba could retain her position as the leader of the party\u2019s legislators, or he himself could be appointed the head of the state unit. But, Perdesi recalled, Sayeed said that he wanted both posts.<\/i><\/p>\n Mohiuddin tried to dissuade Sayeed from forming a new party, saying that he didn\u2019t have the resources. Sayeed had the reputation of a being a clean politician, and was not known to stash away illicit funds. \u201cI said \u2018don\u2019t start a party yet,\u2019\u201d Mohiuddin remembered telling him. \u201c\u2018You don\u2019t have the money.\u201d Mohiuddin told me that he offered to speak to Sonia Gandhi, effectively the highest authority in the Congress. In their conversation, he told, me, she agreed to \u201cresolve any misgivings\u201d that Sayeed had. \u201cI spoke to Mufti at night from Delhi and told him that Ahmad Patel, who was the general secretary, will come and have lunch with you tomorrow,\u201d Mohiuddin told me. Sayeed agreed, according to Mohiuddin. \u201cBut in the morning by 8 am, they announced the formation of a new party,\u201d Mohiuddin added. \u201cI cut a sorry figure.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Sayeed\u2019s choice of party symbol was telling of how he wanted to position the new outfit. A decade or so earlier, he had illicitly supported the Muslim United Front by miming their symbol at a campaign for the Congress. He now chose that symbol for his own party. Perdesi said they \u201cdeliberately chose the symbol because it had already been popularised among the masses by the MUF,\u201d Perdesi said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have to explain our symbol.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n In trying to piece together the origin of the PDP, I heard different kinds of stories about how the party was formed. Some people told me about the discussions they had with Sayeed, and his vision for the party. But I also heard tales that pointed to a far more mysterious beginning.<\/i><\/p>\n One such story was that the PDP had received support from separatists and militants. Soon after the party was founded, Omar Abdullah, Farooq\u2019s son, who was contesting the 1999 elections from the Srinagar constituency, said about Sayeed and Mehbooba, in an interview, \u201cThey have been making heroes of militants, visiting their residences, distributing money among their families and, finally, pleading for unconditional talks with them.\u201d Omar also alleged that Sayeed had cultivated links with the separatist groups Hurriyat and Jamaat, and that he had won the Lok Sabha elections from Anantnag with their support. This was a serious allegation: separatists had boycotted elections for over two decades. News that they had supported a mainstream politician had the potential to seriously undermine their credibility.<\/i><\/p>\n But it was, indeed, true that Mehbooba had been making overtures to separatists for some years before the party\u2019s launch. From 1996 onwards, she began to reach out to the families of people who had been killed by security forces. She also occasionally attended the funeral ceremonies of militants, a radical move for a mainstream politician at the time, with the insurgency fire still raging. She showed great empathy for bereaved women on these occasions, often weeping along with them. As a political strategy of staking some claim to an opposition space, it was noticed. \u201cThe Hurriyat felt a bit insecure and nicknamed her rudaali<\/span>\u201d\u2014a professional weeping woman\u2014Anuradha, who is a friend of Mehbooba\u2019s, told me. \u201cTill then no politician had ever reached out to victims.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Among the most symbolic of Mehbooba\u2019s visits was to the funeral of Abdul Hamid, a higher-secondary-school student who was killed by security forces in the village of Sirgufwara, near Bijbehara. Hamid\u2019s life lay at the intersection of two political streams. His father, Ghulam Nabi Khan, better known as Amir Khan, is a Hizbul Mujahideen militant, who is now second in the organisation\u2019s hierarchy, after the leader Salahuddin. Hamid\u2019s maternal grandfather, Ghulam Mohiuddin Ganai, was an old-time Congress supporter who followed Sayeed to the PDP. Some people I met in Anantnag believed that Sayeed, through Ganai, enlisted Amir Khan\u2019s support for the PDP.<\/i><\/p>\n In October, I travelled with a local journalist to the village of Liver, a few kilometres east of Sirgufwara, to meet Ghulam Rasool Khan, Abdul\u2019s paternal grandfather\u2014Amir Khan\u2019s father\u2014to try and learn more about these alleged connections. Arriving at his house, we were met outside by an anxious group of women. They led us in to meet Khan, a tall man with sparkling eyes, a neatly trimmed beard and a permanent scowl. As soon as I had introduced myself, he turned to my interlocutor and said, in Urdu, \u201cWhich agency does he belong to?\u201d It took him a while to believe that I didn\u2019t work for any intelligence agency, but was only a journalist.<\/i><\/p>\n Khan, who told me that he was a member of the Jamaat, recounted his long association with Sayeed. \u201cI was in school when Mufti saab<\/span>entered politics,\u201d he said. \u201cI used to follow him around in the villages here. He had visited us and had spent two-three nights in our house.\u201d Khan said that when Sayeed was first nominated as an MLA, he approached Khan and asked him to join the Congress. \u201cBut I said \u2018I am a Jamaati now and the two views don\u2019t go together,\u2019\u201d he told me. I asked him if he had supported Sayeed in elections. \u201cYes, we supported him the last time and this time too,\u201d he said. \u201cWe told people to support the PDP because it is better than the National Conference.\u201d Khan was quick to add: \u201cBut Mufti never asked me to support him.\u201d When I asked if the Hizbul Mujahideen had also supported Sayeed, he said, \u201cNo, only Jamaat.\u201d The admission of support for a mainstream political party was significant coming from a leader of the Jamaat, which has boycotted elections since 1987.<\/i><\/p>\n Another theory about the genesis of the PDP is the stuff of political thrillers: that the BJP government funded and supported the PDP to prop up opposition to the NC. Farooq has made this claim in the past.<\/i><\/p>\n The purported reason for this move was that Farooq was becoming an inconvenience to the centre. Towards the end of the 1990s, he began speaking of greater autonomy for the state. After coming into power, the NC government submitted a state autonomy council, or SAC, report in the assembly recommending the restoration of a 1952 agreement with the central government, by which the centre would have no control over the state, except in the areas of defence, external affairs and communication. No government since the Sheikh\u2019s in 1953 had suggested such a drastic measure. In his memoir, Advani wrote that the BJP advised Farooq \u201cnot to press for the implementation of the SAC report. Indeed, Atalji told Dr Abdullah to decide whether to continue in the NDA at the centre following the Union Cabinet\u2019s rejection of the state assembly\u2019s autonomy resolution. To his credit, Dr Abdullah allowed the issue to lapse.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Many observers believe that the SAC report made the central government sufficiently anxious that it decided to set up an opposition party to counter any further such moves. In 2008, the senior journalist Parvaiz Bukhari published a story hinting at this in Mail Today<\/span>. \u201cThe PDP\u2019s foundations were laid when New Delhi began to regain control in Kashmir after militancy struck a blow to the political power structure which existed in the shape of the NC,\u201d Bukhari wrote. \u201cIn the run-up to the 1996 elections, the first seven years, electoral politics was principally dependent on the NC. In such a scenario, New Delhi found the NC more demanding and reminiscent of 1952 when Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah began to question the state\u2019s accession to the Indian Union.\u201d According to Bukhari, his story hasn\u2019t been refuted by the PDP. Vijay Dhar, the son of the DNC\u2019s DP Dhar, made a similar connection in tracing the origin of the PDP, saying, \u201cThe PDP is an extension of the Democratic National Conference, which was a result of the need for another pro-India party at the time.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Hilal Mir, the editor of the daily Kashmir Reader<\/span>assured me that Bukhari\u2019s story was true. \u201cLook at the founding members of the PDP and you will see that all of them are close to the New Delhi establishment,\u201d he said. Among the prominent founders is Ghulam Hassan Mir\u2014also one of the defectors who pulled down Farooq Abdullah in 1984. According to Hilal Mir, \u201cGhulam Hassan Mir is the most important of them, and he is an agency man.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n At the end of August, I met Hassan Mir at his home on the outskirts of Srinagar. I wanted to ask him about the founding of the PDP, but we ended up having a long and surreal conversation about the many grotesque distortions of democracy in the state. He told me freely that the central government had orchestrated his election to the assembly several times. Hassan Mir also spoke of a controversy he had been embroiled in in 2014, when the Indian Express<\/span> reported that the army general VK Singh, now a BJP union minister of state for external affairs, had paid him Rs 1.19 crore to topple the Omar Abdullah government. After that episode, Hassan Mir said, Sayeed told Asif Ibrahim, then the director of the IB, that \u201cGhulam Hassan Mir has become a tainted man, overexposed.\u201d When the 2014 elections rolled out, he said, \u201cThey saw to it that I lost this time. It was in air that I will not win. An atmosphere is created, you know, to show that people were talking about it even before elections.\u201d He then sought to assure me he understood why his loss was necessary. \u201cThey are not letting me down,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was a policy to show the fairness of elections. Whatever happens in the rest of the country is different from what happens here. Whatever the courts say, your channels say, the politics here is different. And that is needed.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n We then came to the matter of the PDP\u2019s origins. I asked Hassan Mir if the party was the creation of the centre. \u201cMaybe the intelligence agencies supported Mufti but it was not known to anybody down below,\u201d he said, not confirming that rumour, yet betraying no surprise whatsoever at the speculated scenario. \u201cNo intelligence agent ever told me to do anything, though I have always been close with the centre. Maybe Mufti got some facilitation from them, but not to my knowledge.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n At the end of September, I met Liaqat Ali Khan, a 46-year-old former commander of the Ikhwan, the counter-insurgency group, at his house in a high-security colony for police officers in the town of Khanabal, near Anantnag. In 1998, the year before the PDP was formed, Khan and other fellow Ikhwanis had joined the BJP. (He has since quit the party.) He told me about a meeting he had with LK Advani around that time. Khan and the others had been reining in militants since 1994, and now they wanted to retire as politicians. For this, they sought Advani\u2019s support. Sayeed\u2019s name cropped up in his conversation with Advani.<\/i><\/p>\n \u201cWhen we went to meet Advani in Delhi, he asked us \u2018What is Mufti all about?\u2019\u201d Khan told me, remembering that he responded, \u201cMufti is with the militants.\u201d Khan assumed that knowledge of Sayeed\u2019s links with militant groups would dissuade the BJP from supporting him. But he now believes that he read the conversation wrong, and that the BJP was interested in Sayeed precisely because of those connections. Khan told me he didn\u2019t realise \u201cthat we had seconded what Mufti had already sold them. We should have been smarter. Mufti had told the BJP and the RSS that he will get the Hizbul, Hurriyat and other separatists to the table.\u201d Khan said he didn\u2019t receive support from the BJP, while the party threw its weight behind Sayeed.<\/i><\/p>\n \u201cAjit Doval was the joint director of IB here at that time,\u201d Khan said. \u201cWe were young when these things happened. We didn\u2019t understand the game plan. All the government of India agencies, and all the assets they had, be it RAW, the IB and others, got a directive to support the new party.\u201d This support continued into the 2002 elections, he said. By his account, the army was roped in to gather information that could help the party\u2019s candidates. \u201cThe army did an exercise and they asked all the company commanders for feedback from the village level,\u201d Khan said. \u201cThey had recommended the issues that should be raised in the elections for getting support.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n As part of his account to me, Khan even made the extraordinary statement, in passing, that \u201cFarooq Abdullah was taken into confidence for creating the PDP.\u201d It remains to be seen how this claim might fit into the already bewildering labyrinth of connections that appear to exist between the state, centre, political parties, and separatists and militants.<\/i><\/p>\n One September evening in Srinagar, I met with a mid-ranking police officer who was posted in Anantnag district between 2000 and 2005. The officer told me that the army extended considerable support to Mehbooba when she campaigned, particularly in areas prone to violence. \u201cMehbooba Mufti used to extensively travel in south Kashmir those days,\u201d he said. \u201cShe was the only person who used to visit an area like Hapatnar, under Aishmuqam jurisdiction, where even the army patrols wouldn\u2019t go, sometimes twice a day. There were always IEDs planted there but nothing ever happened to her. The army used to give her outer-ring support by area domination.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n The officer was present for many of Mehbooba\u2019s campaign speeches during this time. His account of them suggests that she would tailor her political message depending on her audience. \u201cHer speeches were different in every village,\u201d he said. At some places, he said, \u201cShe used to say the \u2018Abdullahs are an elite family from Srinagar but they derive power from villagers, so vote for us, my father is a villager.\u2019\u201d But \u201cin a village where the azaadi<\/span>sentiment was high,\u201d Mehbooba would shift to a far more radical message, sometimes alluding to the similarity between the PDP\u2019s electoral symbol and that of 1987\u2019s Muslim United Front. \u201cShe would even say, \u2018This symbol was given to me by my brother Salahuddin. He gave the mantle to fight the mainstream politics,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/i><\/p>\n Another strategy the officer described involved propping up PDP members as saviours. \u201cThey would first get people arrested by the army,\u201d he said. \u201cThe local PDP man would get them released. The released would go to the village and spread the word. It was the modus operandi before and after the elections.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n During the elections itself, the officer said, \u201cI noticed that the army used force selectively\u201d to favour the PDP. In many parts of the state, he explained, due to a fear of violent reprisal, voters would not step out until told to do so by the army. \u201cThe villages with old-time NC supporters used to wait for the army to come and tell them to vote so that they could use it as an excuse to vote. But the army never went to them.\u201d He added: \u201cThe militants would also attend her meetings, and that also became a signal for people.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n In the 2002 elections, the NC won only 28 seats, its lowest count ever. The three-year-old PDP managed to win 16 seats in its very first election. After being the predominant political power in the state for decades, the reign of the unchallenged NC had come to an end.<\/i><\/p>\n The PDP and Congress struck up an alliance to form the government, along with the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party, and the Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party. Sayeed\u2019s ability to marshal influence from across the political spectrum became clear after the elections, when the question arose of who would be the next chief minister. With Sayeed\u2019s rival Ghulam Nabi Azad also eager to stake a claim, the PDP and the Congress fought for more than a fortnight over the matter. But, according to Taj Mohiuddin, Sayeed used his connections with senior Congress leaders to pip Azad to the post. \u201cThe high command first decided that we will have a Congress chief minister,\u201d Mohiuddin said. \u201cAzad was going to the governor to stake a claim. But Mufti said, \u2018Wait now, what\u2019s the hurry?\u2019 Then the orders came from above that Mufti will be the CM.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Mohiuddin himself believed the Congress might be able to gain the upper hand with the help of other legislators. \u201cI opposed Mufti\u2019s claim for the post of CM because the independents wanted to support Congress,\u201d Mohuiddin added. \u201cAnd I was told to shut up, as simple as that.\u201d <\/i><\/p>\n SAYEED\u2019S FIRST TERM AS CHIIEF MINISTER<\/span>was widely considered a relatively stable time in the state. Most people I spoke to said there was a palpable sense of improvement in public safety. A resident of Kulgam in south Kashmir, who works in Srinagar, told me that the frequency of his visits home increased from once every two months to once every fortnight, because he \u201cdidn\u2019t have to plan too much or worry about avoiding the areas where the army crackdown was happening.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n But Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal told me that this sense of security set in because Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pervez Musharraf had initiated a peace process between India and Pakistan, leading to temporary relief in the contested state. \u201cIt was possible because of the policy of Pervez Musharraf,\u201d a senior journalist in Srinagar told me. \u201cHe held back the militants. The change was felt by the common people.\u201d The process continued in 2004, after a Congress-led coalition came to power. The year after, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh inaugurated a bus service from Srinagar to Muzaffarabad, in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. A poster of Sayeed standing in front of the bus still adorns a wall of the PDP office in Srinagar.<\/i><\/p>\n One of the reasons Sayeed managed to reap the credit for this success, I was told, was his cultivation of the media. \u201cLike the Congress, the NC had arrogance because of the Sheikh\u2019s legacy,\u201d Sheikh Showkat Hussain, a political analyst, told me. \u201cBut the PDP has to look for goodwill and cultivate media. The PDP has experienced media managers.\u201d Ghulam Hassan Mir described Sayeed as \u201ca creation of the media.\u201d According to a senior PDP leader, his fellow members of the Peer community in the media extended help to him.<\/i><\/p>\n As per the terms of his alliance with the Congress, Sayeed was to hand over the chief minister\u2019s chair to Ghulam Nabi Azad after three years. Though this had been agreed on in 2002, when 2005 came around, Sayeed wasn\u2019t pleased about having to cede power. \u201cThe alliance had been turbulent from our side,\u201d a senior PDP minister in the government told me. \u201cAzad taking over as CM was taken as an insult.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n In an interview in Open<\/span>, Sayeed claimed that he was justified in being disappointed. He said that the Congress had wanted the chief minister\u2019s post \u201cto be rotated when my party was in alliance with it. I was called to Delhi for consultations.\u201d At the meeting, he said, Pranab Mukherjee, then the defence minister, \u201ctold me that the government and the party are against changing horses midstream. When I met Sonia Gandhi around noon, she repeated the same thing. \u2026 But later in the evening, Mehbooba got a call from 10 Janpath and Sonia Gandhi had changed her line. She wanted me to vacate the chief minister\u2019s post.\u201d Nevertheless, Sayeed remained in the government as an MLA.<\/i><\/p>\n Three years later, in June 2008, violence erupted in the state over the government-facilitated transfer of 100 acres of forest land to the board that manages the affairs of the Amarnath temple, a high-altitude shrine near the town of Pahalgam. Protests broke out across the state, and more than 60 people were killed in the violence. It was then the most unstable period in the state since the outbreak of militancy in 1987.<\/i><\/p>\n Sayeed withdrew support from the Congress, citing the government\u2019s handling of the Amarnath issue as the reason. In the elections that year, the PDP increased its seat tally in the assembly from 16 to 21. The Congress, which won 17 seats, allied with the NC, which won 28 seats. A bureaucrat who is close to Sayeed told me that the PDP\u2019s decision to break the alliance with the Congress created space for the NC to ally with the Congress. \u201cHis biggest negative point is that he is egoistic and doesn\u2019t forgive easily,\u201d the bureaucrat said. \u201cHe tried rapprochement with Sonia Gandhi later but I don\u2019t think it worked.\u201d It would be a decade before Sayeed occupied the chair again.<\/i><\/p>\n IN THE 45 DAYS I SPENT IN KASHMIR<\/span>, I tried to reach out to Sayeed and Mehbooba through press officers and party colleagues, but wasn\u2019t given an appointment. In early October, I heard that he was due to inaugurate a club in Pahalgam, in south Kashmir, and that journalists were invited for the event. The state had just been through turmoil over the beef ban, and the atmosphere was still tense. Even if I didn\u2019t get to meet him personally, I hoped to obtain some insight into how he saw the state today, and his role in it.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Sayeed arrived dressed in a midnight-blue suit with a yellow tie. He had been ill recently, but that afternoon, he smiled easily, and had a spring in his step. Taking his place on the dais, he began by praising the prime minister. \u201cSome people say, \u2018What did Modi give Mufti?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cThe transformation, the change, the developmental pace, it is mind-boggling and unprecedented.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Then, he seemed to hint at some complaints. \u201cBecause of many reasons, I am not going to blame anybody, it has become a remote control,\u201d he said. \u201cWhatever Delhi wants is what will happen,\u201d he continued. \u201cWhatever they wish, they will do it.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Just as I thought he might say something substantial about his government, and the thorny coalition, Sayeed retreated into the comfort of banality and hyperbole. I had been warned about this by Kashmiri journalists, who said they often had a hard time following his train of thought when he spoke. Some of them suggested that his tendency to lapse into generalities was an intentional strategy, to avoid being pinned down on any subject. In the days before, even as protests had raged on, Sayeed\u2019s public statements had included: \u201cI want to make Kashmir the fruit valley of the world,\u201d on one day, and on another, \u201cI want to make Jammu and Kashmir a golfing paradise.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n \u201cIndia is a country of 1.2 billion,\u201d he said. \u201cJammu and Kashmir is a part of that federation. It is a bouquet. This is India\u2019s only state with a Muslim majority. This has become a symbol of Indian federalism and secularism, a symbol of diversity. If there a modern state in our country, it is Jammu and Kashmir.\u201d He made no mention of the fact that the state was in crisis over the question of a ban on beef.<\/i><\/p>\n Sayeed is today theoretically in a more stable position than in his first term as chief minister, since his agreement with the BJP allows him a full six-year term. And yet, he seems uncomfortable and depleted in his role. When I spoke to Sayeed\u2019s friends and colleagues to understand his present position, the impression I got was of a master politician, who, at the evening of his career, is uncertain about his legacy, and unsure of how to deal with new energies coursing through the state.<\/i><\/p>\n For one, with the change in government, his relationship with the centre is not as strong as it once was. \u201cThere should be visible development and flow of funds from Delhi, and this time it is not happening,\u201d a bureaucrat who is close to Sayeed told me. \u201cWith Congress, he had a lot of contacts. Once, I was going with Mufti saab<\/span> to the US and Pranab Mukherjee, who saw him sitting in the VIP lounge, came and touched his feet.\u201d In the present government, however, \u201cthere is that disconnect. He doesn\u2019t know Modi or Amit Shah. He has a good relationship with Rajnath Singh but it is only professional. Personal touch is what is badly missing this time.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Sayeed\u2019s age also raises the question of succession in PDP. \u201cMufti is not able to work more than two-three hours a day,\u201d the bureaucrat told me. \u201cIt is time Mehbooba takes over from him.\u201d But this transition may not be easy to execute, especially within the current alliance. A senior PDP leader told me that \u201cModi\u2019s oft-repeated political dharma of \u2018no khandaani<\/span> raj<\/span>\u2019\u201d\u2014family rule\u2014could be a hurdle for Mehbooba. (The PDP is already sometimes jokingly referred to as the Papa Daughter Party.) \u201cIn the elections he had appealed for an end to \u2018baap beti ka sarkar<\/span>\u2019\u201d\u2014father-daughter government\u2014\u201cbut ended up aligning with them anyway and has already compromised once,\u201d the leader said. Another senior PDP leader told me that on the issue of succession, \u201cDelhi had asked Mufti to first see if there is consensus in the party.\u201d According to the leader, \u201cthat in itself is a message to Mufti that all is not well within the party.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n More troublingly for the people of Jammu and Kashmir, there are signs of a renewed interest in militancy among the youth. Some of these new young militants were motivated to take up arms after 2010, when the state unleashed violence on people protesting the death of a teenage boy, Tufail Mattoo. More than 120 people were killed in the violence. (A senior PDP leader, who was in the party\u2019s political affairs committee in 2014, alleged to me that two PDP ministers, Altaf Bukhari and Imran Raza Ansari, \u201ctold me that they had funded 2010 protests in their areas.\u201d Bukhari is currently the roads and buildings minister, while Ansari is the minister of information technology, technical education, and sports and youth services.)<\/i><\/p>\n \u201cIn 1989, everybody was joining militancy,\u201d the journalist Yusuf Jameel told me. \u201cSome would even join out of curiosity.\u201d Now, however, he says, \u201cpeople are joining after giving it a full thought. The youth involved in 2008 and 2010 civil unrest have joined militancy. The quality of militancy has changed.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Even AS Dulat\u2014who, as a former intelligence officer, is unlikely to be caught off-guard with developments in the state\u2014expressed surprise at the nature of this new militancy. \u201cA lot of those boys are from fairly good families\u2014upper middle class, qualified engineers,\u201d he said in July last year. \u201cSo why are they getting into this? That\u2019s the scary part.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n The militant who has been attracting the most attention is Burhan Muzaffar Wani, a handsome, social-media-savvy 21-year-old commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen in south Kashmir. In August, I travelled to the town of Tral, less than an hour south of Srinagar, to meet Burhan\u2019s father, Muzaffar Ahmad Wani. A pleasant man with a flowing salt-and-pepper beard, Wani told me that he had no regrets about his son\u2019s course of life. \u201cI am proud,\u201d he said. \u201cHe is now Allah\u2019s man. People are with him. They support militancy. People in Srinagar wave his photos.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Burhan\u2019s grandfather Ghulam Ahmad Wani, a retired government employee who supported the Congress in the 1970s, came over to sit with us. He told me he was deeply dissatisfied with the present government. \u201cMufti wouldn\u2019t do things like the beef ban, but nothing is in his hands now,\u201d he said. His verdict on why Sayeed was failing was unambiguous: \u201cHe joined hands with the BJP for power.\u201d He added: \u201cMehbooba brought him back from the grave and today he is digging his own grave.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n The general consensus among those I spoke to in Jammu and Kashmir was that Sayeed\u2019s decision to align with the BJP had hurt his reputation. He has spent more than 50 years in politics executing every kind of power play imaginable, with every kind of opponent and partner, but most people I spoke to felt this latest move was a clear misstep. The bureaucrat who is close to Sayeed told me he believed \u201cMufti shouldn\u2019t have become the CM this time.\u201d People remembered his last stint well, he said, and it would have been better for him to \u201ccarry the legacy of 2002.\u201d After that, he said, \u201che would\u2019ve gone down in history with a lot of goodwill. This phase of his career is doing more damage to him than anything ever done in the past.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n <\/span>Errors have been corrected online. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Courtesy: The Carvan<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How Mufti Mohammad Syed Became Delhi’s Man in Kashmir ON 3 OCTOBER 2015, the Jammu and Kashmir legislative assembly met for the first sitting of its autumn session. The day was to be spent remembering a number of prominent individuals who had died recently, most of them state politicians, such as the former ministers Mir Ghulam […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10836,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-union-territory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}