It was a telling comment, coming post facto, when RSS power impresario Ram Madhav himself used the word “untenable” to describe the BJP-PDP alliance in Jammu and Kashmir. Immediately, two diametrically opposite reactions emerged. An “admission of failure”, cried opponents. A tactical political statement to secure 2019, said others. Madhav had been hailed three-and-a-half years ago as the architect of the most audacious political alliance in recent history. Now, the partner in this unlikely dyarchy, the PDP’s Mehbooba Mufti, is left trying to save whatever credibility she can after being dumped. The eighth spell of Governor’s Rule in J&K, a formality after N N Vohra’s report to the president, may perhaps not be a bad time for everyone to lick their wounds, take a breather and reflect on what went wrong—before trying to recoup.
Strangely, once the suspense was over, a quiet sense of relief that the incompatible marriage of convenience was over set in everywhere. From political veterans in New Delhi to the middle class in Srinagar and Jammu to the hinterland, the break-up was accepted as ‘inevitable’, as if an unnatural yoke had been taken off. Indeed, ground-level feedback is that, in PDP’s stronghold Bijbehara, South Kashmir, the celebrations were not quiet. That means serious erosion.
This is the second time a government of which the PDP was a part has not completed its tenure. Last time they were sharing power with the Congress, the PDP had pulled the plug in the wake of the 2008 Amarnath land row. This time, the BJP cut it losses. (The PDP claims state BJP ministers were not aware what was in store when they were called for a meeting with party chief Amit Shah in New Delhi.) But last time, the tenure of the Assembly was almost over, this one has two-and-a-half-years left.
More than these particulars, the inner politics is interesting. Mehbooba had once confided that she was taken in by Congress’s logic that the Amarnath land transfer—approved by the then J&K Cabinet (just like the taking back of the cases against 11,000 stone-pelters now)— would politically help the PDP in the Valley and the Congress in Jammu. The issue, however, went out of hand and panned out very differently, changing the whole trajectory of politics in Kashmir.
The BJP solidified its hold on Jammu; MoS Jitendra Singh, a doctor by profession, came into prominence as a product of the agitation. BJP veteran L K Advani, very much in control of party affairs then, had enough leverage to agree to call off the agitation after UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi requested his cooperation, citing the forthcoming Assembly elections
and the need to ensure a decent turnout.
What persuaded the BJP this time? After all, Prime Minister Modi never lost an opportunity to remind people that the BJP had a government across the length and breath of India, starting from Kashmir. It’s a state crucial to its political imagination, where the party’s founding ideologue Syama Prasad Mookerjee met his end.
It was the mandate that forced the BJP-PDP to come together. The former had won a majority of seats in the Valley, the BJP swept Jammu. The Congress, which picked up seats in all three regions, was restricted to a meagre 12, with not a single seat in Jammu’s three Hindu-majority districts. And the National Conference under Omar Abdullah lost miserably, coming third. A coalition formula was thrashed out hastily, almost as if to keep away President’s Rule. Without it, large parts of the state, particularly Jammu (always sore about policy neglect and inadequate resource-sharing) would have gone unrepresented.
Mufti Mohammad Sayeed saw linking up with the party ruling at the Centre as unavoidable for any state government to run smoothly. Shujaat Bukhari, known to be close to Muftisaab, did his bit by working the backchannels. Ironical thinking back, but the alliance had raised hopes of a possible solution. Though it seemed a bit jinxed from the beginning, with two starkly opposite worldviews yoked together, it was around Burhan Wani’s death—with the narrative on the street creating him in the image of a martyred revolutionary—that the cycle of protests went out of hand.
In other governance terms, Mehbooba had her way, particularly on funding and raising of additional border security battalions, even if the relief came in increments. Around Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s recent visit, it seemed New Delhi was heeding to Mehbooba. The BJP even replaced its ministers.
What then brought about the final parting? The disagreement over ceasefire? The targeted killings? Mehbooba’s inability to control things (she held the Home portfolio)? Wasn’t the unified command able to trust her? The Army chief, rather surprisingly, has remarked “now, we will have a free hand”.
That the alliance was losing its cost-effectiveness was put across strongly to the BJP after a recent RSS confabulation in Surajkund. The killings at the borders and even within were not going down well with the BJP’s core voters in the rest of India. Not to mention Jammu. The alliance, instead of bringing the regions closer, had in fact put them at loggerheads as never before. So much so that the takeover by Governor Vohra—an old J&K hand—is being viewed with much relief.
Statistics however show violence and insurgency increase during Governor’s Rule, sans the buffer of a state government. Even the BJP will be bereft now of that cushion, as it frees itself for a ‘muscular’ policy, with Vohra playing a tempering hand. The buzz is the BJP may use the time till 2019 to move on some of its core promises, like resettlement of Pandits and Article 370. Or is there some other surprise?
Santwana Bhattacharya
Political Editor, The New Indian Express
Email: santwana@newindianexpress.com