Srinagar’s Gupkar Road is Kashmir’s Lutyens’ Delhi. A two kilometres long path to power that slopes and curves like a peaceful dream amidst a turbulent landscape, along which doze 150 odd homes and offices small and big. It starts from The Lalit Hotel, faces Dal Lake and ends at the residences of the Abdullah family. It’s the toniest address in J&K, with the Kashmir elite, senior Army and state government officials, officers of the Central Intelligence Bureau, Research and Analysis Wing and a few senior political leaders as the residents.
The Abdullah clan occupies three sprawling bungalows. The state has provided one villa each to former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti and CPM leader Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami. Not surprisingly, Khalid Jahangir, a former journalist who joined the BJP and lost to Farooq Abdullah by polling merely around 4,000 votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, has found a cosy nook for himself on the same road after joining the saffron brigade. Gupkar Road has always been the object of local envy. Not now.
The BJP has given its habitants the laconic label, Gupkar Gang. Reason? On August 4, 2019, Farooq organised the first all-regional party meeting at home after release from detention to announce the formation of People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD). The Declaration is a joint resolution meant to defend Article 370 at any cost. It was signed by the leaders of the NC, the Congress, the PDP, the CPI(M), the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Conference and the Awami National Conference.
A day later, the NDA government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi struck back, revoking Articles 370 and 35A and arrested Farooq, Omar and Mufti along with 500 other local satraps. After 15 months, a full blown political war has broken out between the local parties and the BJP. It is not about protecting the people of J&K from terrorists, providing jobs to its youth, ensuring plentiful business opportunities for its entrepreneurs and facilitating tourism and the safe return of Kashmiri Pundits.
It is only about Article 370 that stood between Kashmir’s full integration with the motherland and denied equal opportunities to Kashmiris to share the Indian growth story for seven decades. The Valley remains a soft target for terrorists till today. Now, new alliances are emerging to grab power by all means. Kashmir has always been the incubator of new alliance models. Since conviction is a matter of convenience for them, the K-crisis can be summed up as a clash between hypocrisy and opportunism.
If the PAGD gets a code name, it could be Cabal 370—the new torchbearer of hypocrisy. And like all opportunists for whom inconsistency is a venal virtue, outfits from the NC to the PDP have been adopting contradictory postures. As a plausible and pliable partner, the BJP anointed Mehbooba the Chief Minister without giving up its core commitment to the abrogation of Article 370. Now as vice-chairman of Cabal-370, she refuses to hoist the national flag. Flag politics was at its peak last week.
As Mehbooba stood against the verdant pine backdrop addressing the media far away from the gunfire and bombings, the two flags that fluttered in the crisp early winter breeze belonged to the erstwhile princely Kashmir state and her party. She moaned, “We had acceded to a liberal, secular and democratic India; we are not comfortable with today’s India.” Her PAGD colleague Farooq is the DJ of separatist rhetoric, spinning the same vilification vinyl again and again.
His rap is that Cabal-370 isn’t India’s foe. “I want to tell you that this false propaganda by the BJP that the PAGD is anti-national…There is no doubt that it is anti-BJP but it is not anti-national.” The NC has been a willing part of the NDA in the past. But when it came to odious opportunism, both the NC and the PDP have got into bed with their rivals and each other. They have now figured that divided they lose not only power but relevance too. Presently, Cabal-370 stands united. Soon, they will rise in mutual revolt on sharing the crumbs.
The BJP’s only virtue is its ideological consistency on Article 370. It has made unholy alliances with most regional parties in the Valley in the past. In its eagerness to capture the Srinagar throne, it adopted Mehbooba as both the leader and the ladder. It promoted Sajad Lone, chairman of the People’s Conference, as its invisible ally after breaking away from Mehbooba. He is now an active member of the PAGD. Amit Shah thundered on Twitter, “The Gupkar Gang is going global! They want foreign forces to intervene in Jammu and Kashmir.
The Gupkar Gang also insults India’s Tricolour. Do Sonia Ji and Rahul Ji support such moves of the Gupkar Gang? They should make their stand crystal clear to the people of India.” A fuming Omar tweeted back, “I can understand the frustration behind this attack by the Hon’ble Home Minister. He had been briefed that the People’s Alliance was preparing to boycott elections. This would have allowed the BJP & newly formed King’s party a free run in J&K. We didn’t oblige them.” The Congress party sharply denied being part of the PAGD. It is obvious that such denials and endorsements are meant to galvanise galleries rather than exhibiting ideological assertion.
For example, BJP detractors charged the party with opportunism. Kapil Sibal, a senior Congress leader, took to Twitter saying, “Amit Shah alleges: Congress wants to take ‘J&K back to the era of terror and turmoil’ when in talk with other parties in the upcoming District Development Council elections. Amitji was BJP -PDP alliance to ‘bring back terror in J&K ..” ? Which gang were you then part of?” Moreover, the BJP is sharing power with the NC controlled Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, Kargil. This wordy warfare concerns the recently announced elections to the 280 constituencies for the District Development Council.
According to unofficial sources, the BJP was expecting local parties to stay away as they did in the panchayat elections. But Farooq Abdullah convinced his partners to convert the poll into a referendum on Article 370 and fight on the same platform with the Congress. The BJP has invoked the well-tested mantra of Nationalism vs. the Rest. By calling the PAGD the Gupkar gang and supporters of terror and poverty, it is once again polarising J&K voters.
The saffron strategy is to capture the local bodies to infiltrate the system and create its own architecture of governance and politics. While the BJP has successfully demolished the perverse ecosystem promoting corruption and ignoring terrorism, it is yet to find empathy with the youth who are choosing guns in the absence of employment. Kashmir is one of India’s wealthiest states. But its social infrastructure sectors like education and health are the worst. Instead of promoting popular participation in making Kashmir Atmanirbhar, the Valley’s political leaders are pursuing Pharisaism and duplicitous statecraft to perpetuate their dynasties and adulterated ideologies. In Kashmir, hypocrisy proposes, opportunism deposes.
prabhu chawla
prabhuchawla@newindianexpress.com Follow him on Twitter @PrabhuChawla