{"id":1305,"date":"2012-12-24T16:52:34","date_gmt":"2012-12-24T11:22:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/?p=1305"},"modified":"2012-12-24T16:57:12","modified_gmt":"2012-12-24T11:27:12","slug":"kashmir-moot-point-for-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/editors-take\/kashmir-moot-point-for-leaders\/","title":{"rendered":"Kashmir: Moot Point For Leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like>

Just A Moot Point<\/h1>\n

Had leadership analyzed the failures, it would have been a different story<\/h3>\n

<\/h3>\n

Z.G. MUHAMMAD<\/h4>\n
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\u00a0<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThose who write contemporary history know that the reader is not a passive vessel to receive the text placed before him or her. The reader is also a citizen, a critical citizen, with individual political and idealogical preferences.\u201d These lines from the prologue of Ramachandra Guha\u2019s recently published book \u2018India after Gandhi\u2019, as student of contemporary history set me thinking about the challenges the present-day writers of Kashmir are confronted with while writing about current political happenings or the political events of the recent past.
\nThere can be no denying, \u2018the closer one gets to the present, the more judgmental one tends to become\u201d but this should not cause ire in political leaders or key players of a political struggle but rather drive them into introspection.\u00a0 Our eighty three year old struggle is story of indiscreet decisions, \u2018wrong decisions at right moments\u2019 and largely failures. It is a story of failures \u2013 one leading to another to another.\u00a0 In this column, it may not be possible to tell the whole story; how faux pas after faux pas and\u00a0\u00a0 failure of leadership to learn from their mistakes drove us from a gorge into an abyss.
\nThe struggle for freedom born with a bang in 1865, at Srinagar found first organized manifestation in 1922, in Jammu in the revival of the Young Men\u2019s Muslim Association with Chaudhary Ghulam Abbas in the lead.\u00a0 However, what could be seen as the beginning of the organized struggle for freedom started after the happenings on 13 July 1931\u00a0\u00a0 in Srinagar followed by birth of\u00a0\u00a0 the Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference at a three-day convention in the middle of October in 1932. This was first ever-statewide organization that brought Muslims- the overwhelming majority of the state on one platform for waging a heroic battle against discriminatory and unjust feudal rule.\u00a0 Nevertheless, barely few months later it cracked with birth of splinter group Azad Muslim Conference. Despite the Azad Muslim Conference surviving only for a brief period, this crack provided sufficient opportunity to the authorities and the forces inimical to the interests of the Muslim majority to operate and cause division amongst the people.\u00a0 The authorities succeeded in fragmenting the Muslim society more particularly in the city of Srinagar- nerve centre of the struggle.
\nHad the leadership at that time heeded to saner advice from people like Dr. Iqbal, many other well-wishers or cool mindedly introspected perhaps the chain of events like birth of the National Conference in 1938, and providing ample space to the Communist ideologues to change the political narrative of the state could have been prevented. Had the Muslim Conference, as it was born in 1932, not suffered ideological mutation the division of state would not have perhaps occurred all. History of the sub-continent would have been different.
\nHistorically our leaders have been \u2018bad students of politics\u2019. Is it tragedy or travesty, they have been learning lessons hard way only to unlearn them. Immediately, after 1947, Sheikh Abdullah learned many a lesson. The honeymoon between Sheikh and Nehru in 1950 started heading for a precipice, immediately after the \u2018maps of government of India claimed entire state of Jammu and Kashmir as part of its territory.\u201d\u00a0 Corridors of power in New Delhi were rife with question: \u201cAbdullah was anti-Pakistan but was he for India?\u201d Nehru was \u201cfrustrated\u201d at Abdullah\u2019s vacillation – his frustration is manifest in his letters to his sister Vijaylakashmi Pandit.\u00a0\u00a0 Abdullah was equally frustrated at Nehru backtracking from all his commitments to him in private and public. Sheikh, despite enjoying absolute power in silencing and tormenting voices of dissent and crushing his detractors started feeling\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Delhi\u2019s pinpricks\u00a0\u00a0 right in 1949.\u00a0\u00a0 These pin pricks graduated to his deposition and imprisonment in 1953.\u00a0 Floating on the crests of popularity from 1953, he led an organized movement for right to self-determination. Nevertheless, for his being a bad learner in politics in 1975,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 none but Jawaharlal Nehru\u2019s daughter stumped him- to die a \u201cremorseful person\u201d.
\nFor their failure to learn from history in the post-1975, scenario, every other leader supporting \u2018accession with Pakistan\u2019 or \u2018demanding right to self-determination without giving much thought\u00a0 jumped over the \u2018bandwagon of blunders\u2019 by joining or supporting the Janata Party that was pitted against Sheikh Abdullah in the elections. Intriguingly, same Prem Nath Bazaz who in 1938 had been instrumental in changing the Muslim Conference into the National Conference that succeeded in wooing Kashmir leaders to the Janata Party- a right wing conglomerate. Even footnotes of Kashmir history are now denying space these leaders.
\nIf Sheikh Abdullah died a \u2018remorseful person\u201d or not but for his not learning from his political mistakes he opened floodgates of miseries and suffering on\u00a0\u00a0 people he led for fifty years after his death. Had not Indira-Sheikh agreement for Abdullah\u2019s return to power taken place the young men perhaps would not have taken to arms?\u00a0 Ostensibly, there would not have been bloodbaths and destruction of such a magnitude.
\nIt is not only Sheikh Abdullah, who refused to learn from his goofs, if one makes an honest appraisal of the role performed by the post-1990\u00a0 bunch of leaders their bags are also full of boo-boos. History did through up many an opportunity to these leaders to show their political foresight and ingenuity for giving a direction to the \u2018people\u2019s movement\u2019 that would bring it near its goal. Nevertheless, every time it was lost.
\nCommentators counts the years 2008 across the globe as the years of transition in the contemporary history of Kashmir. The transition was maturating of the political movement to a take off stage that needed a visionary leadership for translating it into success. It, by all stretch of imagination was people\u2019s movement that held promise of bringing dividends to their expectations.\u00a0 For leadership goofing, many believe it ended without meeting people\u2019s aspiration. Notwithstanding \u201cblundering\u201d in 2008, historical forces that are behind political changes caused 2009 and 2010. The year 2010 is counted as good a benchmark in Kashmir history as 1931, 1947, 1953 or 1990. The year with all its subtly brought Kashmir under focus at the international level, after a gap of decades it caused a rethinking in New Delhi, the visit of Parliamentary delegation was an open manifestation of changed thinking\u2026
\nIt is a moot point, had leadership analyzed the failings in 2008 perhaps 2010 would have proved catalytic in meeting peoples political aspirations.<\/p>\n

Published in Greater Kashmir on 24 Dec 2012<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just A Moot Point
\nHad leadership analyzed the failures, it would have been a different story<\/p>\n

Z.G. MUHAMMAD<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

 
\n\u201cThose who write contemporary history know that the reader is not a passive vessel to receive the text placed before him or her. The reader is also a citizen, a critical citizen, with individual political and idealogical preferences.\u201d These lines from the prologue of Ramachandra Guha\u2019s recently published book \u2018India after Gandhi\u2019, as student of contemporary history set me thinking about the challenges the present-day writers of Kashmir are confronted with while writing about current political happenings or the political events of the recent past.
\nThere can be no denying, \u2018the closer one gets to the present, the more judgmental one tends to become\u201d but this should not cause ire in political leaders or key players of a political struggle but rather drive them into introspection.\u00a0 Our eighty three year old struggle is story of indiscreet …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editors-take"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1305"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1305"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1307,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1305\/revisions\/1307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}