Our Delicious Ironies

Both NC and PDP miscalculated public mood on July 13, but Omar Abdullah’s bravado points to his dependence on non-electoral route, argues Riyaz Masroor

Meaning of the phrase “delicious irony”, which I had recently used in a political commentary, was lost on one of my readers who in his email response disapprovingly ruled: “By the way ironies can’t be ‘delicious’.” But the linguistic pundits say ironies become delicious when an event or an act takes place quite contrary to a set pattern, or when a hypocritical action is too manifest to be camouflaged. Some theorists even deduce a different connotation: “disgusting hypocrisy”.
Here is more telling testimony: When in 2006 the Arab media leader, Al Jazeera disclosed that it would draw talent from the western world to compete CNN and BBC in the English television journalism, India’s most respected newspaper, The Hindu, carried a detailed report in its weekly supplement. The report carried the same phrase, delicious irony, as the standalone title.
The above explanation was deemed necessary not to rebut what my worthy reader had pointed out but for fear of again getting misheard in the following lines in which I will point to some latest ironies which took a delicious twist.
The anger that filled the streets of Kashmir during a nine-day Battle for Land against the May 26 cabinet order, which gave proprietary rights of around 100 acres of land near Baltal to the Hindu Shrine, might have subdued but the aura it has set in will take longer to die down. But the local rivals of a badly hit pro-India political camp, National Conference and Peoples Democratic Party went whole hog on July 13, observed as martyrs’ day by both pro-India and secessionist forces, by showing up at the martyrs’ graveyard in Khawajabazar near the heartland of secessionism, Nowhatta, only to prick a wound that was halfway to healing.
No sooner had the PDP Chief Mahbooba Mufti reached the shrine premises where the martyrs’ of July 13 massacre lay at rest than the locals raised alarm over her entry and pelted stones. Local cable TV aired the footage in which Mahbooba frenetically recited the Quranic verses, which the Kashmiri Muslims usually recite when an earthquake strikes. Pleading calm, she shouted in what seemed a fit of fear; fear of getting lynched by the frenzied mob; fear of getting humiliated and the fear of having her political career in tatters. When the stones rained relentlessly she left the place leaving even her sandals behind. She, perhaps, rightly recited a particular verse because it was no less than a tremor, a political tremor that humbled a gritty politician.
Her retreat was a symbolic admission of defeat and perhaps an honest acknowledgement that in Kashmir she and her party were yet to be accepted as a ‘soft separatist force’ let alone the chance of taking them as heirs of the martyrs. She must be grieved as her claim that “PDP transformed the political discourse in Kahsmir” has so humiliatingly deflated.
As if the Act 2 of a preconceived play, Omar Abdullah led a procession toward the martyrs’ graveyard and winked at his supporters to retaliate the stone pelting from the locals. NC supporters were yelling at the pro-freedom activists and paying back with stones and brickbats. Taken together with the replay of Kashmir-versus-Kashmir, Omar Abdullah’s inflammatory speech on the occasion leaves no doubt who choreographed the game.
“Those who talk about the election boycott have been favored by the previous BJP regime in center when L K Advani sanctioned money for their medical expenses.” On this a bevy of angry protesters tried to stone the stage wherefrom Omar was speaking. “Look,” Omar responded from behind a thick wall of security guards, “they have understood whom I am referring to.” Such a provocative tenor could have stemmed from either his lack of understanding or a prescription from New Delhi.
Unlike PDP that did not seem in a rush to undo nine-day Battle for Land, National Conference rushed to outsmart PDP by launching its poll campaign from martyrs’ graveyard. But the NC Chief miscalculated on two counts. First, it was a time when the smoke of the recent uprising was yet to disperse and both PDP and NC were seen as party to the land transfer decision with their varied degrees of culpability. And second, Omar plunged in the middle of a separatist heartland and dared the restive masses.
Then why Omar chose an inopportune timing for such bravado? Because every act the mainstream politicians stage here is not necessarily aimed at the local audience. Omar knows better whom did he want to show that he was the only one who could change the terms of debate vis-à-vis Kashmir movement. At a time when the recent achievement, however sketchy it may look, had emboldened the masses and they have grown conscious to the benefits of a non violent resistance, Omar’s incitement looked out of sync. Not because he should not have criticized the separatists but because he knows fully well which way the wind blows if one wants to assume power through real people’s power. His anti-Hurriyat stand is, therefore, the anti-thesis of elections in which you need votes not the glib rhetoric.
There are some hazy hints why Omar sought to revert from his pro-movement posturing when returned from Pakistan in 2006. One among them is this: A predated interview of India’s wily hand on Kashmir, Amarjeet Singh Dulat, was recently circulated in press in which he has sweepingly predicted Omar Abdullah to be the next CM of J&K.
Dulat is not an ordinary political commentator or a journalist. He has held important positions in both Intelligence Bureau (Special Director Kashmir) and Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). He is currently member in the India’s National Security Advisory Board and is often consulted on security affairs especially Kashmir. If he has publicly tipped Omar Abdullah to be the next ‘Maharaja of Kashmir’ it cannot be brushed off as a routine guesswork by top bureaucrats in the country.
Mr Dulat’s ‘revelation’ has raised some important questions. Was Dulat’s tip aimed to prod Omar toward something PDP was considered unfit for? Was the clash on July 13 a warm up exercise of a bigger project New Delhi wants National Conference to execute ahead of polls? Did Omar fritter away the chances, if any, of a comeback by once again openly doing New Delhi’s bidding? Such questions cannot be farfetched in the backdrop of NC’s latest somersault.
Only time will tell whether this ‘revelation’ was aimed at rejuvenating PDP’s sagging credibility or an unwitting admission that Delhi was preparing to install the third generation Abdullahs as its new bet in Kashmir. That is why, perhaps, Omar Abdullah on July 15 threatened to pay in the same coin if his party was attacked again in future. This may not as much scare the separatists as it would relieve the PDP that is in a shambles.
As for PDP’s role in the recent land transfer deal, it is yet to come clean on certain counts. When the popular reaction against the land transfer was blowing into such an uprising that could have stirred the international opinion PDP bailed out New Delhi by pulling out of the coalition and shifting the debate to a constitutional crisis.
It is not yet clear whether New Delhi has promised PDP anything in lieu of this service in which it creatively localized the nine-day agitation averting the global reaction the issue could have evoked otherwise. But Omar’s gesture speaks louder than PDP’s whispering with 10-Janpath (Sonia Gandhi’s official residence in New Delhi). If PDP prevented the issue from spilling over, NC is doing the spadework to refurbish New Delhi’s image in Kashmir at a time when the alienation is peaking.
Omar who on his return from Pakistan said every security picket in Kashmir is a torture cell has taken on both Geelani and Mirwaiz. His friends privately boast that Omar had more guts than his father to speak truth to the power. But over these years, it seems, his ego has jockeyed with greed and greed has won out. Ego would have earned a space in Kashmir’s beleaguered society; greed would fetch him the power.
But by promising New Deli to change the terms of debate in Kashmir he has undertaken a difficult task. He still has a cue from the ungracefully seen off governor S K Sinha who has recorded his confession about the popular sentiment in Kashmir. “New Delhi must realise that we have been able to control militancy in Kashmir but the mindset behind the separatist movement is intact,” Sinha told Business Standard in a recent interview.
We have had back-to-back ironies ever since 1947 but the irony displayed by NC and PDP is unquestionably ‘delicious’. Objection to the usage of “delicious irony” is respected but overruled!
(riyaz.masroor@yaoo.com)