Delhi gets first politician to contest Geelani in Kashmir

With NC and PDP on one page of Hurriyat appeasement, Soz hits hard on stone pelters, hartal masters

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Jul 21: With almost everybody in the ruling National Conference (NC) and the opposition PDP jostling to clinch a goodwill from the separatists, New Delhi has finally got a politician to contest hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s “politics of anarchy” in Kashmir valley. He is neither incumbent Chief Minister Omar Abdullah nor former Home Minister of India, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, but none other than the UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s party chief in Jammu & Kashmir---Prof Saifuddin Soz.

After half-hearted statements against the cult of continued shutdown and anarchical agitation from a couple of mainstream politicians, Prof Soz today came to the forefront to assail the politics of chaos in unambiguous terms. While the PDP has understandably clung to its pseudo-separatist posturing and the ruling NC has become famous for Law Minister Ali Mohammad Sagar’s public strictures against CRPF and Army, not one in the major mainstream regional parties has asserted against the current hartal culture in Kashmir. Even the NC President and Union Minister, Dr Farooq Abdullah, according to well placed sources, has been under strict instructions from his party to remain tightlipped. NC and PDP, in fact, appear to be in a competition of India bashing and Hurriyat’s appeasement.

Rather than contesting hardline and extremist politics, both, NC and PDP have engaged themselves in five-times-a-day refrain of Kashmir being a “political problem”. They have been invariably holding New Delhi responsible for the current spate of turbulence with the contention that the UPA government at the Centre had snapped NDA-initiated dialogue with the Kashmiri separatists. Even Mr Soz’ s Congress, which is a partner in the ruling coalition, has remained a mute spectator to the political upheaval with its Ministers enjoying tours in Jammu, Ladakh and Delhi. Former J&K Chief Minister and now Union Minister of Health at the Centre, Ghulam Nabi Azad, known for his frontal attacks on the extremist politics and hardline icons, including Geelani, has also chosen ton remain in oblivion with regard to the situation in the Valley.


In an interview to local news agency Kashmir News Service, Jammu & Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee chief, Prof Soz showed no hesitation in taking on the Valley’s hartal masters and stone pelters. Making the mainstream political camp’s first frontal attack on Hurriyat, Prof Soz said that the separatist leaders had pushed Kashmir to a quagmire of destruction. He said that the people who, according to him, had been enjoying meetings with Prime Minister in New Delhi, had been calling hartal on Dr Manmohan Singh’s visit to Kashmir. He said that the separatist leaders, as also all others involved in the cult of stone pelting, had held hostage entire population of over six million in Kashmir.

Soz accepted that Hurriyat and other separatists had a political agenda that, according to him, needed to be resolved on a table of dialogue with Government of India. He made an appeal to the detained hardliner, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, to mellow down his position and engage New Delhi in a political dialogue. He asserted that insurgency and anarchical agitation would never solve any problems.

“Those following the crowds can never become leaders. They have to assert as leaders and end this cult of directionless strikes”, Soz said of the separatist leaders. He asserted that stone pelting was “completely un-Islamic” and it had never been practiced by Muslims to achieve a goal. He said that those spearheading the mobocracy had pushed the Kashmiris to a quagmire of destruction as the masters of hartal had banned education in schools and issued threats to the children going to their schools. He said that even in Vietnam, schools had functioned without interference from freedom fighters.

Soz said it was “strange” that calling for shutdown had become everybody’s craze in the educationally and economically shattered Kashmir. He pointed out that the separatists had been calling such strikes even on the deaths happening in routine traffic accidents. Soz claimed that shopkeepers in the Valley were not in favour of any more bandh and they had downed their shutters for fear of the stone pelters. He also lashed out on the state government employees and said that these people had been enjoying sitting indoors as their salaries, sizably enhanced last year under 6th Pay Commission report, had been automatically piling up into their bank accounts without attending duties. “Government employees have developed the worst vested interest in hartal and stone pelting”, Soz said.

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