Mehbooba Mufti remains dedicated to her father's peacemaking process

By calling for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to resume former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s open-hearted negotiations with Pakistan, Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti has obliquely called Modi to account for his arrogant remark during a speech in Srinagar on 7 November last year that he did not need anyone’s advice. By reiterating that advice, at a time when he and his colleagues are desperate for advice in the face of the current crisis in Kashmir, Mehbooba has subtly made the point that PM Modi would have done well to take that advice when her father gave it. Just a few minutes before the prime minister had waved away the advice last November, Mehbooba Mufti’s father, the then chief minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, had suggested that Vajpayee’s path should be followed. [caption id=“attachment_2944234” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti and Union home minister Rajnath Singh during a meeting in New Delhi on Monday. PTI[/caption] In response, Modi sought to nuance Vajpayee’s call for ‘insaniyat ke dayare mei baat-cheet’ (talks in the ambit of humanity) to ‘insaniyat, jamhooriyat, Kashmiriyat’ (humanity, democracy, Kashmiri ethos - whatever that combo may mean!) While doing that, Modi had added — gratuitously — that he did not need anyone’s advice on how to deal with Kashmir. He seemed to believe he had enough experience but, as it turns out, Kashmiri teenagers have given him and his colleagues the experience of a lifetime over the past month. Although the Muftis’ popularity had slid noticeably over the previous year, a wide spectrum of Kashmiris had taken umbrage at the snub implied in that rude remark. Modi’s lack of grace has evidently stuck in Mehbooba’s mind; after all, she idolised her father. She said in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly just a few weeks ago that she had told her late father at that time that she did not like what the prime minister had done. But her father had told her that these were small matters compared to the huge task they had undertaken. She compared this far-sighted attitude of her father’s with that of Sheikh Abdullah more than 60 years earlier, when he too had taken up a gigantic task in the wake of the messy partition of the subcontinent. (She did not directly note that that earlier task had gone somewhat awry.) The fact that Mehbooba reiterated the need to revive’s Vajpayee’s vision right after meeting Home Minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi on Monday indicates that she is dedicated to that peacemaking project, which she perceives as her father’s legacy as much as Vajpayee’s. Engaging with Pakistan for a mutually agreeable solution is a key part of that vision. To be sure, Modi had already revised his strategy with regard to Pakistan about a month before he visited Srinagar and made that speech. Since at least the beginning of October last year, the ground was being prepared for Indo-Pak rapprochement. Senior figures in the security establishment confirm that Modi’s stopover in Pakistan on his way back from Kabul last Christmas had been carefully scripted. It would nevertheless have behoved a man in his office to have accepted with good grace Mufti Sayeed’s reference to the crucial need for India-Pakistan rapprochement as the Vajpayee line. After all, Vajpayee was not only a predecessor in Modi’s august office, he belonged to the same party and parent organisation — the RSS — too. And, Mufti was not just his senior in politics, he had been Home Minister of India when Modi was just a national secretary, not even general secretary, in the BJP. Now that Mehbooba has reiterated her father’s advice at such a challenging time in South Asia’s history, it would behove the prime minister and his hubristic advisors to show grace. That might help assuage Kashmiri sentiments, which have a tendency to be ultra-sensitive. That in turn might help to stave off the disaster in South Asian relations that is staring all of us in the face.