Prominent Kashmiri political scientist Gul Mohammad Wani is not known for his humour. But, in a recent write-up published in a local daily, when referring to the Peoples Democratic Party legislator Mohammad Khalil Bandh being treated in an army hospital, Wani offered a flash of stinging satire. Bandh, he said, “is undergoing healing touch” in the army hospital.
Bandh was critically injured when his car was attacked with stones on July 18 in Pulwama, as part of the protests continuing in Kashmir following Hizbul Mujahideen Commander Burhan Wani’s killing on July 8 in south Kashmir.
To avoid further risk to Bandh’s life (and more embarrassment to PDP), he was not taken to any civilian hospital where people, injured with bullets and pellets during protest demonstrations, were receiving treatment, as hundreds of angry attendants and the volunteers had thronged the hospitals in Srinagar to provide food and other services to the injured and their attendants.
Why Wani chose to take a barb at Bandh’s treatment in an army hospital as “healing touch” is not surprising. The PDP owes its existence to an era in Kashmir when more than a decade old intense armed conflict had left the people of Kashmir wounded, physically as well as emotionally. Buoyed by Mehbooba Mufti’s knack of grieving with the conflict-hit families which she had effectively demonstrated in the past, her father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed founded PDP in 1999 with the avowed intent to apply a “healing touch”.
'Lesser evil'
Soon, “Healing Touch” became yet another slogan, along with “Peace with Dignity” and “Dialogue, not the Bullets are the Way Forward”. These slogans, coupled with the party’s pandering to pro-azadi Kashmiri leadership and Pakistan, worked to such an extent that the PDP, almost in a matter of months, earned the sobriquet of “Lesser Evil” as compared to Farooq Abdullah’s decades-old National Conference, which the voters believed had made “meek surrender” to New Delhi, while Abdullah directed vitriol at Pakistan.
In 2002, the PDP was able to parlay its “Lesser Evil” image into a significant electoral success in the Assembly elections – although it won 16 seats, as compared to 20 won by the Congress and 28 by the National Congress – it was able to form an alliance with the Congress to lead a coalition government, during the tenure of which the party’s “Healing Touch” policy appeared to play out well as cases of harassment of villagers by army and paramilitary troops witnessed a sharp decline.
However, what actually helped the PDP to make an impact was the presence of a friendly and somewhat uncomplicated Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government in New Delhi. The Congress and its allies had no problem with the PDP advocating dialogue with Pakistan or demanding a “dignified” solution for the Kashmir issue, though the UPA never seemed serious enough to deliver effectively on those demands. The Congress did not question the PDP’s overtures to the people in Kashmir and across the Line of Control. Meanwhile, the warming up of Pakistan’s President, Pervez Musharraf to New Delhi and pro-India political parties in Kashmir also helped PDP to operate with ease.
All these dynamics helped the PDP thrive on the agenda of pro-azadi parties while it was labelled as pedalling “soft-separatism” by media houses in New Delhi. Later, when the PDP was out of power despite improving its tally of seats in the 2008 Assembly elections to 22 from 16 in the 2002 elections, the party took its pro-Kashmir politics to new heights in 2011 when one of its senior leaders, Nizam-u-Din Bhat, moved a private member Bill seeking deletion of Section 3 of the Jammu & Kashmir Constitution – which deems the state an integral part of Indian territory.
“If we are sincere in our political utterances that Kashmir is a dispute, then the Constitution should provide the space to solve it,” the Bill demanded. The Bill was rejected, but the PDP knew it had scored a point.
Pyrrhic victory?
Helped by this background, the party ended up at the top slot by winning 28 Assembly seats in the 2014 elections. But the PDP’s best electoral performance in its then 15-year history threw up a situation which ultimately ended up with a Frankenstein’s monster – in the form of an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party for government-formation.
Soon after the government formation, the BJP took strong objection to then chief minister and PDP patron Mufti Sayeed’s appreciation of Pakistan’s role in allowing peaceful elections in Kashmir. This was an early warning for PDP that its insistence on starting a dialogue with Pakistan for the resolution of Kashmir issue would not cut ice with the BJP.
But, the party failed to read the writing on the wall until the BJP made an issue of the Hurriyat Conference leaders meeting the Pakistani High Commissioner in New Delhi. It was a clear signal that the BJP was not serious about engaging with differing voices in Kashmir, not to talk of any meaningful dialogue on Kashmir.
The public snub to Mufti Sayeed during a rally in Srinagar when Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he didn’t need anybody’s advice on Kashmir also attracted significant attention from observers trying to read the dynamics of the relationship between the two parties and leaders.
Modi’s impulsive visit to Pakistan in December 2015, with the PDP appearing entirely clueless about it and not in a position to take credit for this change of heart in New Delhi, was yet another pointer. Contrast this with earlier peace overtures to Pakistan during the Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance or Manmohan Singh’s UPA, including travel and trade across the LoC, apart from engaging Kashmiri separatists and Pakistan. The PDP then had not only been given the feel-good factor of being privy to New Delhi’s decisions on Kashmir and Pakistan, but was readily allowed to take credit for those gestures, which immensely helped the party in enhancing its image in the valley.
Another red flag for PDP, and the most conspicuous one, appeared in the form of poorly attended funeral of Mufti Sayeed early this year. “It was our decision of allying with BJP which dealt us this psychological blow,” a PDP leader said.
The slide downwards
The aftermath of Sayeed’s demise also presented an opportunity to PDP to call off the alliance, but it chose to stay the course.
This was followed by issues such as setting up of separate Sainik colonies for former soldiers, separate clusters for Kashmiri Pundits and the issue of undertaking of a new pilgrimage Yatra to Abhinavgupt cave in Beerwah area of the state’s Budgam district by a New Delhi based religious organisation.
All these issues kept pricking the PDP’s populism. Not even once could the PDP manage to get its alliance partner to make a serious positive statement on talks with the Hurriyat leaders and Pakistan which the two parties’ Agenda of Alliance advocates.
As regards the prevailing crisis, the PDP could not prevail upon the BJP to ensure that its leaders did not add fuel to the fire by their irresponsible statements, the latest of which was by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar: “Army will have to fire weapons, can’t just use lathis.”
The consequences of these compromises on its supposed ideology have already become visible. Far from applying any “healing touch” and winning over the hearts and minds of the Kashmiris politically, the PDP’s present worry is how to shield itself from the protestors’ stones.