After a nervous pause, the alliance between the People’s Democratic Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party in Jammu and Kashmir is set to swing back into action. According to reports, PDP president Mehbooba Mufti will take oath as chief minister of J&K on January 13. The track record of the alliance so far has not been promising. In the months to come, both parties will have to put the dissensions of an entire year behind them.
Collision course
The alliance forged between the PDP and the BJP, who occupy opposing sides of the ideological spectrum, was considered to be a feat of great political agility. In fact, it started with a document that left both sides dissatisfied. The Common Minimum Programme was meant to hammer out some sort of a consensus on the key issues that the two differed on. These included Article 370, which grants special autonomies to J&K, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, which has been the source of so much discontent in the state, and holding talks with separatist leaders of the Hurriyat. But the ambiguously worded Common Minimum Programme, which Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, PDP president at the time, described as the “second instrument of accession”, resolved none of these differences. The PDP appeared to have given in to the pressures of the political moment.
From the start, the coalition has been pulled in two directions, as both parties played to their respective constituencies. While BJP had won its mandate from Hindu-majority Jammu, the PDP’s support base lay in the Muslim-majority Valley. This translated into a struggle over how resources would be allocated, and which region would get the new hospitals and educational institutions. The first issue to split the coalition along party lines was the proposal to set up a new All India Institute of Medical Science in Kashmir. Jammu had already been allocated a new IIT and IIM. But leaders from both parties took to grandstanding about it: while the BJP demanded that the AIIMS be located in Jammu, the PDP wanted Kashmir to have its own IIT and IIM. In the end, both Jammu and Kashmir were allotted an AIIMS each, while the Valley continued to agitate for more educational institutions.
As the year wore on, issues of identity gained centrestage. Most recently, the coalition was brought to the brink by a wrangle over the Kashmir state flag. The BJP has alway insisted on “Ek Vidhan, ek pradhan, ek nishan (one country, one constitution, one flag)”, a direct jibe at the special status granted to J&K. This year, when the High Court directed that the state flag would be given equal importance on official buildings, the BJP hinted that it would oppose the order. “No flag can be hoisted to the same level as the national flag,” BJP Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh had said.
But the issue that proved to be the most corrosive for the fragile new coalition was a decades-old beef ban, forgotten by the state but freshly enforced by the High Court last year. While the PDP opposed the ban, the BJP wanted to bring in new legislation that would prohibit the sale of beef. It brought the assembly to a standstill and bared some serious fissures in the state’s polity. After Independent MLA Rashid Engineer hosted a “beef party” at his residence in October, he was attacked by BJP MLAs from Jammu. The beef ban agitation, which dovetailed into a larger national debate on intolerance, proved costly for the J&K government. It further alienated constituencies in the Valley as it became apparent that the BJP, at the Centre as well as in the state, was not prepared to make room for the beliefs and practices of Muslims.
Of Jammu and Kashmir
Mehbooba Mufti takes charge at a delicate political moment in the state, when confidence in the government has ebbed to an all-time low. While the BJP stands discredited in Kashmir, the PDP is accused of partnering with communal politics. In the last few days, Kashmiri papers have carried articles asking Mufti not to resume ties with the BJP and there have been rumbles of discontent within her party. Meanwhile, the gulf between Jammu and Kashmir seems wider than ever. In a bitter and alienated Kashmir, separatist sentiments have grown stronger and militancy is on the rise.
In her new role, Mufti will have to reconcile all these contradictions – of being chief minister of Jammu as well as of Kashmir, of leading a party that seeks to bring separatist politics within the democratic fold and being in coalition with a party that chooses to peddle a muscular idea of nationalism.
The BJP, for its part, has much to learn. First, how to be a tolerant, inclusive party that leaves behind vote bank politics when it enters government. Second, how to engage with the political complexities of the Valley, and to recognise that all aspirations are not economic.
Much depends on it.