PDP suffers from ‘paralysis of analysis’
Gowhar Geelani
Jammu and Kashmir’s former Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed breathed his last on January 7. Nearly two months after Sayeed’s demise, his party led by daughter Mehbooba Mufti is yet to take a stand on the government formation. What does this inexcusable delay in either restitching the partnership with the ideologically antithetical Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or divorcing the right-wing Hindu nationalist party entail?
Saying that PDP is in serious leadership crisis and facing paralysis of analysis would be stating the obvious. It is indeed facing a precarious situation wherein it can neither justify reforging the alliance with BJP nor its two-month long delay in government formation in Jammu and Kashmir.
The challenges for the under fire PDP are immense in the current socio-political scenario. Here is why.
Following the crackdown on students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi, the Narendra Modi-led BJP is facing severe criticism from the world over for curtailing the academic and intellectual freedom in India and constricting spaces for dissent and debate. There is an intense debate over intolerance and competing nationalisms.
In its hard-hitting editorial, The New York Times wrote that “Mr. Modi must rein in his ministers and his party, and defuse the current crisis, or risk sabotaging both economic progress and India’s democracy. The charge of sedition against Mr. Kumar [Kanhaiya Kumar, president of the Jawaharlal Nehru Students Union] should be dropped.”
However, PDP maintained criminal silence over the JNU row. Its silence did not help the party one bit. Rather it further exposed the hollowness of the party’s claims of being a pro-Kashmir political entity. It gave a message that PDP supports curbs on academic freedom.
Paradoxically, various leaders of PDP had earlier described Afzal Guru’s hanging on February 9, 2013 as “miscarriage of justice” and “travesty of justice”. The party had also made a passionate demand for the return of mortal remains of both Afzal Guru and Maqbool Butt.
If that was the moral position taken by PDP two years before it assumed power in March 2015, what forced it to remain silent and not to say a word on Guru and Butt in the wake of JNU crisis that erupted after a group of the Left-leaning students gathered in solidarity to ask critical question on the controversial hangings in early February?
By not speaking up against the JNU crackdown vociferously, PDP has apparently made an attempt to keep the spirit of the “unholy alliance” alive.
To make the matters worse for the party, various leaders have been speaking in different languages on the same issue.
For instance, PDP had made it public that it wants the BJP government in New Delhi to take certain visible Kashmir-centric and Kashmir-specific CBMs so that the PDP-BJP alliance remains intact. It was also said on record that very little progress was made on the ‘Agenda for Alliance’ agreed between the BJP and PDP in March 2015.
But then, a senior party leader distanced himself from the CBM statement, saying that the PDP has not put any condition for the government formation. Another party leader said that the question of restitching the alliance did not arise, because “the alliance was unbroken”.
Not only does PDP appear utterly confused, it is also ambiguous, lacking clarity, and inconsistent.
If PDP goes ahead with the government formation with the ‘radical’ BJP, as is evident from several hints that the party has already dropped, it will face serious questions and challenges.
If the party forms the government, the questions asked will be regarding the delay. Why this delay? What has the party gained by this? How have the people of Jammu and Kashmir benefited from it?
If the party breaks the alliance, the question why did it take so long for the party to decide the inevitable will haunt PDP.
Breaking of the alliance will also raise serious questions about the late Mufti Sayeed’s ‘legacy’ and ‘acumen’?
Mehbooba Mufti’s stamp of approval to the PDP-BJP alliance will further dent the PDP’s image and credibility in the eyes of its supporters and sympathisers for joining hands with the Hindu right-wing BJP for a second time in two years. It has already been reported that some of the PDP sympathisers and young campaign managers have joined the militant ranks in south Kashmir.
On the other hand, Mehbooba Mufti’s decision to snap ties with BJP will prove detrimental to the late Mufti’s image of being an “astute politician”.
Ms Mehbooba Mufti indeed said in south Kashmir during the PDP’s much publicised membership drive that it would not be possible for her to ignore the Jammu mandate. Her statement implied that the PDP cares about the electoral mandate from one region but does not care a bit to respect the anti-BJP vote that the party got from the Kashmir valley.
True, it is not an easy position to be in. The PDP is facing scathing criticism from the opposition National Conference and the “Azadi” lobby, especially the pro-freedom amalgam headed by Syed Ali Geelani.
Addressing his party workers in his Beerwah, his assembly constituency, Jammu and Kashmir’s former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah took a dig at the PDP for maintaining “ambiguity”.
“PDP’s efforts to maintain ambiguity over government formation are based on the presumption that this delay can be marketed as a moral stand that the party had suddenly found. Now that Mehbooba Mufti has herself confessed that the people of Jammu and Kashmir did not benefit from the 10-month-long PDP-BJP partnership, one wonders who the beneficiaries of this alliance were,” the junior Abdullah told his workers.
It appears that the PDP’s ambiguity, confusion and inconsistency are only cementing the perception that the party has lost leadership, vision and decision-making ability.
From the “Azadi” camp, the party faces serious allegations that “it is a creation of Indian secret agencies to sabotage the ongoing freedom movement”.
Worse, its own leaders are confused and seem to have no clue about what lies ahead.
As all of this was not enough, the ex-spouse of Mehbooba Mufti, Javed Iqbal Shah, has hit hard against the PDP’s “dynastic politics”. In a controversial interview with The Telegraph, Shah has made acerbic commentary on his ex-spouse Mehbooba, the PDP and the Mufti family.
“From seeking to empower people, the PDP ended up with one family centralising power. Every second relation is legislator, contesting candidate or office bearer,” Shah said in the interview. Commenting on the PDP-BJP partnership, Shah said that “the present standoff (between Mehbooba and the BJP) is nothing but the usual blackmail that this opportunist conglomeration of people called PDP is given to. Why are the terms it is negotiating with the BJP a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma?” He also accused Mehbooba of being “wrapped up in contradictions”.
While Shah may be a “political non-entity” so far as Kashmir’s politics is concerned, but the timing of his comments has certainly added more pressure on the already embattled PDP.
All said and done, the good old Urdu couplet acquires a real life meaning for the PDP for now:
Na khuda hi mila, na visaal-e-sanam
Na idhar ke rahe, na udhar ke rahe!”
(I found neither faith, nor union with my beloved
And now I belong neither there nor here).
