Shabir Shah was all set to become CM in 1996: Dulat

In his controversial book “Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years”, Dulat claims he was in consistent talks with Shah from his jail time and had almost struck a deal to form a government in the 1996 elections.

“Sometimes I met him (Shabir) in jail, bringing along a bottle of Rooh Afza and a box of grapes, and sometimes I met him at a Jammu nursing home. I began to call him the Nelson Mandela of Kashmir and he liked to be known that way. We spoke of a settlement with India and that he could become chief minister or even prime minister in the way that Sheikh Saheb was in the period 1947-53,” Dulat writes in a chapter, ‘Kashmir’s Mandela or Delhi’s Agent: Shabir Shah’.

Elaborating his negotiations with Shabir, Dulat said: “We really massaged his ego, encouraging him to think that he had a monopoly in Delhi and that we wanted to see him as chief minister.”

“I told him that ‘Shah Saheb, now we want to see you there (chief minister). I want to come and stay with you,” Dulat said.

“I will be responsible,’ he said repeatedly to us and insisted that there had to be peace with honour. “Of course”, I replied. “If there is a dialogue, there has to be something for the Kashmiris also.”

Dulat said seeing his fan following after he was released in October 1994, Shabir was the right man at the right moment.

“When Shabir was out, he decided he would march to Poonch, then back to Jammu and then climb up through the Bhaderwah and Kishtwar and Doda on his way to Anantnag in south Kashmir. It was a good plan. By the time he reached Srinagar he was like the Pied Piper of Hamlin, everyone was following him. His each step was thronged by excited Kashmiris. India Today put him in cover on top of a bus. I was taken aback by the massive reception and asked a Kashmiri friend- Is this guy really that big?” Dulat said.

According to former RAW chief, Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao encouraged the political class to “pump up” Shabir.

“Narsimha Rao was so keen to rope Shabir into play. He didn’t like Farooq Abdullah much and wanted to see a fresh leadership in Kashmir.  In 1995, I was sent by the DIB to brief him (Rao) on Kashmir before he left on a foreign tour. How necessary is Farooq for the revival of the democratic process in Kashmir, he asked me,” Dulat writes.

He adds Rao was looking towards state assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir the following year and it was clear that he was placing great hope in Shabir.

“He even asked me to introduce Shabir to finance minister, Manmohan Singh,” Dulat writes.

He refers to the trip to Africa when the prime minister announced that the government was willing to discuss any kind of political arrangement with Kashmir.

“Shabir, however, did not see it that way because he did not check Narasimha Rao out. For some reason he thought Rao’s offer was for Farooq and NC to draw them in and there by legitimize elections,” Dulat writes.

“It seemed that in 1995, Shabir would seize the moment and give Kashmir a new direction. He even spoke to his friends about the possibility that he could win a Nobel Prize. But then, nothing happened. Shabir begin to have a second thoughts and he began backtracking.”

According to Dulat, Shabir had his own fear of stepping up to the plate and some of it was Delhi.

“In March 1995, Shabir came to Delhi and he met a whole bunch of politicians, including those in the ruling Congress party, those in the Left, and even Vajpayee, who was then the leader of the opposition.

“Shabir even set up shop in Delhi, and established the Kashmir Awareness Bureau which was inaugurated by I K Gujral, a later prime minister. It was part of Shabir’s getting known in Delhi and becoming a part of the political firmament.”

Dulat further goes to write that while Shabir was in Delhi “he told us that he needed to go to Kathmandu, and ask me to facilitate the trip”.

“I am going to meet Mehmood Sagar,” he said, referring to his Pakistan based senior colleague in the Peoples League.

Shabir apparently wanted to consult his senior colleague, who was himself now across the LoC…“I can only meet him in Kathmandu,” Shabir said. “So I must go to Kathmandu.”

Dulat, however, said he was overruled by the panicky bosses in Delhi and Shabir, who was in Varanasi on his way to Kathmandu, was called back.

“Shabir never let me forget that. He often told me, Aap humko trust nahi karte.”

Dulat writes: “dithering in 1995-96 did not go unnoticed by Shabir’s lieutenants, who ultimately got disillusioned with him-Firdous Syed (Babar Badr) before the elections, Nayeem Khan after the elections.”

“All that Nayeem Khan and Firdous ever heard from Shabir was how he should get the Nobel Prize. This didn’t help the militants who wanted to join him over ground. Firdous and several militants decided to no longer wait for Shabir to make up his mind and in early 1996 they came overground, laid down arms, and began talks with GoI,” Dulat writes.

According to Dulat, this was also a setback to Shabir “because he believed he had monopoly with New Delhi and began to think the Delhi was double-dealing with him”.

Dulat further writes that “because of the way we pursued Shabir and the offer that the prime minister made, things opened up in Kashmir.

“More and more Kashmiris began to come forward and the NC won power, so by the time of the next elections in 2002, Shabir had missed the bus. There were more players and he was no longer a big deal. Had Shabir jumped into the fray in 1996 he could have had it all and a chance to forge his people’s destiny,” writes Dulat.

Dulat recalls that in 2002 elections he had a long chat with Shabir and tried to persuade him to contest. “But he said what can I do single-handedly. I can at most win one seat. If I had more people I could win probably three seats. And anyways it is decided that Farooq Abdullah or his son Omar will become the chief minister, on which I told him that he was wrong but he did not listen.”

After the 2002 elections, Dulat writes, when Mufti Sayeed became the chief minister without having won the largest number of seats he told Shabir he had been wrong.

“I told Nayeem and him that they could have been ministers if they had become MLAs. Nayeem agreed and said, “Yes, we made a mistake”.

But Shabir was bitter. “Big deal,” he said, “Mufti is the other side of the same coin as Farooq.”