Crybaby or Kashmir saviour: Farooq Abdullah can’t make up his mind

Even when absent from the Valley for four years during its lowest phase, Farooq Abdullah has always claimed to be thinking of ‘my people’.

Former chief minister of J&K and National Conference president Farooq Abdullah | ThePrint

Kashmir’s Farooq Abdullah, the son of a chief minister and the father of a chief minister, has never known an emotion he cannot exploit.

“You think I will stay inside my house of my own will while my state is being burnt? While my people are being electrocuted in jails, punished in their homes? This is not the India that I believe in. My India is a democratic India, secular India for all.”

This is how the National Conference MP from Srinagar, and former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir for 12 years, reacted after the repeal of Article 370 and Article 35A, his voice breaking with emotion. But no one who knows him well would have been surprised by this sentimental outpour.

All through his career, Farooq Abdullah has vacillated between being an eternal crybaby and the only man who can save Kashmir.

And he managed to do so while not being at loggerheads with the Centre and yet portraying himself as the authentic representative of the Kashmiris.

Farooq, the man with waves of emotion

Read this description of Farooq in full flow when he hears that three militants have to be exchanged to secure the release of the 1999 hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC-814 in A.S. Dulat’s Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years (2015):

“As my R&AW aircraft landed in Jammu, the sun was setting on 30 December. It was the month of Ramzan. I went straight to Farooq’s residence, where I found him sitting at his dining table by himself. ‘I know why you’ve come,’ he said. ‘Just let me go and say my prayers.’ After his prayers he came out and had his juice. And then he angrily said: ‘You again? Tumne Mufti ki beti ke liye kiya tha, phir wohi kar rahe ho.’”

What he was angry about and what the small irony of our situation was the kidnapping of Rubaiya Sayeed on 8 December 1989, an eventful episode like the hijacking of IC-814 a decade later, and one where both of us were involved. In both episodes, he was chief minister; during the earlier incident, I was the head of the IB in Srinagar.

When Farooq gets into it, he likes to milk the drama for all he can

He experienced waves of anger. He would calm down and then he would start all over again. Calm down and start again. Then he was at it: how weak Delhi is, how big a mistake this is, what a bunch of bloody idiots, buffoons. It just went on and on and on. Part of it was theatre; when Farooq gets into it, he likes to milk the drama for all he can.”

It takes a few shots of Black Label and all of Girish Chandra ‘Gary’ Saxena’s diplomatic finesse to quieten Farooq.

But look back at the bloody history of Kashmir since the guns started booming there and an excitable Farooq will be part of the landscape.

Here’s Farooq in 1983, after his enormous mandate in the assembly elections, on Article 370: “No one can fiddle with that and take the risk of setting the entire state on fire.”

There’s Farooq in 1994, commenting on his four-year-long absence from the state in its darkest era: “I am not ready for burial as yet. I will bury others before I go… All of you make the ’87 election out to be the turning point. It is India that is responsible for what has happened in Kashmir and not Farooq Abdullah. They betrayed my father in ’53. They betrayed my father in ‘75. They betrayed me in ’84. They are responsible, not Farooq Abdullah.”

In the same interview, he goes off again: “Farooq is not as useless as you Indians think. When Farooq comes out to fight, you will not know in which corner to hide.”

And there he is again in 1997, a year after returning to power in the Valley, in response to a question on what he is going to do to ensure the return of Kashmiri Pandits: “What can I do if they are hellbent on being miserable? As for being self-destructive, I am killing myself with work. My blood pressure is up in the sky.”

Farooq Abdullah addresses media at his residence in Srinagar | ANI Photo

With Kashmir at its best and worst

He has been with the Valley at its worst, when the Moi-Muqaddas (holy relic) was stolen in 1963, and he, along with Mirwaiz Maulvi Muhammad Farooq (father of the current Mirwaiz, Umar Farooq), became a member of the action committee that came up to strategise for the recovery of the hair of the Holy Prophet—they were then called the Double Farooq. The relic was said to have disappeared from Srinagar’s Hazratbal Mosque on 27 December 1963.

Farooq has also been with the Valley at its best, when in 1983, he was elected to power with an overwhelming mandate after a hard-fought election.

He has witnessed the Valley in one of its darkest phases, in 1987, when he was accused of rigging the assembly elections, which the opposition Muslim United Front was unlikely to have won in any case. He also tried to keep the assembly steady from afar when his son Omar Abdullah, as chief minister, endured the crisis of the summer of 2010, which saw the deaths of 117 people.

And yet, he has avoided locking horns with the Centre all along.

Love for golf, while Kashmir burned

Farooq Abdullah is an odd mix of characters. He was both a motorcycle riding playboy (with actress Shabana Azmi riding pillion) and the golden progeny of “strict disciplinarian” Sheikh Sa’ab. “We were brought up more by my mother. My father was always in prison. But he was a strict disciplinarian. I remember being slapped one day,” he had said. He was both the man who could never give up golf (you have to be a gentleman in golf) and the only man who could articulate Kashmir to the West.

Ramesh Vinayak, now executive editor, Hindustan Times, who covered Jammu and Kashmir extensively for India Today at the height of the insurgency after 1989, recalls to ThePrint the time when Kashmir was under a prolonged spell of governor’s rule and politicians had gone into hiding, Farooq never gave up on his passion for golf whenever he happened to be in Srinagar.

“Sometime in the autumn of 1995, he decided to meet me at Kashmir’s picturesque Royal Springs Golf Course on the edge of the Dal Lake and the Mughal Gardens. On a crisp and balmy noon, the place was strikingly serene in contrast to firings and grenade explosion elsewhere in the fear-stricken city. Inevitably I opened the conversation by wondering how he was playing golf while Kashmir was burning. ‘Do you want me to go mad over what’s happening around?’ he asked with his trademark bluster, adding, ‘My dear, actually these greens keep me sane in these times.’”

Farooq never gave up on his passion for golf whenever he happened to be in Srinagar

“Even when the chips were down, he never lost his common touch. Hour before he was to be sworn in as chief minister in October 1996, my editor and I met him for an interview over breakfast at his Gupkar Road home, which was over-flowing with supporters and officials. While seeing us off, he suddenly spotted an old man in a skull cap and worn-out phiran who sat quietly on his haunches in a corner of the courtyard, and occasionally made wild gestures. ‘Oh, pir sahib is here,’ he said before dashing to the old man and kissing his hands. For a few moments, an immaculately dressed Farooq sat on the ground, his head bowed in reverence oblivious of the surprised crowd while our photographer frenetically clicked photographs,” said Vinayak.

Even while being absent from the Valley for four years during its lowest phase, 1989-1994, he has always claimed to be thinking of “my people”.

Chandrababu Naidu along with Congress President Rahul Gandhi and Farooq Abdullah sitting on dharna at Andhra Pradesh Bhawan demanding special category status to his state | Suraj Singh Bisht/ThePrint

Running Kashmir, a Sisyphean task

Farooq Abdullah’s “people” have repeatedly thrown their lot with him, even when he has disappointed them. In 1983, they elected him with an overwhelming majority. In 1996, after the National Conference won, India Today said running Kashmir was a “Sisyphean task”. “He must deal with the threat posed by renegade militants at large, define the role of the army and the security apparatus, restore law and order while ensuring human rights, rebuild the bureaucracy and tackle the question of autonomy while keeping corruption at bay,” it had written.

A tall order, still so true, and one he was never able to fulfil. A mere four years later, the magazine wrote in a cover story, headlined Faltering Farooq:

“His flamboyance gives the impression of the Government being a country club,” says a state official.

He did, after all, spend Rs 15 crore on developing a golf course in Srinagar and another Rs 20 crore on a state aeroplane. Worse, Farooq is being described as a ‘non-resident chief minister’. He has spent less than a month in the state since the Government moved to the winter capital of Jammu on November 8. Farooq has no one to blame but himself for acquiring a dubious reputation.

Farooq is a big man with a large heart who never bore ill will no matter how he was treated

Nobody expected wonders from him when he assumed office in 1996. But neither his ministerial team nor the National Conference cadres are willing to step out of the safety of their homes to even lend a sympathetic ear to basic, everyday problems. In four years, Farooq’s Government has done little to rebuild schools, hospitals and bridges. The people in the Valley are still talking bread and butter issues but Farooq is not grasping the opportunity.”

Former spymaster A.S. Dulat told ThePrint that he believes Farooq is a big man with a large heart who never bore ill will no matter how he was treated. And mistreated he was, just like his father Sheikh Abdullah, who spent his best years in prison. In 1984, the Farooq government was dismissed and the Congress-backed Ghulam Mohammad Shah, his brother-in-law, was installed as chief minister. Dulat calls him by far Kashmir’s tallest leader who deserved much better. “He would have made an outstanding foreign minister and with a bit of luck he would have been in Rashtrapati Bhavan today,” he said.

A file image of Jammu and Kashmir National Conference President Farooq Abdullah in the Lok Sabha | PTI

The clueless saviour

As Kashmir’s history since 1953 has shown, the Valley’s people are mercurial, its leaders temperamental and periods of relative calm can turn overnight into outbursts of rage and violence. Author and editor of Force, Pravin Sawhney, found Abdullah informal, assertive, extremely sharp for his age – and not just sharp memory but sharp responses.

But how clueless he was about his own state is evident from this 1988 interview where to a question on whether youngsters in Jammu and Kashmir are turning against him and the Centre, he said: “They’ve become cannon fodder for fundamentalists and extremists who offer them money. Pakistan’s been training them. Thank God we’ve been able to nab the leaders or the situation here could get worse than Punjab. But by and large, our people have refused to harbour extremists.”

Typical Farooq. Self-preservation, self-praise and self-abnegation, all in one

And to the next question – Isn’t there a terribly frightening scenario that lies ahead – he answers: “I am not frightened. The only heartening things I see are the strong bridges that have been built on which we are going to cross the hazards. Unlike the past, the nation is now solidly behind me. Farooq Abdullah is not alone today. He is not afraid of death but he’s not a fool to put himself before a bullet.”

Typical Farooq. Self-preservation, self-praise and self-abnegation, all in one. If Kashmir and the Centre repeatedly failed him, it is a truth that no one can deny—he failed them too.

The author is a senior journalist. Views are personal.