After Hazratbal siege, Shujaat Bukhari predicted that militants had tasted blood and would become more powerful and get support in Kashmir.
At around 7 pm Thursday, I was fiddling with my mobile and thought of calling Shujaat Bukhari to wish him for Eid. Just as I was about to dial his number, I received another call and got distracted.
Twenty minutes later, as I was about to call Shujaat, someone from the JK Editors Forum sent me a WhatsApp message. It read: Shujaat Bhukhari shot dead.
I immediately called my old friend Saleem Pandit, the Kashmir correspondent of The Times of India, who confirmed the news.
This wasn’t the first time I was getting such news – news that I didn’t even want to believe or share. I have seen several of my fellow journalists fall in the line of duty to this senseless cycle of violence that has gripped our state. I only hope this is the last.
I first got in touch with Shujaat in the early ’90s when I was working with Kashmir Times, a prominent newspaper from Jammu founded by the late Ved Bhasin, a man who taught more about journalism than any journalism school could have.
Shujaat used to contribute for a weekly column –Kashmir Jottings. He and I spoke over phone – at a time when one had to book trunk calls – a few times and became friends without having even met each other.
Thereafter, I started working for Jansatta while he began contributing for a South India-based newspaper.
Shujaat and I first met each other in person when I and my colleague S.M.A. Kazmi from The Indian Express went to Kashmir to cover the siege of Srinagar’s historic Hazratbal Mosque in 1993. Since the entire Valley was under curfew, our friend Aasha Khosa, then with The Tribune, offered us one of the rooms in her hostel flat.
Guess where our daily supply of excellent home-cooked food came from? Shujaat’s house. He decided to play our local angel and would arrive with food every morning and help us get information.
It was the first time I saw how well-connected he was. But, it wasn’t the last. After all, he did belong to an influential family that was the ‘peer’ of a revered religious sect in Anantnag.
We formed a bond that, I am sure, will be rekindled when I also meet my maker.
When the Hazratbal siege ended, the Government of India attracted international ridicule for meekly succumbing to the militants who had taken control of the shrine. Shujaat predicted that the militants had tasted blood and would now become more powerful and get support in Kashmir. His words proved prophetic.
A strong supporter of the idea of giving more respect to Kashmiris and ending the alleged high-handedness by successive governments in dealing with their demands, Shujaat never shied away from condemning the violence that, he said, was destroying the ethos of Kashmir.
He was one of the few Kashmiri journalists who had a vast circle of friends in Jammu – friends who could count on him to open the doors of his home and heart whenever they visited Kashmir.
In 2003, both of us were part of a delegation of Indian journalists that went to Pakistan under the banner of South Asia Free Media Association (SAFMA). It was the first time that Indian journalists were given access to Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK) territories of Gilgit and Baltistan.
But, it was during the second visit to Pakistan where we met a more combative Shujaat, who was then working with The Hindu. He took on Nawaz Sharif, who was set to take charge as prime minister, when the latter said that both India and Pakistan need to move on, open trade routes and forget the bitter past.
“What about the Kashmiri youth who had been lured by Pakistan into picking up arms? Was Pakistan planning to dump them too,” he asked Sharif, who had no answer for him.
When Sharif cited a new world order post 9/11 as the reason for his argument, Shujaat told him that while world may or may not have changed, Pakistan had certainly changed.
Till the end, Shujaat remained active in various track-II conferences to find a solution to the Kashmir issue.
In this age where TV news has turned into slanging matches, where the line between opinion and news has blurred, where social media is being used and rather abused by some journalists to destroy the credibility of those they don’t agree with, Shujaat was a calming influence. His death is also a loss for journalism because he mentored several young reporters in the Valley.
When I was president of Press Club of Jammu, he would often drop by my office, and we would discuss various issues for hours.
But, the brutal killing of Shujaat has inflicted the biggest loss on the few Kashmiri Pandit families who continue to live in the Valley even after the majority migrated. Few people know that Shujaat, along with a Kashmiri Pandit doctor, ran an NGO that worked to ensure that the Pandits living in Kashmir felt protected.
“Manuji, Kashmiri Panditon ke bina Kashmir, Kashmir nahin hai. Inko wapas laana hi hoga (Kashmir will not be Kashmir without the Pandits. They have to be brought back),” he would often lament. If only he had lived a little longer, who knows, he may have succeeded.
Rest in peace, my friend.
Manu Srivatsa, a senior journalist based in Jammu, is former president of Press Club of Jammu
He was great human and very good reporter and editor. I was following his articles and TV interviews…RIP. Hope for Peace in Kashmir.
Rest in peace, a great journalist , a friend of my friend with the hope that good sense shall prevail in Kashmir some day.