Independence not viable for Kashmir: Omar Abdullah

How did the National Conference conduct itself during the recent Kashmir crisis and how does it see the future of this politically sensitive issue? Those were the twin issues Karan Thapar explored in an interview on Devil’s Advocate with President of the National Conference, Omar Abdullah.

Karan Thapar: Let's start with the recent agreement between the Kashmir state government and the Sangharsh Samiti about making land available to the shrine board. Your father has publicly endorsed and supported this agreement but so far no one knows what your personal opinion is.

Omar Abdullah: I don't need to have a personal opinion. If my personal opinion were different from my father's or my party's, you would have heard it.

Karan Thapar: Except that you're the president of the party and everyone looks to you to express your opinion.

Omar Abdullah: Not at all. I was in the meeting when the Prime Minister discussed the framework of this agreement. I was there when my father was briefing the media. I was standing there with him. If I didn't think what was happening right, I would have told him. The bottom line for me is that if you don’t agree with this agreement, you might as well turn around and say that you're against the yatra, because there's nothing in this that should give anybody a cause for concern.

Karan Thapar: So you totally support this agreement?

Omar Abdullah: Absolutely. There’s nothing in it.

Karan Thapar: And there is no difference between your and your father's position as many people in the Valley suspect?

Omar Abdullah: No, there isn't. I don’t believe there's any reason for it. In a sense, all you've done is put down on paper what has been happening for more than a hundred years, which is that this land is being used for the yatra for two months or one month a year and that is about it. You haven’t transferred the land, you haven’t sold the land and you haven’t diverted the land.

Karan Thapar: What is the difference between this agreement — which you, your father, and your party have endorsed — and the May 26 order of the Azad Government, which you objected to? Both are exactly identical in every way.

Omar Abdullah: The objection was to the perception of it, the objection was to the way in which the government sold that agreement to the people, the objection was to the way in which the government came out in two voices on that, and the confusion they created — that allowed no scope for us to support that agreement.

Karan Thapar: You said the objection was to the perception, the way it was sold and to the fact that the government spoke in multiple voices. Your objection wasn’t to the substance?

Omar Abdullah: If the substance was right, you wouldn’t have had a problem with the perception of it. The fact of the matter is that there was no clarity on the duration of the transfer of that land, no clarity on whether it was for temporary structures or permanent structures. The order talked about constructing railways, tunnels, road links and other facilities.

Karan Thapar: I’ve read that order. It explicitly said that this was for non-permanent structures and camping purposes only.

Omar Abdullah: If you go further down the order, you'll find that it says that in the event you construct roads, tunnels or railways, then the following earthworks and banking works has to be done.

Karan Thapar: But roads, runnels and railways will be for the benefit of the state. It wouldn’t be exclusive for either the shrine board or the Hindus going on the yatra.

Omar Abdullah: Why would you need a tunnel or a road in that area if you haven't needed on all this while? Why would you need it now?

Karan Thapar: Because presumably it helps communication?

Omar Abdullah: No. There is no communication in that area.

Omar Abdullah: Come back to what you said. You’re objection arose not so much from the substance so much as from the perception of it. Does the principal party involved in creating a misperception, if not a false perception, was your provincial president Mehboob Baig. He was the first person to claim the handing over of 40 hectares to the shrine board would change the demography of the state. How can the 'perception', trouble you? You created the perception?

Omar Abdullah: No, absolutely not. Mehboob Baig is not a prophet passing on a word handed down by god. He's an individual. If his words or perception of it was wrong, why was the government silent?

Karan Thapar: More importantly, why were you silent?

Omar Abdullah: No. We asked for questions and I am on record in a press conference having said that we are not worried about the change in demography because article 370 will not allow it.

Karan Thapar: But you didn't tell Mehboob Baig to shut up. You didn't contradict or correct him.

Omar Abdullah: I contradicted him. We corrected his perception in a press conference. After that Mehboob Baig didn't repeat that line. It's not our fault. It’s the PDP and the government of the day that started following this line.

Karan Thapar: Let me quote to you what your father at the Tehelka conference in London on June 27 said about those people who were creating and raising, what he considered to be a "forced bogey". He said, "Just to get political mileage we are ready to destroy everything that created us." He spoke passionately and angrily against the very people who were creating this bogey. They were members of his party, in fact, his own provincial president.

Omar Abdullah: The provincial president was dealt with. You heard this allegation from him once. That’s it.

Karan Thapar: What about the storm it created? The whole Valley turned around.

Omar Abdullah: I think this is being slightly unfair. The storm was created not because of Mehboob Baig. If Mehboob Baig were important enough to create this storm, he would be able to put this storm out. A government that had no business passing this order without doing the necessary homework and then not standing by the order created this storm.

Karan Thapar: It is very interesting that you excuse yourself for complicity. You have to make your provincial party president seem like a very unimportant man but leave that aside, he lit the fire. He started the flame.

Omar Abdullah: No. I don't believe so.

Karan Thapar: Don't believe so or don't want to believe so?

Omar Abdullah: No I don't believe so.

Karan Thapar: You know what people say? People say that National Conference tries to have it both ways. They wanted to benefit from the movement. They allowed Mehboob to get away with it, even though they knew what he was doing was not just errant nonsense but dangerous nonsense. Today, because they're a little bit embarrassed by it, they’ve distanced themselves from it.

Omar Abdullah: We distanced ourselves from it right then.

Karan Thapar: Not very loudly.

Omar Abdullah: No, loudly enough.

Karan Thapar: What do you mean loudly enough? Loudly enough would mean loud in Delhi but not to be heard in Srinagar?

Omar Abdullah: You can't speak and be heard in Delhi unless you're heard in Srinagar. You're more likely to be first heard in Srinagar than in Delhi.

Karan Thapar: No one in Srinagar remembers Omar Abdullah criticising Mehboob Baig. No on in Srinagar recalls that the National Conference was against the claim that demography would be changed by handing over 40 hectares.

Omar Abdullah: I think somebody needs to pull out the transcript of the press conference I had somewhere towards the end of June, around the same time my father was addressing the Tehelka press conference. You'll find on record, my having said that the change of demography is not the issue. It's the environmental concerns and the concerns with regard to the duration of the transfer.

Karan Thapar: People say that under Omar Abdullah as the national president of the National Conference, he pushed the party to an extreme position, even more extreme than his father would have wanted.

Omar Abdullah: No, I don’t think I pushed it to an extreme issue. If I had to push it to an extreme point, we would not have agreed to what has happened now. If I had to play extremist politics, I would have done what the PDP is doing.

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Karan Thapar: The National Conference is the only state party in Jammu and Kashmir that has substantial support both in the Valley and in Jammu. But by seeing this whole thing through Kashmiri eyes, you alienated your voters in Jammu without any appreciable gain in the Valley. Why?

Omar Abdullah: Absolutely not. It's not about politics. If it were about politics, I would have stood outside 7, Race Course Road, and done what Mehbooba and Mufti (Mohammad) Sayeed have done, which is to criticise this agreement. It's not about politics. It is about what is right. The initial order of the government was incorrect. It was incorrect in what it did and it was incorrect in how they sold it to the people.

Karan Thapar: But could you not have found another way of handling it rather than spark emotions that allowed Mehboob Baig to create confusion?

Omar Abdullah: I don't know why you make such a big thing about Mehboob Baig.

Karan Thapar: But he's your provincial party president even though you suggest that he’s incompetent.

Omar Abdullah: I didn't say he's incompetent. I didn't even suggest it. I just said he's entitled to his opinion, which was corrected both by the party patron and myself

Karan Thapar: People used to say that Abdullah family in Kashmir represents one of the saner, more balanced and restrained voices. Many people outside the Valley now look at you and say you played with politics. You endangered the whole nature and the character of Kashmir at a time when Kashmir was returning to normalcy. You may have damaged your personal image in the country.

Omar Abdullah: I'm not really concerned about that. I don't care what image people derive of me from time to time — one day it's good, the other day it's bad.

Karan Thapar: You mean to say you have no regrets about either your position or party’s position on this issue?

Omar Abdullah: I regret what the state went through.

Karan Thapar: You don’t think you played a very important part in what the state went through?

Omar Abdullah: I wish we had a better role to play in this. If we had, we wouldn’t have had allowed the state to reach where it did. It's unfortunate we weren’t in government to ensure that something like this didn't happen. We were bystanders in this.

Karan Thapar: NSA has said that he doesn’t believe that the situation in Kashmir is either a bad as the press make out or as bad as 1990. Do you accept that?

Omar Abdullah: It’s bad. The difference between now and 1990 is that there are no guns and, to that extent, I think the NSA is right when he says it’s not as bad as the 1990s because in the 1990s people like myself and my party colleague we were all fleeing. But I think he’s being a little careful in assessing the actual mood of the people because the size of the protests that you saw in Kashmir, I rethink should give him more cause for concern than he's publicly stating.

Karan Thapar: How close to alienation are the people?

Omar Abdullah: What more do you want to see when the children in class X, XI and XII from good English missionary schools are out on top of buses screaming, "Hum kya chahte hai? Azaadi. Kashmir banega Pakistan (What do we want? Independence? Kashmir will be a part of Pakistan." That I think is an indication of alienation.

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Karan Thapar: Is there a clear ISI hand discernible behind these mass protests?

Omar Abdullah: I don’t see it. If the ISI were capable of doing this, why would they have turned it off for the last 15 years?

Karan Thapar: So what happened was a spontaneous protest?

Omar Abdullah: What happened was a spontaneous eruption, arising out of the fear, which the economic blockade brought into people's minds. Let's not forget that even in the worst of times like 1991 and1992 never was there an effort made to economically cut off Kashmir from the rest of the country. This is the first time it happened and it sparked off the reaction. That's all.

Karan Thapar: If it was spontaneous then it's actually much worse because then it means it was an upwelling (sic) of peoples' pent up simmering anger.

Omar Abdullah: Yes.

Karan Thapar: And that means to say that that the anger continues even if today it can't be heard?

Omar Abdullah: Yes.

Karan Thapar: Which means it could happen all over again?

Omar Abdullah: We have always been saying that. Kashmir is essentially a political issue. It needs political handling. It's not good enough that you give Rs 24-crore economic reconstruction package or that you announce all sorts of confidence building measures.

Karan Thapar: The NSA last week also said that between seven and 10 days, Kashmir would return to normalcy. Since then seven days have passed. Is Kashmir on the brink of normalcy or is he deceiving himself?

Omar Abdullah: It depends on what you want to conclude from the term normalcy. If normalcy for you means that you don’t have lakhs of people protesting on the streets, then yes, Kashmir is normal. But if normalcy for you means that the anger or the resentment has been done away with, people are back and participating in the political process, then perhaps no, we're nowhere near normal.

Karan Thapar: And if you're nowhere near normal then that anger continues, and it could blow up — without anyone realising — just as quickly as it did the last time.

Omar Abdullah: If we have another spark like this or an economic blockage, sure I won't be surprised.

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Karan Thapar: For many people, a test of normalcy is the ability to hold elections. Do you think in the present situation, elections can be held so that a new assembly can be constituted by January 2009?

Omar Abdullah: I believe you can have elections. I believe it is important to hold elections because at the end of the day, even the best governor's rule is no substitute for the worst representative government. That having been said we missed a great opportunity to hold a really good election in Jammu and Kashmir a few days ago. I think Ghulam Nabi Azad was interested in prolonging the life of his government by announcing a few populist measures.

Karan Thapar: But you're still saying to me that the election are still possible in October or November, weather permitting?

Omar Abdullah: We've had elections in much worse circumstances — 1996, 1998, 1999 and even 2002. 2002, the ground situation was much worse militancy wise.

Karan Thapar: It has been announced that after the next elections, if the NC is in a position to form a government, your father would be the Chief Minsiter, but given that he deliberately stepped aside from state politics in 2002 and you had taken over as the national president of the party, why would he be the CM?

Omar Abdullah: That’s a question we have pondered over and we believe that under the circumstancesthat prevail in the state perhaps the experience that he has…

Karan Thapar: Was this decision taken by your father or by you?

Omar Abdullah: It was taken jointly.

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Karan Thapar: Is there a message here that as far as your age is concerned, you're not ready and perhaps not qualified to be the CM?

Omar Abdullah: In our country, we equate age with wisdom. We haven’t reached a point where we have 42 or 44-year-old candidates for vice president or president.

Karan Thapar: But you had a 40-year-old PM Rajiv Gandhi?

Omar Abdullah: Circumstances were very different then.

Karan Thapar: You mean to say Omar Abdullah is not as qualified as Rajiv Gandhi?

Omar Abdullah: I don’t think qualification has much to do with it in this country.

Karan Thapar: Recently, you said that amongst the many issues that have been debated, it's quite possible that azaadi should be included in that list, yet at the same time, you also said that independence is not a viable option for Kashmir.

Omar Abdullah: I was asked in the light of column report, asking me what were the possible solutions that could be talked about. The reporter, who did this interview, kind of needled me and said, "Well, you only have one suggestion, isn't it? Autonomy?" I said, "No, you can go beyond autonomy, if India and Pakistan are willing to discuss a solution other than autonomy. Who's to stop them?" At the same time, I said that I did not believe that independence for Kashmir was a feasible or a viable option, and I stand by that.

Karan Thapar: The independence is not a feasible option?

Omar Abdullah: I believe you can give Kashmir independence but not freedom under the circumstances that prevail within the subcontinent with India, Pakistan and China . Even if India and Pakistan were somehow to decide to give the state independence, it would never really be free.

Karan Thapar: You're saying this in Delhi. Would you say it in Srinagar?

Omar Abdullah: I've said it. The interview I gave, where they conveniently missed out this bit, was given in Srinagar.

Karan Thapar: So from time to time, reporters mischievously pluck out things like that?

Omar Abdullah: I would like to believe that your programme would be seen in Srinagar as well. We have made this very clear that we believe that autonomy within the Constitution, both on this side of Kashmir and the other side of Kashmir, is the most viable solution.

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Karan Thapar: Except that with hundreds and thousands of Kashmiris having come out onto the streets of Kashmir demanding azaadi now, and for you to turn around and say that independence is not a viable option is to put yourself in opposition to their feelings.

Omar Abdullah: Be that as it may. It's not my job to follow popular mood. It’s my job to tell the people what I believe is in their interest. And I sincerely believe that it is not in their interests. It is not a viable alternative to suggest that azaadi or even accession to Pakistan.

Karan Thapar: If you can take such a clear stand on this issue today, could you not have taken a similarly clear stand on the way emotions were whipped on May 26. You could have so much trouble. On May 26, all you had to do was to sit back and say, ‘Mr Azad, you handle this badly…’.

Omar Abdullah: We warned Mr Azad long before this. My father had a press conference well before May 26 when he said this needed to be handled better and differently, that one needed to take into account the fears and the way in which this is being interpreted. Unfortunately, nobody took us seriously at the time.

Karan Thapar: Many people say that in 2005-2006 when General Musharraf was in power and in a position to deliver, India lost an amazing opportunity to sort out Kashmir with him. You want to respond to that view?

Omar Abdullah: I don’t know if you remember but I went to Pakistan in March 2006 and the first interview I did when I came back was in a discussion with you and I said we won’t have an opportunity like this. I also told you the door was closing. It won’t remain open forever and unless we grab the opportunity, we would lose it and it could be the only opportunity of my generation.

Karan Thapar: And we’ve lost it?

Omar Abdullah: We’ve lost it. It’s gone

Karan Thapar: Do you hold the UPA government primarily responsible for letting that opportunity slip out of its grasp?

Omar Abdullah: They were the government of the day at that time and I sincerely believe they could have gone further. I know NSA has said we have two-thirds and three-thirds cooked solutions that need a statesman in Pakistan to reach its logical conclusion. Unfortunately, we shouldn’t have left the two-thirds or three-fourths uncooked. We should have cooked them, signed and sealed them when Musharraf was there.

Karan Thapar: In the hindsight, was it lack of conviction or lack of guts?

Omar Abdullah: Lack of trust. We couldn’t separate General Musharraf from the man who was instrumental in Kargil and that clouded our judgement severely.

Karan Thapar: And this is a serious mistake we are going to live to rue.

Omar Abdullah: We are living to rue it now. Had we worked at a solution with Pakistan in 2006-2007, you wouldn’t have seen Kashmir like this in 2008.

Karan Thapar: You think this opportunity will come our way again? You think Asif Zardari as President – which he could be – will give us this opportunity?

Omar Abdullah: I am sure Asif Zardari will be president. But Asif Zardari will not ne powerful. Asif Zardari will still have an army to deal with, he will still have an establishment to deal with, he will still have Nawaz Sharif to deal with, he will still have a judiciary that can’t decide.

Karan Thapar: So Musharraf was an opportunity to make history in Kashmir?

Omar Abdullah: Musharraf was a single-window system, so to speak that we had to deal with in Pakistan. That window is gone.

Karan Thapar: And India funked it?

Omar Abdullah: We funked it. All of us. We all played a part in that.

Karan Thapar: Omar Abdullah, a pleasure talking to you.