The gunning down of five civilians by army men after the mysterious molestation of a young girl in broad daylight and the unending curfew highlight the grim reality confronting Mehbooba Mufti who has just been sworn in as the first woman Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir.
To be sure, Mufti is not India’s first Muslim woman CM; feisty Syeda Anwara Taimur walked away with that honor way back in 1980 when she ruled over Assam. But there is no denying that Mufti today faces the biggest challenge of her political career spanning two decades. The ground is fast slipping beneath her feet. Evidently, she is not in the same class as Mamata Banerjee, J. Jayalalitha or Mayawati who have a knack for giving all their male adversaries a bloody nose.
The inexperienced Mufti proved that she is her biggest enemy by keeping the chief ministership — which was hers for the asking — on hold for three months! Her father, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, passed away on Jan. 7 within 10 months of becoming the CM last year after his People’s Democratic Party (PDP) cut an unexpected power-sharing deal with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which nominated Nirmal Kumar Singh as the deputy CM.
But after her father’s demise, she stubbornly refused to be sworn in as CM despite the BJP and PDP exhorting her to sit on the throne — a blunder she will rue for a long time. Her naivety led to President’s rule giving Gov. Narinder Nath Vohra a free hand to run the “orphan” state.
A grieving daughter is perfectly entitled to four, 14 or even 40 days of mourning. But three months? Obviously, she was trying to extract concessions from PM Modi and Amit Shah to bolster her image before the coronation. She hinted at confidence-building measures to win over the Kashmiri people but what Mufti really wanted was Modi and Shah to publicly repose their faith in her.
Mufti thought that by playing hard to get, she would get what she wanted — a lengthy proclamation in New Delhi that India was blessed to have someone like her govern a province that two nuclear powers have been fighting over since their birth.
But that didn’t happen. In the battle of wits between soft separatism and hard Hindutva, the latter had the last laugh because Mufti had overestimated her importance and underestimated the BJP’s self-confidence. The certificates and citations she craved for didn’t materialize. And what’s worse is that while she shunned power and refused to form a government and head it, Gov. Vohra did an excellent job administering the troubled state.
Now Mufti must tame two political parties, which have realized in the last three months that she lacks depth and maturity. And it’s not only the BJP; her own PDP has ambitious leaders who think they are more capable than her. In such a scenario, BJP is bound to fan dissidence to undermine her position and boost its own bargaining power.
After wasting so much precious time, she must pull up her socks and get down to the business of governance on a war footing. And she must realize once and for all that Modi or Shah will not oblige her by announcing a time frame for the implementation of the Agenda of Alliance the PDP and BJP had rustled up when they got together after the fractured mandate in the 2014 assembly elections. Because such a commitment — or even releasing the economic development package Modi had pledged while campaigning — will cost the BJP politically not only in the Hindu-dominated Jammu region but across India.
The BJP has no qualms about betraying the PDP or Kashmiris. But before Mufti accuses BJP of treachery, she must mull over the PDP’s moral culpability. Didn’t her father betray Kashmiris by forging an alliance with the anti-Kashmiri and anti-Muslim BJP for the sake of power marginalizing the National Conference? Did she try to stop her father?
