Islam and Politics
Jammu and Kashmir: Mandate for secular democracy
Editorial in The Hindu, 29 Dec 2008
Early in August, as his jeep wound its way through the piles of burning tyres that angry protestors had used to barricade the road from Srinagar airport into the city, former Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, 72, turned to a journalist sitting next to him with a smile on his face. “So,” he said, “are you here to write another article about how I don’t know how to run a government?” More likely than not, Dr. Abdullah’s leadership — or that of Jammu & Kashmir National Conference president, his son Omar Abdullah — will soon be put to the test. Having emerged as the single largest party in the J&K Assembly, with 28 seats in a house of 87, the National Conference has the undeniable right to form and lead the government. To do so, however, it will need the support of the Congress, which has picked up 17 seats. In 2002, the Congress joined hands with the People’s Democratic Party to form a government, and some in New Delhi would like to see the arrangement revived. But the party’s rank-and-file in the State are hostile to an alliance with the PDP, arguing that its religious-chauvinist politics and ‘soft separatism’ are unacceptable to their constituents. Battered by the violence unleashed in the wake of the PDP’s decision to pull out of the alliance after land-use rights were granted to the Shri Amarnath-ji Shrine, few in the State Congress have any desire to revive the relationship.
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1:01 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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