Politics of Confinement: Why has Mehbooba Mufti abandoned the healing touch policy that her father instituted?

In 2005, two years after the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had defeated the National Conference to claim power in Jammu and Kashmir, I was returning to Srinagar from North Kashmir’s apple-rich town of Sopore. The driver of the eight seater TATA sumo quipped, “haalaat Kashmir mein bohot theek hogayee hai” (“the situation has improved in Kashmir a lot”). When I asked the basis of his observation, he innocently pointed out that he could now overtake Army vehicles with ease, while plying on the busy Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road. He did so to my delight and at some places waved to soldiers who were either guarding the road or boarding vehicles with their packed baggage, probably leaving for holidays to support his argument.  

For years, villages in South Kashmir had to observe blackout. In winters, villages would go dark as early as at 5pm, making it almost impossible for children to do their homework. Chief Minister Mufti Sayeed in consultation with then 15 Corps Commander Lt General VG Patankar ended this practice and allowed villages to light up lamps or to switch to electricity bulbs. After years of turbulence, people on the ground had a whiff of fresh air. In 2014, when the PDP returned to power after a gap of nine years, people believed hope would return once again. But soon realised it was a different PDP.

In order to survive in power, CM Mehbooba Mufti brought back the ‘brutal face’ of the State, dumping the ‘healing touch’ policy coined by her father in his first tenure. Her handling of the first bloodbath of her tenure has  shocked even her most ardent supporters. Many concluded that she followed the script of her political nemesis, Omar Abdullah by blocking Internet access. Like Abdullah Jr, Mufti Jr also adopted the politics of confinement.
The mainstream political camp in Kashmir, which includes the National Conference (NC), is plagued by a peculiar predicament, managing public sentiments to seek votes and then keeping rulers and agencies in Delhi happy to continue in power. NC patron Dr Farooq Abdullah owes his successful political career to having mastered skills of combining deception and contradictions.

His arch rival Mufti was perhaps the only politician who had attempted to nurture a true Indian constituency in Kashmir. To counter him even the towering Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah during the ’60s went to the extent of supervising social boycotts of political activists who had aligned with national parties. But Mufti’s daughter seems to have stolen the Abdullah formula to power in Srinagar.

In 2010, during street protests that saw killing of 120 youth, Mehbooba as Leader of Opposition was charging Omar Abdullah with failing  to connect with the people. In 2016, in the aftermath of the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Muzaffar, the disconnect has deepened such that over the past five months, none of her MLAs has been able to visit their constituencies.

The dichotomy between Mehbooba Mufti as a leader of the Opposition and Mehbooba Mufti as Chief Minister stands exposed.

In Opposition, her concern for human rights, soft corner for separatists, and fiery speeches on “battle of ideas” and ‘Goli nahin, Boli se’ (Not through bullets, but dialogue) won her many admirers. But within two months, that image has been completely tarnished.