Separatist outfit publishes Afzal Guru's diaries, triggers controversy in J&K

Seven months after his execution, parliament house attack case convict Afzal Guru’s purported jail house diaries have stirred a hornet’s nest in the restive Jammu and Kashmir.

The National Front, a major separatist organisation here, has compiled the diary entries into a 94-page book in Urdu  and  published it under with the title ‘Ahle Imaan Ke Naam Shaheed Mohammad Afzal Guru Ka Aakhri Paigam’. According to the NF, more than 5,000 copies of the book were printed and circulated.

In his diary, Guru has described the slain Jaish-e-Mohammad commander Gaazi Baba, the mastermind of 2001 Parliament attack, as a “martyr”.

Guru has also called for renewed “Jihad against India” and eulogized Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Umar as “Ameer-ul-Momineen” (leader of the faithful).

“Jihad-e-Kashmir has become indispensable…For Muslims there are only two options, either jihad or migration. Migration is not possible because there is not Madina here….. So only option is jihad... Even praying for Jihad is a jihad…” reads the translation of the excerpts of the diaries.

“Deen (Islam) is the fountainhead of our struggle. Animals also fight for rice, grass and other needs... Islam was the basic motivation for the martyrs like Maqbool Bhat, Ishfaq Majid Wani, Gaazi Baba et all…” it further says.

The book was released at a function attended by Guru’s brother Aijaz Guru on Tuesday. However,  Guru’s wife and son, Tabasum and Ghalib, were not present at the function held in a local hotel in Srinagar.

“They (Tabasum and Ghalib) are media shy therefore they could not come. But they were in loop. Besides,  his relatives were there,” Nayeem Ahmad Khan, chairman of NF. “We are not selling the book. We have decided to distribute it in the relevant quarters.

We had published 5,000 copies and all of them have been circulated,” said Khan.

The book has triggered a storm, with the Bhartiya Janta Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the BJP, demanding a ban on the book.

“It is a conspiracy against India. I demand that a book that says such negative things and provokes people must be banned. It is these people who have turned Kashmir into a graveyard,” said Ravinder Raina, president of BJYM.