There is a deeper lesson pertaining to Kashmir politics to be taken from the shameful scenes witnessed in the J&K Assembly in Srinagar on Monday — that politicians in the Valley can’t resist the temptation of making the trivial seem critical. When high-voltage drama is unleashed at the drop of a hat, it becomes impossible to tell the wheat from the chaff, and the important issues of the day get buried under a mound of patently cooked-up allegations aimed at unsettling the existing political order.
The sorry events in the legislature were a side-show in the wider scheme of things. It has to be said, nevertheless, that Speaker Akbar Lone had no business hurling abuses of a personal nature at Maulvi Iftikhar Ansari, who is with the Opposition PDP these days and is deemed a spiritual leader of the minority Shia community. Although Maulvi Iftikhar, otherwise a mild-mannered man, reacted by hurling a pedestal fan in the direction of the Speaker and is deserving of chastisement, it is clear enough that the showering of invective on a minority religious personage has rendered the present Speaker unsuitable for that august office.
As for the controversy in question, from which the shenanigans in the legislature arose, chief minister Omar Abdullah has already forwarded the matter to a sitting high court judge for inquiry. It appears a supporter of the ruling National Conference, who allegedly takes money from the gullible on the promise of getting them into high positions through his special contacts, showed up at the chief minister’s residence and was handed over to the police for investigation. Unfortunately, the man died in police custody. The official version is that he sustained a massive heart attack, but the dead man’s family claims he was tortured and killed because “he knew too much”.
The PDP, the principal Opposition party in the state, has raised a storm and accuses the chief minister and his father, Union minister Farooq Abdullah, of being “party to murder”. This is preposterous and irresponsible. It is doubtless designed to make the chief minister look weak at a time when he couldn’t get a resolution in the Assembly through to save Afzal Guru from the gallows. This is petty politics at its worst.