India's National Magazine
From the publishers of THE HINDU

Vol. 15 :: No. 25 :: Dec. 05 - 18, 1998

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THE STATES

A break with the past

PRAVEEN SWAMI

WARRING Jamaat-e-Islami factions in Kashmir appear headed for a fateful showdown, one which could transform the State's politics. On November 14, Jamaat-e-Islami chief Ghulam Mohammad Bhat proclaimed his party's decision to sunder all links with terrorist groups, specifically with the Hizbul Mujahideen. This dramatic announcement has enraged Bhat's major rival in the Jamaat-e-Islami hierarchy, All-Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC) chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani. The APHC chief, who also heads the political wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami, claimed that the Jamaat-e-Islami chief did not have the support of his party's cadres and reiterated his "full support for the armed struggle".

Ghulam Mohammad Bhat's press conference focussed on attacks on Jamaat-e-Islami cadres by security personnel and pro-India militia groups. Over 2,000 Jamaat-e-Islami workers, he claimed, had been murdered as part of a "systematic campaign to finish our party". This policy, he continued, was profoundly misplaced, for the Jamaat-e-Islami had "nothing to do with militancy". "If a picture showing (Hizbul Mujahideen chief) Syed Salahuddin shaking hands with Pakistan's Jamaat-e-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed is published, the fault does not lie with us," he complained. "We are being made scapegoats in this game of politics."

NISSAR AHMED
Ghulam Mohammad Bhat (in black) and other Jamaat-e-Islami leaders at a meeting.

The Jamaat-e-Islami chief's remarks were endorsed by three senior leaders of the organisation who shared the platform. All four of them sought to legitimise their departure from the Jamaat-e-Islami's position through reference to its constitution, which has remained a secret one so far. This document, Ghulam Mohammad Bhat said, committed the organisation to working for the spread of Islam and universal brotherhood through peaceful means. The party, he said, had contested the elections of 1987 as a constituent of the Muslim United Front. Had those elections not been rigged, he argued, Kashmir's recent history would have been "very different". In any case, he concluded, the Jamaat-e-Islami would now seek to resolve the crisis in Kashmir through "amicable means".

Syed Ali Shah Geelani responded acidly to these assertions. Ghulam Mohammad Bhat's claims to have spoken for the entire Jamaat-e-Islami, he said in a statement, were "far from true". "I strongly refute and contradict the views expressed by Bhat at the press conference," Geelani proclaimed. He said that the Jamaat-e-Islami was involved in backing insurgent groups and would continue to support the armed struggle. "I want to make it clear," the APHC chief said in a statement, "that I have all along and at every level differed with the policy being pursued by the Jamaat chief." He went on: "I made my differences known to Bhat from time to time through letters. If the need arises, my communication on this issue with the Jamaat chief can be released."

SUCH public disputation of the authority of the Amir-e-Jamaat (as the Jamaat-e-Islami chief is known) is unprecedented. However, it is clear that a confrontation had been brewing since at least November last year, when Ghulam Mohammad Bhat called for an end to Kashmir's "gun culture". The remark was made in the course of an interview to a Srinagar-based magazine, shortly after he was released from jail and elected Jamaat-e-Islami chief. He had argued that although he believed that the armed struggle was itself legitimate, it was a response to a specific phase in the secessionist movement and had now "served its purpose". The only way to an end to violence in Kashmir, he asserted, was a "political dialogue".

M. LAKSHMANAN
All-Party Hurriyat Conference leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani.

Jamaat-e-Islami factions wanting to sever links with the Hizbul Mujahideen have transparent motivations. Although officials deny that political activists of the Jamaat-e-Islami have been targeted, many of them who were found to have aided terrorists have been eliminated. Field cadres of the organisation, too, have been subject to the State's wrath. From as early as October 1997, Jamaat-e-Islami workers in Kulgam have sought to make their peace with the Army by participating in local official functions. "Our affiliation with the Hizbul Mujahideen brought us no tangible benefits," says one Kulgam rukun (Jamaat-e-Islami worker). "It only meant that the Jamaat, though the ban on it expired in 1992, was unable to work for its real ideological and religious objectives."

The Hizbul Mujahideen itself has shown signs of realising that its relationship with the field workers of the Jamaat-e-Islami is increasingly fragile. With effective control of the Hizbul Mujahideen having passed from the Jamaat-e-Islami leadership to Pakistan's intelligence apparatus, strains between the two have been accentuated. In May, Salahuddin, himself a Jamaat-e-Islami member, issued a statement from his Muzaffarabad headquarters, distancing the armed organisation from the party. "Among its thousands of freedom fighters," Salahuddin's statement read, "there is a good number of young liberators who were born to parents owing affiliation to the National Conference and other political organisations." It added: "It is unfortunate that our scope of affiliation is restricted to the Jamaat-e-Islami."

How far Ghulam Mohammad Bhat's application of the cleaver to the Jamaat-e-Islami's links with the Hizbul Mujahideen will succeed, however, remains to be seen. Much will depend on his ability to find mainstream political patronage. In the 1997 Lok Sabha elections, Jamaat-e-Islami workers received instructions to campaign for the Congress(I)'s Mufti Mohammed Sayeed in Anantnag, a sign perhaps of an alliance to come. On November 19, Bijbehara MLA and Mufti Mohammed Sayeed's daughter Mehbooba Mufti condemned the alleged killings of Jamaat-e-Islami workers by the Army and the Special Operations Group of the State police and demanded that the Union Government "end its bullet-for-bullet policy and initiate a dialogue with the people of Kashmir."

While Ghulam Mohammad Bhat's position reflects his desire to save the Jamaat-e-Islami from annihilation, there are several challenges before it. For one, sources told Frontline, the Jamaat-e-Islami chief has already received far from subtle warnings from the Hizbul Mujahideen leadership. Then, Ghulam Mohammad Bhat will have to explain to his core constituency just why the Jamaat-e-Islami led Kashmir into a 10-year conflict in the first place. Above all, Ghulam Mohammad Bhat will have to be able to establish his authority in the organisation, both through expulsions of Jamaat-e-Islami workers found to be backing terrorists and by acting to end Geelani's influence. Should he prove able to do so, Kashmir's most important secessionist grouping could be entering mainstream politics in the very near future.