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Loved or loathed, late Sheikh still relevant
Tuesday December 06, 2011 10:36:31 AM,
Sheikh Abdul Qayoom,
IANS
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Srinagar:
Even as the state government organised many functions to remember
legendary leader Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah on his 106th birth
anniversary Monday, the man who galvanised Kashmiris against
autocratic rule, giving them a sense of pride, is little
remembered by the younger generations today.
The magic and charisma of the man who singlehandedly withstood the
tide of communal fires in the subcontinent has remained restricted
to the older generations while the youth just remember the late
Sheikh as someone who facilitated the state's accession to India.
Kashmir Valley was the only place in the subcontinent that did not
witness a single communal riot in the wake of the country's
partition in 1947 because of the secular vision given by the
Sheikh.
The politics of Hindu-Muslim unity was something Dogra Maharaja
Hari Singh could not handle except by imprisoning the 'Lion of
Kashmir for extolling his people to freedom from the yoke of
slavery and penury'.
Second to none in the secular politics of India, the Sheikh today
is a largely betrayed man - sometimes by his own colleagues and
sometimes by the inheritors of his legacy, both of whom have
miserably failed the vision the man had given to his people.
His most remarkable contribution, besides giving Kashmiris a sense
of pride, has been the landmark agrarian reforms which gave the
proprietary rights of land to peasants. Till then, they tilled
those lands on behalf of absentee landlords.
Sheikh's agrarian reforms, the first of their kind in India,
brought in 1950, are still to be matched in their sweeping
empowerment of landless tillers who became masters of their own
destiny.
Little wonder the Sheikh ruled the hearts and minds of his people
till the very end of his life in 1982. When he died, more than a
million mourners participated in his burial on the banks of the
Dal Lake in Srinagar adjacent to the Hazratbal shrine.
Much water has flowed down the Jhelum since, and the charisma of
the Sheikh is little remembered by the youth today, but a more
popular leader is yet to be produced by Kashmir.
He may be eulogised or cursed for acceding to secular India
against the rationale of the Two Nation Theory that saw the
country divided into two with millions losing life and home, but
the Sheikh continues to remain relevant to the politics and ethos
of Kashmir.
Despite his detractors, the over six feet tall, Karakul wearing
man of Kashmir politics continues to be loved and loathed 29 years
after his death.
The party (Regional National Conference) he founded might be a far
cry from what it was during his lifetime, the inheritors of his
legacy, both son Farooq Abdullah and grandson, Chief Minister Omar
Abdullah, might have failed the charisma, yet the late Sheikh
continues to remain the referral point on Kashmir politics.
(Sheikh Abdul Qayoom can be contacted at sheikh.abdul@ians.in)
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