“For our party power is only a means to achieve the goal (read autonomous status) and not an end itself. The National Conference (NC) will take it if it suits public interest and kick it if it does not”. So said Sheikh Mustafa Kamal, NC additional general secretary and uncle of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s on April 16 while addressing party workers in Rajouri (Jammu).

Earlier on March 30, Omar Abdullah too made an almost identical statement. He said it would be politically unwise for him to leave the government and UPA at this point in time and operate as other Kashmiri leaders had been operating; that his being at the helm of affairs would help him extract from New Delhi as many concessions as possible.

Both statements establish that the NC wants to remain in power not to serve the people and the State by focusing on issues of governance, but to accomplish its most cherished goal of autonomous status for Jammu & Kashmir, or a status that would help it de-link the State from India in no time. NC president and Union Minister Farooq Abdullah also demanded autonomous status for the State on April 7, but he did not say what his son and brother said on March 30 and April 16.             

Jammu & Kashmir State is strategically very crucial to the Indian State. In fact, the very unity and integrity of the nation depends on this part of the country. Indeed, should Jammu and Kashmir go out, the country would wither away, so important is it for India. Yet apart from China and Pakistan, almost all the Kashmiri parties have been working overtime to achieve their stated goal of separation of Jammu & Kashmir from India and the dismemberment of India. Their goals are two and not one, and it is too well-known.

The Kashmir parties are operating from different platforms and supplementing each others’ efforts in their own way. They are working in complete unison. They do sometimes make statements against each other, but it is basically part of the strategy they have diligently evolved to push forward the break-India agenda. The hard fact is that it is free for all in the Kashmir Valley.

No one in the National Conference-Congress controlled administration is willing to even pretend to stem the rot in the Valley and check those who have been abusing the Indian State and targeting its symbols for years. There are reports that armed militants are roaming about freely in parts of the Valley, including the city of Srinagar, the summer capital of the State.

There are reports that certain elements in the administration are at the beck and call of a particular anti-India religious group called “Allahwalle”, which has been organising meetings across the Valley with a view to preparing the ground for a “final assault”. Reports even suggest that elements in the civil and police establishment have been facilitating their activities. This group of fanatics is particularly active among the Kashmiri youth and is preaching the Wahabi brand of Islam.        

The situation has turned so alarming and dangerous that it is difficult to predict what is in store for the nation. This is not to suggest that things in the Valley have worsened only recently. Things in Kashmir were never inspiring and reassuring. The vested interests in Kashmir under the inspiration of Pakistan always kept the pot boiling on one mischievous pretext or the other. They never allowed the gullible Kashmiri Muslims belonging to one particular religious sect, which has been ruling the State since October 1947, to join the national mainstream. They consistently poisoned their ears against the otherwise exceptionally generous India. To be more exact, they took Indian generosity as a sign of weakness and gave fillip after fillip to the anti-India movement in Kashmir.     

It is, however, true that the situation in the Valley was never so alarming and frightening as it has been since February 28, 2013, when the budget session of the state legislature commenced. Instead of making optimum use of the session and adopting people and state-centric legislations, the ruling party, backed to the hilt by the Congress, used the floor of the Assembly to attack New Delhi and create confusion in the minds of the Kashmiri people about the status of Jammu & Kashmir within India. Leave aside the NC’s highly questionable stand on the lawfully hanged Afzal Guru (convicted in the Parliament attack case) and its dangerous surrender and rehabilitation policy vis-à-vis the arrest of a Pakistani terrorist of Kashmir origin, Liaquat Ali Shah, on March 20 in Gorakhpur district of Uttar Pradesh.

The NC misused its official position on the floor of the Assembly to the extent that it ridiculed even the Indian Parliament, which had on March 15 passed a unanimous resolution on Jammu & Kashmir, reiterating that “it is and shall always be an integral part of India”. The NC said that those who termed the State an integral part of India had no place in its scheme of things. This happened on March 25. The Congress of “termites” and its UPA Government did not question the NC. It allowed the NC leadership to go scot-free as before.

No wonder that the NC has intensified its campaign against India. The NC leadership feels that now is the time to strike and achieve what it failed to during all these years of the State’s lawful accession to India. The UPA Government is weak and the NC leadership believes that it can persuade the Prime Minister and his ilk in the Congress to grant autonomous status to the State. It is, however, a different matter that Mustafa Kamal dismisses the Congress as the “Congress of deceit and treachery”.