BOOK: The Chief Minister and the Spy: An Unlikely Friendship
Author: A.S. Dulat
Publisher: Juggernaut
Pages: 312
Price: ₹ 799
While Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah was grooming Farooq to take over the reins of his party in 1981, he told his son: ‘Remember one thing - politics is jumping into the Jhelum and swimming against the tide.’
In his memoir ‘A Life in the Shadows’ published in 2022, A.S. Dulat makes an interesting claim and says that ‘instead of swimming against the tide, Farooq decided to go with the flow.’
Dismissed on August 9, 1953, Sheikh Abdullah, the then Prime Minister of the state of Jammu and Kashmir would go on to spend 22 long years in prison. What do great leaders do when they are put behind bars? Nehru had an interesting answer. Citing German Philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, Nehru stated that jail for him was like a grave and “only where there are graves are there resurrections.” He ended up writing all his three books inside the jail. Like all great leaders, the prison years shaped the politics of both Sheikh Abdullah and Jawaharlal Nehru.
In his recent book ‘The Chief Minister and the Spy: An Unlikely Friendship’, A.S. Dulat quotes a speech Farooq Abdullah delivered at Lal Chowk on June 28, 1989, which offers a counterview to Nehru’s opinion about jail.
“If you have in mind someone who ends up in jail, you can count me out. I am the last person to like being jailed. I like to play golf. What am I going to do in jail? You may suggest that I read books to while away time, but I would not like to do that because reading puts pressure on my eyes,” Farooq said, as quoted in Dulat’s book (Page: 18-19).
The speech distinctly highlights the contradiction in the political philosophies of Sheikh Abdullah and Farooq Abdullah. It is even more clear in the ways the father and the son conducted their politics with Delhi.
Sheikh’s relationship with Delhi was mostly confrontational, till 1974 when he finally caved in, but as Dulat suggests in his new book, “Farooq was in politics to work with Delhi, not against it.” (Page: 204).
It's this distinction that has made all the difference. The only time Delhi detained Farooq Abdullah was in the aftermath of the abrogation of Article 370 and because of this detention, says Dulat, “Farooq was terribly hurt.”
He goes on to say in what has become the most controversial paragraph in the book that “Just as the BJP had never hidden its intentions towards Kashmir as far as Article 370 was concerned, so, too, had Farooq been extremely open about his willingness to work with Delhi. Maybe, he said, the NC could even have had the proposal passed in the legislative assembly in Jammu and Kashmir. ‘We would have helped,’ he told me when I met him in 2020. ‘Why were we not taken into confidence?”
Many political analysts are of the opinion that the BJP led government at the Centre is more inclined to work with Omar, instead of Farooq, and this book by A.S. Dulat is an attempt to keep Farooq relevant at the Centre. They opine that if Farooq is relevant at the Centre, so is Dulat.
The book contributes to the narrative that holds the two political dynasties responsible for Kashmir’s ongoing distress. People in Kashmir often derive pleasure if any of them loses an election, There is a certain public gratification over the humiliation of these leaders and that’s what we witnessed with Farooq Abdullah turning out to be the epicentre of the controversies shrouding this book.
At the same time, the people are also aware of a history of all exercises managed from New Delhi having political overtones. Thus, they are equally conscious of the political implications of this book and question whether an ex-spy – a part of the bureaucracy – should be relied upon to judge their own leaders.
This book might, for some time, raise questions on the political standing of Farooq Abdullah in Kashmir but as has always been, the people of Kashmir would not take any of his statements at face value. They know that most of the time he does not mean what he says.
The seriousness of Dulat’s book will also come into question. Sample this anecdote in the book where Dulat quotes Mehbooba Mufti’s daughter, Iltija, one of the most vocal critics of National Conference, attesting to Farooq being the ‘tallest’ and ‘nicest’ leader in Kashmir.
(Saleem Rashid Shah is a researcher and a book critic based in Kashmir)
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