Militants are killing BJP workers to keep the focus on separatism
Soon after the killing of Apni Party leader Ghulam Hassan Lone in south Kashmir’s Kulgam district on August 19, the party’s block president Sameer Ahmad Khan took to social media to announce his resignation from the party. “I have nothing to do with politics anymore. I apologise. I should be forgiven. I have resigned from Apni Party and have no connection with any other party,” Khan said in his video message.
It’s a familiar script in the Kashmir Valley. Since 1990, around 7,000 National Conference workers have been killed. A number of PDP workers too have been killed since the party’s foundation in 1999. Since the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019, at least 23 BJP workers have been killed, eight of them in Kulgam district alone. The killings have created fear among party workers, leading to some resignations.
According to BJP leader Sofi Yousuf, his party is being targeted not just because of its growing footprint in the Valley, but also due to its leading role in the discourse of national integration and development, including propagation of the benefits of the abrogation of Article 370. “In the past, they killed a large number of National Conference and PDP workers, and now they are after the BJP as Pakistan does not like the new discourse of change. So long as there is militancy, these killings (of political workers) will continue,” says Sofi.
The BJP leader also alleges that statements by former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti have incited violence against his party. “When she says Taliban has defeated America and warns the government that the Indian Army has to leave Kashmir, it sends the message that the BJP is the only hurdle,” he says. In her speech in Kulgam on August 21, Mehbooba asked the government to see how the “mighty Americans” had to flee Afghanistan, and called for dialogue and reconciliation as the “gun is no solution”.
According to Ghulam Hassan Mir, a senior leader of Apni Party, assassination of political leaders is part of tactics to keep Kashmir’s narrative around separatism and ‘azadi’. Mir says the recent killings are aimed at silencing a political thought, which has been considered unthinkable in Kashmir so far. “Killing political workers or anyone else can silence people for the time being, but it cannot silence an ideology,” he adds.
While Mir sees condemnation of the killings of political workers by all political parties as one of the biggest changes after the abrogation of Article 370, his party leader Junaid Azim Mattu thinks otherwise. He says it is ironic that the National Conference leadership is condemning the killing of BJP leaders in Kulgam when their spokespersons brand their opponents as BJP workers.
A senior police officer says militants used to target National Conference and PDP workers earlier, but they have now opened a front against the BJP and its supporters because of their stand in favour of abrogation of Article 370. The killings are posing security challenges to the government and the police. Abid Hussain Khan, the BJP’s Kulgam district president, says he wrote a letter to the Kulgam deputy commissioner and SSP seeking security cover for 26 BJP leaders and workers a day after the killing of two BJP leaders in Anantnag district. He says the list was ignored and BJP leader Javed Ahmad Dar was killed in Kulgam on August 17. The police, however, had no idea that Dar was holding any position in the BJP. Khan says there are 1,270 BJP workers in Kulgam district, including over 300 prominent leaders who need security cover and accommodation in safe houses. “As it is impossible to provide security to every BJP worker, I have written to the DGP asking him to provide security and accommodation to 300 prominent leaders,” says Sofi, who claims there are around 6.5 lakh BJP workers in Kashmir.
(This appeared in the print edition as "Politics By Bloodier Means")
By Naseer Ganai in Srinagar