Farooq is free, but his words are still guarded

The release of former Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah from detention following the revocation of the stringent Public Safety Act (PSA) has raised a clutch of questions to which there are no clear answers at this moment. 

To begin with, it is not clear when others similarly detained will be released, principally the other two former J&K chief ministers, his son Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti. If this is the beginning of a process, it signals a change in the attitude of the Centre, which has talked of ushering in what it has called the “normalisation” of the political process in the Union Territory. 

The other and radically differing theory is that Farooq Abdullah’s freedom is a one-off (at least for the moment), a result of his advanced age (82 years), his health (he recently had undergone an eye surgery), and a possible promise of remaining more or less silent on political issues until his son and others are released.

It is difficult not to be struck by the position adopted by Farooq Abdullah at his post-release press conference. He refused to take questions or speak on political matters, saying he would not do so until other detainees are released. 

Speculation is rife whether this silence is a part of a deal that earned him his freedom or whether it could stem from the August 2019 Gupkar Declaration, in which various parties declared they would forge a united strategy to protect and defend the special status of J&K. 

In other words, is he only waiting for the others to be set free? The answers to such questions as well as those relating to the future contours of politics in Jammu & Kashmir will become clearer once Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti are released. 

The pressure to release them has grown on the Narendra Modi government with Opposition parties at home condemning these “illegal and unconstitutional” detentions and with international attention increasingly focused on the Centre’s “authoritarian” Kashmir policy. 

New Delhi has for long adopted a strategy of promoting those who toe its line in the Valley, and the launch of the Apni Dal (party) earlier this month appears very much like an attempt to forge a new political mainstream in Kashmir. 

Headed by businessman-politician Syed Altaf Bukhari, a defector from the PDP, the party stops with demanding the restoration of statehood – a position that is not at odds with that of the Centre, which has left the window open on this issue. 

The question of course is whether what many see as the BJP’s stratagem of propping up a new set of Kashmiri politicians against the others will ever work.