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A new saffron bloom in the Valley: The other Shiv Sena is making its presence felt in Kashmir
The Shiv Sena Hindustan says it seeks justice for all Kashmiris.
On
February 9, a quiet meeting was underway in North Kashmir’s Nawgam
village. As the Valley rang with strike calls to commemorate the death
anniversary of Afzal Guru – hanged four years ago for his involvement in
the attack on Parliament in 2001 that left nine people and five
terrorists dead – about 30 villagers gathered in the house of a member
of the Shiv Sena Hindustan. It was a gathering of office-bearers of the
right-wing Hindu outfit who were visiting the village on a recruitment
drive.
In a corner of a room in the house, supporters had unfurled
two saffron flags bearing the party’s logo – a roaring tiger inscribed
on a map of India. The host served plates of fried chicken, tea and
biscuits.
As the meeting began, one of the villagers asked about
the party constitution. It is not against any community and functions
within the ambit of the Indian Constitution, he was told. Next, they
asked what the organisation would do for the sacrifices made by the
villagers. They will be reciprocated, they were assured.
It was a
carefully scripted show. The party’s Kashmir president, Abdul Khaliq
Bhat, and Bandipora district president Mohammad Yusuf Shugnoo were out
to woo the villagers. Bhat spoke of political mistrust between the
public and mainstream parties in Kashmir, and about the lack of
amenities in Nawgam.
Talking development
The
pitch had been planned at a party meeting in Srinagar earlier that
week. About a dozen members had crowded into an airless room in a
building guarded by paramilitary personnel. This was Bhat’s
government-provided accommodation.
Shugnoo had then said that
the village had no medical facilities, water or roads. A hospital there
had been defunct since its construction over a decade ago, and drinking
water had to be brought from a well more than a kilometre away, he
elaborated. The party would pitch for development work, he added.
“If our problems are solved by the Shiv Sena [Hindustan], we will stay
with it, or else we will leave it,” he said pragmatically.
Ghulam Mohammad Dar, a young worker who joined the outfit on February 2,
put it differently. “We want an end to the zulm we are facing,” he
said, using a word that often describes any kind of injustice in the
Valley. Dar had his own definition for it, though – widespread
corruption, unemployment, and lack of amenities.
The room had
filled with smoke from a hookah the workers took turns to smoke. They
spoke of their reasons for joining the party and the barrage of threats
they had received from Kashmiris online because of the perception that
the outfit is anti-Muslim.
The other Shiv Sena
This Punjab-based, self-professedly hardcore right-wing Hindu party
claims to be an offshoot of the Mumbai-based Shiv Sena. It shot to prominence
after it launched a Dharam Oudh Morcha in 2005, prompting the state
government to prepare a compensation package for Hindu victims of
militancy in Punjab.
According to its national president, Pawan
Gupta, they split from the Shiv Sena because the Thackerays – Uddhav
Thackeray, who heads the party, and his late father Bal Thackeray before
him – were too focused on Maharashtra, leaving little scope for
expansion.
“The Mumbai-based Shiv Sena is powerful, yet they
couldn’t step into the Valley,” Gupta said proudly. “Even if they have a
government in the country, we have set ideological foot in the
Valley,” he added, referring to the Shiv Sena being a part of the
Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance that is in power
at the Centre.
According to Gupta, the Shiv Sena Hindustan is
currently active in 18 states and has had a presence in Jammu for over
seven years. It entered the Kashmir Valley a little over a year ago, and
on February 2, it claimed to have recruited 200 members there, all of
them from Nawgam. On February 9, they said at least 200 more had joined
the party in Kashmir.
But on the face of it, Nawgam seemed
largely indifferent to the outfit’s overtures, though a few residents
had gathered for the meeting.
It was on Bhat’s proposal that the
party made its foray into the Valley. “How will somebody from the Valley
want to join Shiv Sena [Hindustan]?” had been Gupta’s initial thought.
But after a year of discussions, they concluded that Bhat’s ideology
fit in with the party’s.
Gupta does not shy away from saying that
he heads a “Hinduvadi” party. “How can we turn away from our
organisation and it’s base?” he asked. But he does not see why Muslims
cannot be a part of it. “If the Muslim community has a problem and it
is wrongly tackled, as a political party, we will raise that issue so
that injustice is not done to anyone.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_fzs77OHoI
India, not Pakistan
The
Shiv Sena Hindustan strikes a careful balance in the Valley. On the one
hand, it shows sympathy for Kashmiris who have faced injustices, and
even for separatists. On the other, it asserts its nationalist
credentials.
Not long before the outfit announced its sudden
success with recruitments, national vice-president Rajesh Kesari made a
trip to the Valley. During his visit, he asserted that Hizbul
Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani – whose death in an encounter with
security forces in July had led to months of unrest in Kashmir – had
become a militant after his older brother, Khalid Wani, was killed in
April 2015.
“Burhan Wani is not a terrorist, this government
is,” Kesari told the Kashmiri press in December. He said Khalid Wani
was a civilian but the Army had called him an overground worker for the
militant group. The government’s announcement in December of compensation for Khalid Wani’s death hinted at differences between the establishment, he alleged.
“An FIR should be lodged against the government and the chief minister
who killed such innocent people,” Kesari said. He also demanded
compensation of Rs 50 lakhs for all those killed in the unrest. “Whoever
has died here will be called shaheed [martyr],” he added.
But
in stark contrast to his approach, Bhat and his supporters have made a
point of displaying their pro-India credentials. Before joining the Shiv
Sena Hindustan, Bhat had approached another Jammu-based regional party
but that did not work out for him. In 2008, he
contested the Assembly elections on a Bahujan Samaj Party ticket from
Chadoora in Budgam and lost. He, along with some others in the party,
have also aided security forces in counter-insurgency operations in the
past.
“Grief led me to join hands with the forces to avenge my brother’s death,” said Bhat, whose brother was killed by militants.
The
other members cited similar reasons for helping the security forces
tackle militancy in the 1990s – grief and a desire to avenge the death
of family members. Among them was Ghulam Muhammad, a party worker from
Nawgam. In 1991, his brother was killed for allegedly working with the
Army. A year later, militants killed his nephew on suspicion of being an
informer. Muhammad said he had worked for the security forces for
seven years in the 1990s. “It’s only natural that we will join a
pro-India party,” he added.
According to him, his faith does not
come in the way of this nationalist sentiment. “Whether they call god
Shiva and we Allah, it doesn’t matter,” he explained. “Our nation is
India. We are not Pakistanis.”
Supporters in Srinagar echoed him. “We are all Indians,” they chanted, when asked what they thought of integration with India.
Most
of Bhat’s supporters in the Valley are drawn from the Shia community.
He pointed out that Shia Muslims in Pakistan face attacks on a daily
basis. “We do not want to be with those who bomb everyone,” he said.
Another shade of saffron
With
its political ambitions in Kashmir growing, the Shiv Sena Hindustan
sees itself in competition with another saffron party, the Bharatiya
Janata Party, which is in a ruling alliance with the People’s Democratic
Party since the Assembly elections in 2014. Since then, fears of a
“saffron agenda” have grown in Kashmir.
But the Shiv Sena
Hindustan’s national president, Pawan Gupta, was quick to point out that
unlike the BJP, his party does not work on the condition that it will
join hands only with Hindus. He also said that while the BJP speaks of
bringing Kashmiris into the national mainstream, the Shiv Sena Hindustan
has actually done this. “Now people who join the Shiv Sena
[Hindustan], who can be more national mainstream than them?” he asked.
While
the Shiv Sena Hindustan may claim to have done more in the Valley than
the BJP, the national party has devoted considerable energy to making
inroads in Kashmir. In December 2015, its newly elected state president,
Sat Sharma, declared that they would not “play second fiddle” to its ally, the Peoples Democratic Party.
Veer Saraf, the BJP’s organising secretary for South Kashmir, has also
claimed that people still have faith in the BJP despite discontent with
the ruling alliance and over last year’s unrest. “It [BJP] is the first
party, which started its political activities publicly after the
unrest, not in the rooms... on the roads of Srinagar,” he said.
On January 11, the BJP held a torch rally in Srinagar
celebrating the birth anniversary of Swami Vivekanada. And on Republic
Day, it held a procession during which pro-India slogans were raised,
and carried the national flag to Pampore to “commemorate the martyrs of
the EDI [encounter].” The three-day gunbattle
at the Jammu and Kashmir Entrepreneurship Development Institute last
year had left five soldiers and three foreign terrorists dead. The
Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha's Republic Day programme in Kashmir. Image
Credit: Aijaz Hussain (BJYM vice-president) /Facebook“We
will do many more programmes of such kind in Kashmir,” Saraf said. The
party plans to organise two to three programmes in the Valley every
month. “We are working on that and we will do it [again] on certain
occasions,” he added.
For now, both the Shiv Sena Hindustan and the BJP are eyeing the panchayat elections, scheduled for March.
Perils of the mainstream
But
in Kashmir, being part of mainstream parties, especially saffron
organisations, still comes with risks. Between 2011 and 2014, militants killed
at least 10 sarpanches in the Valley, leading to large-scale
resignations by panchayat members. During last year’s unrest too, public
anger was directed at security forces as well as mainstream parties.
Then too, several sarpanches and panchayat office holders had resigned
from the political parties they belonged to – or from the panchayats,
though this form of resignation was largely symbolic as their terms had
expired before the violence began.
The state police anticipate another round of unrest this spring.
The
Shiv Sena Hindustan is clearly worried. Bhat, who has been allotted a
personal security officer and secure accommodation, complained about the
lack of security.
On the face of it, the BJP is unfazed. “[We
have] not worked against the interests of Kashmir,” Saraf said. But he
admitted, “There may have been an incident or two but the whole of
Kashmir was burning.” The party, he said, has a plan to “safeguard our
people”, but refused to divulge details.