Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years Part 10

Along with the partying there was also work. When I joined the prime minister's office on the first day of 2001, I asked Brajesh what I was supposed to do. 'Anything you like,' Brajesh said. 'But we want you to focus on Kashmir.'

Though the brief was not yet specific I was content because I had spent a lot of time on Kashmir and it was what I enjoyed doing.

A few days later we had a longer chat and I asked, 'Okay, what in Kashmir?'

'Elections are coming up next year,' the princ.i.p.al secretary said. 'We want as much partic.i.p.ation as possible, as many people as you can get in.'

'Okay,' I said.

'And try and get these separatists in,' he added.

What more could one ask for? Kashmir had always been my favourite subject and now I would be devoting all my time to it. What added to these three and a half years being a great experience, possibly the best period in my career, was that one saw everything from close quarters.

There were people who had problems with my brief on Kashmir, be it when I headed R&AW or when I was in the PMO. Why was I meddling in Kashmir, it was an internal matter? But Brajesh Mishra encouraged it, and even when I was in R&AW he would tell me, every three-four months: 'Bhai, woh Kashmir pe PM ko thhoda brief kar dena.'

The IB was not very happy about my meddling, but it carried on throughout my stint in R&AW and the PMO, and only ended when Dr Manmohan Singh came to power and M.K. Narayanan took over as his national security advisor; Narayanan made it clear to the R&AW people that they would not meddle in Kashmir. Sadly, a lot of Kashmiris were then dumped by R&AW, and many of them are dissatisfied today.

Those who cribbed about my involvement were technically correct but the fact of the matter was: they weren't doing anything. So what was the problem with my doing something in Kashmir? As I said, Brajesh needed to stop me if that was the case, and say, look at Pakistan instead. But he encouraged me to handle Kashmir when I was in R&AW and got me to the PMO to specifically deal with it. I was officer on special duty but unofficially referred to as advisor on Kashmir in the PMO. Whatever little our problems may have been Shyamal Datta and I got along famously (I was after all beholden to him for my job) and the IB and R&AW had a great relations.h.i.+p.

Brajesh Mishra in that regard was a great boss. He gave the brief, but how I did it and when I did it, he never interfered. I was free to do things my way. We had hit it off back when I joined R&AW, and from there it only got better. He made me feel comfortable and complimented the organisation on a couple of occasions.

Occasionally he might say, 'you're overstepping something', or 'you're becoming too prominent'. For instance, there was a time I went to Srinagar and a major Delhi paper splashed a story on its front page that I had gone to Kashmir to conduct 'golf diplomacy' with the separatists and other Kashmiris. Actually, whenever I went to Srinagar during those days I played a lot of golf, and if anyone asked it was a good cover story. Of course I did not go just to play golf but to meet someone or discreetly take care of some governmental business. When I returned to Delhi and briefed Brajesh Mishra, he told me that I had become too prominent. 'Take it easy for the next three weeks,' he said. 'I don't want any news.'

In our PMO there was no doubt who the boss waswhich has not been the case in some other PMOs. Here, Brajesh virtually ran the government for the prime minister; he was everything. No wonder he is regarded as one of the most powerful princ.i.p.al secretaries ever to serve a prime minister. And of course he was India's first national security advisor. With so much power he eclipsed even the cabinet ministers.

Everyone who worked in the PMO and who worked with him never complained about Brajesh Mishra. He was good with people, he was clear-headed, quick on the uptake, quick on deciding, he knew how to get things done and he never wasted time. You could be sitting with him, and if you overstayed by two minutes or he was to meet someone else, he would tell you, 'Someone's waiting, I'll talk to you later.'

And yet Brajesh Mishra was an extremely relaxed person, though paradoxically he found it difficult to relax. He loved his drink and smoked a lot, which was bad for him. The doctor stopped him but he would still smoke three or four cigarettes. He was not a social namby-pamby drinker. He drank everywhere and he only drank his Scotch. Also, he would talk about how, when he went to New York, the first thing he wanted to do was go and listen to some jazz. He loved jazz and often spoke of the jazz clubs in New York, which he frequented when he was our permanent representative to the United Nations from 1979 to 1981.

At the same time, however, you would never see him in anything but a safari suit (or a suit in winter). It was amazing. I travelled with him a few times, once to Israel, once to China, and even on the flight where there were just the two of us, he would not even take his tie off at night to sleep. On an El Al flight from Bombay to Tel Aviv, for instance, he took off neither his jacket nor his tie. I found that funny. (For the record, the only time I wore a safari suit was for a brief while during my posting in Kathmandu; safari suits had just come into vogue, invented by the Chinese, I think.) His wife used to joke about it: 'Can you ever imagine him in a T-s.h.i.+rt?' she asked me. 'He never gets out of his safari suit.'

Unlike other bureaucrats, Brajesh Mishra did not like to be seen strutting around. He didn't encourage politicians to come and meet him unless it was the one or two he was comfortable with: Arun Shourie and Arun Jaitley, who in any case couldn't offend him in any way. He didn't like politicians and he didn't attend political functions, even if the prime minister was going. Brajesh and Vajpayee had an understanding: you run your politics and I'll run the government. And they got along amazingly.

Which was not the case with the most powerful ministers in the government. It's strange that the most senior ministers in the government did not see eye to eye with Brajesh Mishra, be it Home Minister (and later Deputy Prime Minister) L.K. Advani or Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh. And it didn't seem to bother anybody, least of all Vajpayee, who of course was an accomplished politician and had a good equation with Jaswant Singh and even with Advani.

Brajesh Mishra was very democratic and sometimes I wondered why at times he would waste his time. 'Everyone is ent.i.tled to his say, so let him have his say,' he would tell me.

For instance, a new organisation was carved out of R&AW's Aviation Research Centre (ARC) called the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), modelled on the USA's National Security Agency. The ARC director was to head the NTRO, and there was a lot of friction between R&AW and the NTRO; as it happened back in 1968 between the IB and the R&AW, they were arguing over cupboards, chairs, officers. I don't know why it had to be created, the ARC was doing fine.

There was a big flap about how many airplanes the NTRO would get. I told Brajesh, 'Sir, take a call, end this nonsense.' But he was very open about it, very democratic, willing to listen. He gave everyone time and a hearing. And things got sorted out.

If he didn't want to see someone, he would palm that person off to me. He didn't suffer fools. And if he had to put off a call on something, he would say, 'I will have to ask the PM about this,' which was his standard line, popular among his own colleagues.

In the PMO I was free to meet the prime minister whenever I wanted; even if I wanted to meet him every day I could, but I did not need to nor would he have wanted to meet me every day. He never refused an appointment nor would Brajesh meddle or ask why I was going to meet the PM. All appointments were listed on his table and he would merely note that you had a meeting that particular day. He might have occasionally asked: 'Koi khaas baat hai?'

On normal days Brajesh Mishra interacted with the prime minister every evening. Vajpayee functioned out of his residence and rarely came to his South Block office, so if any of us had to meet him we had to go to RCR. In Brajesh's case it was not a question of him briefing the prime minister because they knew each other so well. It was a question of sitting down and discussing a matter. So at the end of every day Brajesh would leave office at about 6:30 p.m.he didn't sit late, like a lot of people doand he would go to RCR, where he would spend his time depending on how much time Vajpayee had. He probably wound up and reached home at 8:30 to 9:00 p.m. most evenings.

You might wonder how the government functioned at all in this easygoing manner, but the truth is, in our country the government functions on its own and in Vajpayee's time it functioned smoothly despite the fact that there was a coalition government. Vajpayee managed the coalition very well: he was good with people, he was good with words, and above all he had a sense of humour.

Once, for instance, there was a time when the railway minister, Mamata Banerjee, was sulking. She was a moody person who could be very difficult to get through to. I witnessed one example of Vajpayee's people skills at the airport. Mamata had stormed out of a cabinet meeting, and then Vajpayee went on a trip abroad. I was still in R&AW then and in those days we had to go and stand in line at the airport to either see off or receive the prime ministermore on his return than his departurein case he had a brainwave or something and you were required.

At the airport the officials were lined up on one side and the politicians on the other side. For the politicians it was purely optional who went. But on this occasion Mamata was at the airport and she was first in line. As Vajpayee came in she bent down to touch his feet, as was her habit. He caught her hand and gave her a hug. That ended all problems with her party, the Trinamool Congress. Vajpayee could do that.

Vajpayee was not only a very astute politician but a poet and philosopher as well and an unparalleled orator. I had the privilege of first hearing the great man in 1978 while posted as first secretary in our emba.s.sy in Kathmandu when as foreign minister Vajpayee spoke at a function of the NepalBharat Maitree Sangh starting with 'Jis desh ke kanker, kanker me Shankar ho' which sent the crowds into raptures. Vajpayee mesmerised the packed house; most of the Nepalese women came out with moist eyes. Not only in Kathmandu but everywhere he went and spoke as in Lah.o.r.e in 1999 and Srinagar in 2003 he held the crowd in thrall.

Vajpayee fulfilled Plato's ideal of the perfect state in which 'philosophers were kings and kings philosophers'.

My only reservation was that Vajpayee took his time in deciding things, particularly in important or crucial matters. You would never be able to tell that from meetings, which he never allowed to meander uselessly; he would sit there, munching his samosa and jalebis, but ensured the meeting was quick and business-like and over. If he had to say something or make a remark, he would do so; otherwise it was thank you very much.

Perhaps his decisions now took a long time because of Kargil, etc., and he had to face that criticism. Vajpayee the foreign minister who went to Pakistan, when he was much younger, and Vajpayee the prime minister were two different people.

Nonetheless, Vajpayee was never one to allow himself to be led by the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy antic.i.p.ates things and tries to be 'his master's voice'. In Vajpayee's government, however, you never felt an unnatural swing to the right; it was like any other government. Indeed, it was a friendlier government, a happier one, and I don't think the bureaucracy had a better time than during Vajpayee's time, though there might have been the odd guy who felt he was being discriminated against because he was with the Congress or some such thing.

For instance, if you leave it to bureaucrats, things like relations with Pakistan will not improve no matter how much you may personally want to improve thema clear example is Dr Manmohan Singh's ten-year tenure as prime minister. When Vajpayee took the bus to Lah.o.r.e, it was not a bureaucratic decision; it wasn't a whim either, but it was a decision 'driven' by the prime minister himself, with the supporting homework being done by the bureaucracy. And who would have thought that within two years of Kargil, Vajpayee would invite and talk to General Musharraf.

In his 'pure politics' approach of not being led by his bureaucrats, Vajpayee to my mind showed several similarities with his predecessor, P.V. Narasimha Rao (recall that Vajpayee headed a thirteen-day government in 1996 after the Congress government led by Narasimha Rao lost power). The two of them were keen on a breakthrough in Kashmir, and in this both were willing to look beyond Farooq Abdullah: in the mid-'90s, Narasimha Rao placed his hopes on Shabir Shah, while, as we shall see in the next two chapters, Vajpayee favoured Omar Abdullah over his father.

The other similarity that people talk about is that both Narasimha Rao and Vajpayee were nudged along in their Pakistan and Kashmir initiatives by the Americans. Though those who argue this seem to make a logical case for their a.s.sertion, I never saw anything that suggested this nor do I have evidence that such was the case with either prime minister. Perhaps this suggestion comes from those quarters who are themselves unwilling to credit these prime ministers with original thinking.

Narasimha Rao was, like Vajpayee, a smart strategist and must be given credit for a couple of things. For one thing, after the shock of the militancy erupting in 1990, whatever opening we in the government madetalking to all Kashmiris, no matter who they werethe credit goes to Narasimha Rao. His approach was not at all hampered by any baggage. There was a time when separatists or Kashmiris going to the Pakistan High Commission would be hara.s.sed by the police and agencies. In May 1995, Pakistan president Farooq Leghari came to Delhi for a South Asian a.s.sociation for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit and he invited the Hurriyat leaders for a meeting. We at the IB did our best to try and dissuade them; the result was that two went, two didn't go, one reported sick, and Moulvi Abbas Ansari landed up at 2 p.m. for an 11 a.m. meeting, saying that he had gone shopping and had got lost in an auto-rickshaw coming to Chanakyapuri, which is the diplomatic enclave. It was comical.

'What's the big deal?' Narasimha Rao asked. 'If they want to go there, let them. It's not a big deal.'

This opening-up started in Narasimha Rao's time. Before that, anyone who visited the high commission was suspect. They'd be searched or frisked or whatever it is, and followed. So all that stopped. Narasimha Rao said, nahi, aane dijiye jaane dijiye. Why are we doing this? There is no need.

Perhaps it was because Narasimha Rao wasn't too impressed with intelligence work (or the officers that brought him intelligence). Part of it might have been because his predecessor as Congress prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, was impressed by the intelligence community, and his tenure is remembered as the best it has ever been for Indian intelligence. But it was mostly due to Narasimha Rao's notion of intellectual superiority, and the att.i.tude that there was nothing new that the spooks could tell him.

In any case, Narasimha Rao, who had overseen the 1992 a.s.sembly election in Punjab after which the Khalistan movement lost much of its steam, was determined from 1994 onwards that democracy be revived in J&K. This governor's rule business will not do, he apparently felt, referring to the arrangement in J&K from 19 January 1990, when Farooq Abdullah resigned following the appointment of Jagmohan as governor. We have to get back to the political process. If you want to normalise Kashmir, that is the only way.

And in Narasimha Rao's mind, reviving democracy did not mean going back to the Abdullah family. He did not see that as moving forward. He was one for talking to the Kashmiris, and if he could rope separatists or even militants into the political process, then that would be dream fulfillment. On this job, he deployed his young telecommunications minister (and from 1993 to 1995, the junior minister for home affairs), Rajesh Pilot, and the DIB, D.C. Pathak.

Rajesh Pilot had already had some involvement with Kashmir during Rajiv Gandhi's time, when he was a junior minister in charge of surface transport (198589). At that time, Pilot was a sort of message carrier between New Delhi and Farooq Abdullah, and he a.s.sisted Rajiv Gandhi in the 1986 Congress accord with the National Conference. That's how I got to know Rajes.h.i.+ used to meet him after I was posted to Srinagar, and we got along quite well. I found it easy to talk to him.

The only thing was, Governor K.V. Krishna Rao could not stand Pilot. General Rao was a former army chief who was appointed to the J&K Raj Bhavan for a second stint in May 1993, succeeding Gary Saxena (a former R&AW chief who would also do a second stint, from 1998). Gary was a great man manager: though an intelligence services man, he got along well with Kashmiris and with the army. He could have, in my opinion, helped a Kashmir initiative from Raj Bhavan in Srinagar, had he been asked.

Krishna Rao's importance, perhaps, was that he had a great relations.h.i.+p with Farooq. It was a sort of father-son relations.h.i.+p that the General said formed because he was the corps commander in Jammu from 1974 to '78, when Sheikh did the accord with Indira Gandhi and then took over as chief minister.

Besides not liking Pilot, Krishna Rao was also allergic to the home secretary, K. Padmanabhaiah. In another smart move, Narasimha Rao set up a Department of Kashmir Affairs that he himself headed; the secretary was Padmanabhaiah, and this gave Kashmiris encouragement that their matter was being handled at the highest level of government. To his credit, Padmanabhaiah also visited Kashmir several times, which is more than what can be said about other home secretaries.

Padmanabhaiah and Rajesh Pilot, though, were on the same wavelength. This brings up an interesting story. Pilot was very close to K.P.S. Gill, the Punjab police chief credited with leading the fight against militancy from the front, and in 1996 he wanted to send K.P.S. to Kashmir as governor. K.P.S., however, preferred to go as director-general of police. There was a vacancy, so Pilot got the ball rolling. But as soon as Krishna Rao got wind of it, he immediately filled the vacancy by appointing an officer he was not fond of, M.N. Sabharwal. Just to pre-empt these guys. Such were the fun and games in Kashmir.

Narasimha Rao was a veteran at balancing out people. In March 1994, for instance, when India was under a lot of pressure internationally because of Kashmir, there was an important meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, of the fiftieth session of the United Nations Commission for Human Rights; a few months earlier, in 1993, US a.s.sistant secretary of state Robin Raphel had questioned the finality of J&K's accession to India; at the same time Pakistan prime minister Ben.a.z.ir Bhutto said the Kashmir dispute was an 'unfinished business of Part.i.tion'. Both statements had come during a high-profile standoff between the army and JKLF militants at the Hazratbal shrine on the outskirts of Srinagar. Narasimha Rao's brainwave was to send to Geneva a delegation headed by the leader of the opposition, who at that time was Vajpayee, and which included Farooq Abdullah. India presented a united front to the world on Kashmir, and this helped relieve the pressure internationally.

However, whatever balancing Narasimha Rao might have done, Rajesh Pilot was key to the Kashmir breakthrough. The prime minister knew that this was a youngster who spoke his mind; who was open, frank and ambitious; and who had a future, perhaps even as prime minister. Narasimha Rao's thinking did not always match Pilot's thinkingin fact, he wanted to go much slower than Pilot did, and thus did not fully trust him, often using the senior home minister, S.B. Chavan, to slow him down. Pilot was prepared to do at that time what no other person was prepared to do: take a little risk and talk to Kashmiris. Which is how I got into this whole business of talking.

Thus there were two parallel tracks: we in the IB had begun talking to Kashmiris, and when Pilot got wind of it, he didn't want to get left behind. On the political plane he started his own channel. In fact, Pilot deserves credit for being the first political interface with separatists and militants, long before Advani as deputy prime minister began talking to the Hurriyat in 2004. This sort of interface was a lot hairier thenPilot's car was shot at on a couple of occasions in Srinagarbut Pilot was meeting Kashmiris, having them hang around at his house, letting the youngsters know that this was a point at which you could come in.

The IB didn't want to be left out of the loop, so the DIB, M.K. Narayanan, asked me to tie up with Pilot. Everything happened almost simultaneously: if we were talking to X and Y, and we thought we would talk to Z later, Pilot would already be talking to Z and his people. There were no secrets with Pilot, who felt this was all in the national interest, and who tried to rope in a Kashmir-knowing team of bureaucrats like Wajahat Habibullah, an IAS officer who was fond of JKLF leader Yasin Malik.

The JKLF boys got along with Pilot and a lot of that gang was always hanging out at Pilot's house, though I never saw Yasin at his place. (As a minister he could not go visit anyone in jail. That was our job.) They were close to him and they liked his openness. Unless you have some empathy for Kashmiris, and some time and patience to listen to their b.i.t.c.hing, you won't understand a thing of what is going on over there. Pilot was willing to listen, and was willing to say, if that is so, what can we do for you? There was n.o.body in Delhi more sympathetic to Kashmiris or to their cause, in the government of India, than Rajesh Pilot.

We were always talking about what we could do, how we could move things forward. Once Pilot asked me on the matter of unemployment: 'Can you think of anything we can do for these Kashmiri boys?'

'Sir, there's so much you can do,' I said.

'I've been talking to some corporate honchos,' he said. 'I've been wondering whether I can get them jobs abroad, in Dubai and all that.'

It struck me as not a bad idea. What he was saying was that not many people were willing to accommodate Kashmiris here, at that point of time, so he was looking at options outside India, and he mentioned Dubai.

'I've also spoken to some business people in Bombay,' he added. 'I'm hopeful something will happen.'

We spoke during crises, as mentioned in chapter three, during the al-Faran hostage situation. And Rajesh spoke of the prime minister. 'This old man is too sharp, too b.l.o.o.d.y smart,' he said once. 'Calls me and tells me, "Home Minister, how are you?" Makes me feel I'm the home minister and then uses Chavan to undercut me.' He understood the whole game with the wily Narasimha Rao.

Pilot was simple, down-to-earth, straightforward; he was ambitious, no doubt, and he must have thought that Kashmir was a good opportunity. Even after Narasimha Rao's government left, Pilot's interest continued; even when he was out of power there were Kashmiris at his place. If he had not died in that tragic accident, in May 2000, he would have gone places.

Pilot never forgot that he was an air force officer and had his friends and links there. At his parties and get-togethers you would always find air force officers there; it was normal for the Air Force Marshal Arjan Singh to be there. At his daughter Sarika's weddinghis son Sachin married Farooq's daughter Sara, but that was some time after Pilot had pa.s.sed awayI was surprised to find that we were invited, along with a lot of other people, but that there were no politicians. 'I don't see any politicians,' I remarked. 'When is madam (Sonia Gandhi) coming?'

'I haven't invited anybody,' Rajesh said. 'If I invite one then I've got to invite the whole lot, and I don't need them here. I have invited only friends.'

He was that kind of a guy.

Pilot had an exceptional relations.h.i.+p with Farooq. It cooled a bit when, in 1999, Farooq voted in Parliament for the NDA government and against the Congress's motion of no-confidence; the NDA fell, but returned to power later that year. Perhaps Pilot expected Farooq to vote the same way that the other NC MP, Saifuddin Soz, did. The following year Pilot died.

Ironically, when Sara and Sachin married, Farooq did not attend the weddingeven though it was the wedding of his favourite daughter. It was not very courageous of him, and when I asked him how he could have done this, he had no answer. (Incidentally, Omar did not go, even though he was in Delhi). Farooq did not disapprove; he was a liberal, and besides, Omar had married a non-Muslim, Payal.

In any case, I visited Pilot's place a few times after he died and once the crowds had disappeared. I sat with Sachin, who had just come back from the US, where he was studying at the Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania, and I asked him: 'When are you going to take up your Dad's mantle and join politics?'

'No, no, not me, Uncle,' he said. 'This is too much for me.' 'It's in your genes,' I said. 'You're capable.'

Once he got into politics, I found Kashmiris coming and visiting Sachin. Perhaps it was the Sara connection, but it had to do with his family. People had a lot of regard for Rajesh Pilot.

In our talking to separatists and former militants, things progressed with Shabir Shah to such an extent that by 1994, Narasimha Rao was dreaming that Shabir would enter the democratic process. He was his big hope. But as we saw in chapter four, Shabir was not up to the task, and in November 1995, the night before Narasimha Rao went to the African nation of Burkina Faso, when he asked me whether Farooq was the only option, I had to convey to him that no separatist, including Shabir, was ready to climb aboard. The National Conference had been putting pressure on Delhi giving some political package which it could sell to the electorate before elections. So I told the prime minister: 'Yes, it's like that.'

Narasimha Rao was so keen on Shabir that when I reached the stage of talking to him, the prime minister asked me to meet the finance minister, Dr Manmohan Singh. I went and met him. He asked me what it was all about, so I told him we were talking to some Kashmiris, some separatists. Singh's query was whether Farooq knew about this. 'I'm not sure if the PM has briefed him,' I said. 'But maybe Farooq doesn't need to know everything.' This made Singh uncomfortable, though he did meet Shabir. The whole idea had been to make Shabir feel that the engagement was getting serious; that Narasimha Rao was keen on him. But Shabir did not take the bait.

Famously, while in Burkina Faso, Narasimha Rao announced that he was ready to grant autonomy to Kashmir, and that 'sky's the limit'. Though many people thought he was saying this for the benefit of Farooq Abdullah (which will bring us to the NC's autonomy resolution in the next chapter), at the back of Narasimha Rao's mind was Shabir Shah. The prime minister was thinking, if this is what the separatists want, or if they want to be reasonable, then here is the s.p.a.ce for us to talk, and here is the s.p.a.ce for accommodation. Shabir would have got political concessions, for Narasimha Rao was interested. But Shabir missed the bus.

By the time the 2002 election rolled around, it was too late for Shabir. Like Narasimha Rao, Vajpayee also wanted a break from the past and he too wanted to look beyond Farooq Abdullah. But whereas Narasimha Rao's dream was to have a separatist like Shabir Shah join the political mainstream and take control of Kashmir, Vajpayee's notion of a break from the past was different. In looking beyond Farooq Abdullah he too wanted a generational change, but closer to home. His dream was Omar Abdullah.

11.

VAJPAYEE CHOOSES OMAR.

Omar Abdullah is Farooq's only son, born in England while his grandfather, Sheikh Saheb, was still in jail (his mother Mollie is English). Though he came from a political householdto the extent that when he graduated from Lawrence School in Sanawar, he enrolled at Sydenham College in Mumbai and lived at the residence of his father's political buddy, Sharad Pawarhe entered the corporate world, working for the Oberois for five years or so; it was in this job that he met his wife Payal. The years after Farooq won the 1996 a.s.sembly election thereby taking the wind out of militancy by providing a working democratic political system in the state againwere a heady time. He had his most trusted bureaucrats helping him administer J&K, he and I drew very close, and in this milieu he and his wife began to think of his political legacy. Farooq suggested to Omar that he enter politics and his wife Mollie was also agreeable. After all, politics was in Omar's genes.

An opportunity opened up very soon, when the United Front government fell in November 1997; the Lok Sabha election was held in February and March the following year, and Farooq encouraged Omar to contest. It was a logical first step for the handsome young man, as he would get a kind of acquaintance before the inevitable encounter with the hurly-burly of politics.

Not all in the family welcomed Omar's entry into politics. In particular, Farooq's elder sister Khalida was extremely distressed. To her family, it must have seemed like deja vu.

Khalida was the eldest of Sheikh Saheb's five children; his other daughter Suraiya was the youngest. Khalida was also her father's favourite. When she was only fourteen, back in 1948, she was married off to a man twice her age, Ghulam Mohammed Shah, otherwise known as Gul Shah. He was a National Conference loyalist and in Sheikh Saheb's Emergency Administration in the immediate years post-independence he served as the controller, food and civil supplies. When Sheikh Saheb returned to power after two decades of imprisonment, Gul Shah served in his state cabinet as a minister in charge of important portfolios such as food and civil supplies, transport, works and power. To some, including Gul Shah himself, it seemed he would inherit Sheikh Saheb's political mantle.

What Gul Shah perhaps did not count on was that after the 1977 a.s.sembly election, in the final five years of Sheikh Saheb's life, it was the latter's wife, Begum Akbar Jehan Abdullah, whose power grew. She wielded a lot of influence in Sheikh Saheb's last days. She became a member of Parliament after Sheikh Saheb returned to power in 1975, and during his final years, there were many rumours of corruption in his government that dented his image as a statesman, and somehow many of those rumours could be traced back to the Begum and her coterie.

Begum Abdullah was old school, and an extremely charming and elegant lady, but she didn't talk much. She was careful about what she said. During my days in Srinagar, whenever I heard her, she showed great respect for the NehruGandhi family, but in whatever she said she was definitely part of the older guard, the more conservative part of the National Conference.

Begum Abdullah's favourite was their eldest son Farooq, who had studied medicine in Jaipur and then went to England to train and then practise (where he met his wife Mollie, and where his son Omar was born). Farooq had returned and his mother felt that he should inherit his father's political legacy. This inheritance was a matter of concern since Sheikh Saheb was not in the best of healthand even Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was seized of the matter. After all, Kashmir was an important border state, and although Pakistan had been defeated in 1971, extra care had to be taken with regard to the governance of India's only Muslim-majority state.

Indira Gandhi thought about it at length, and by 1980 she had decided that it would be best for all concerned if Dr Farooq Abdullah succeeded his father. He seemed to be the more trustworthy option. Perhaps she was swayed by Farooq's modern outlook, his foreign exposure, and his ease with English as well as with Kashmiri and Urdu. Perhaps his happy-go-lucky image did not threaten her. After all, Gul Shah had been active with the Plebiscite Front during the years that Sheikh Saheb was under arrest. She let Sheikh Saheb know that her preferred choice for his successor was Farooq.

Gul Shah might have been a smarter politician than Farooq, but he was widely regarded as a bully. Another factor that might have swayed Sheikh Saheb was the fact that Gul Shah ill- treated Khalida; she would come home and complain to her parents about it. Thus ultimately it was Begum Abdullah who tilted the balance, and Farooq was appointed the president of the National Conference in August 1981. Sheikh Saheb pa.s.sed away in September 1982, and Farooq took over as chief minister. Gul Shah felt cheated; he had had a long innings in politics, and he was senior to his brother-in-law both in age and in politics. So he left the government, and in due course, the National Conference. Khalida's family and Farooq's family drifted apart.

As chief minister, Farooq hobn.o.bbed with opposition leaders such as N.T. Rama Rao, Jyoti Basu, Parkash Singh Badal, Sharad Pawar, and A.B. Vajpayee. This impertinence was not what Indira Gandhi had expected. She had a new governor, Jagmohan, appointed, who dismissed Farooq and replaced him with Gul Shah, who led a splinter of the NC which was called the NC (K) after his wife. (In 1988, his party's name changed to the Awami National Conference.) Gul Shah's tenure is remembered for the heavy hand with which he put down dissent, and for which he came to be popularly called the 'curfew CM'.

Farooq patched up with Mrs Gandhi's son Rajiv and in 1986 he returned to power. Gul Shah was out in the cold, and Begum Abdullah decided that the two families should patch up. Even when Farooq Abdullah became chief minister, his mother ran a kitchen cabinet though by 1988 it was not as powerful as it had once been. Farooq, for his part, would 'mummy' her and keep her in good humour, but she did not meddle too much in day-to-day affairs. Of course she did not approve of what Gul Shah had done but she could not go against her daughter either. It was a difficult tightrope walk. But though she was often around when you visited Farooq's residence, she never spoke while her son was speaking. They were very close.

Begum Abdullah began inviting Khalida to the chief minister's home, where she lived. Khalida visited regularly, and her son Muzaffar Shah, whom everyone called Muzy, came along. By 1988, Muzy had drawn close to Farooq, all the time saying Mamu this and Mamu that. Farooq grew fond of the boy. After all, Omar was away at school and the thought of Omar entering politics did not enter anyone's head at the time. Muzy was around.

The rapprochement grew steadily and I once even saw Gul Shah at Farooq's place, sometime in 1997, so I asked the chief minister if things had become okay with his sister and her husband. 'Haan-haan, theek hai,' Farooq said. 'Politically we can't align with each other, but the family relations.h.i.+p has settled down, it's fine.'

By this time, Muzaffar was expecting some kind of political concession, and he had begun to eye a seat in Parliament. When it became known that in the 1998 election (Kashmir chose three representatives to the Lok Sabha, from Srinagar, Anantnag and Baramulla) Omar would be contesting, Khalida's family again felt short-changed. It was the early 1980s all over again, when Gul Shah lost out to Farooq; this time his son lost out to Farooq's son.

Khalida's family must have seen Muzaffar as a proper politician, whereas Omar had spent his formative years outside the Valley; not only that, Omar spoke haltingly in Kashmiri. Khalida's family let it be known they felt that the fact that Omar's mother was English would hurt the party politically; and then there was the fact that Omar was married to a girl who was neither Kashmiri nor Muslim.

But nothing they said could stop Omar from becoming member of Parliament. The inter-family rivalry and hatred, which had been on the mend, deteriorated; and the people around each of the families only fuelled these negative feelings. Since Muzy always thought he should get something, being Gul Shah's son and all, I approached Farooq sometime in 2001 when the idea was gaining currency that Omar should take charge in Kashmirto suggest sending Muzy to Parliament. But Farooq expressed helplessness: 'We can't have so many family members in these positions,' he said.

In the case, when elections were held again in 1999 Omar was re-elected, and because he had voted for Vajpayee's first NDA government in the no-confidence motion sponsored by Sonia Gandhi's Congress party earlier that year, the NDA decided to induct him into the new council of ministers, making him the youngest in Vajpayee's cabinet. (NC MP Saifuddin Soz, in that vote of no-confidence, was persuaded by Congress leader Rajesh Pilot to vote against Vajpayee; this angered Farooq, who in any case had no love lost for the Gandhi family, and Saifuddin Soz had to leave the NC. He then joined the Congress party.) Omar's tenure in the commerce ministry was marked by good reports about his performance, and he also seemed to feel comfortable in Delhi. It was while he was in the commerce ministry and I was at R&AW that a crisis emerged. This was the J&K a.s.sembly's discussion, in June 2000, of the report of the State Autonomy Committee (SAC) recommending greater autonomy to the state.

As mentioned before, the J&K a.s.sembly election took the steam out of militancy. The main reason was that the National Conference partic.i.p.ated in the election. The National Conference partic.i.p.ated because Farooq Abdullah agreed to partic.i.p.ate (recall that Abdul Ghani Lone had tried to dissuade him from partic.i.p.ating); while he was away from the Valley, the NC had stopped functioning and gone into hiding. Farooq got the NC going again; it was nothing without him. At the same time, Farooq realised that if his party was going to be the alternative to separatism and militancy, then he was going to have to do something for his peopleor at least make the right noises. The 'peace with honour' that Shabir Shah and others could not give Kashmiris, he would give them. After all, Narasimha Rao had said, from Burkina Faso less than a year ago, that so far as autonomy was concerned, 'the sky's the limit'.

Thus, promptly after the a.s.sembly election, on 29 November 1996, the state government set up the State Autonomy Committee with the following terms of reference: To examine and recommend measures for the restoration of autonomy to the state of Jammu and Kashmir consistent with the Instrument of Accession, the Const.i.tution Application Order, 1950, and the Delhi Agreement, 1952.

To examine and recommend safeguards that be regarded necessary for incorporation in the Union/state Const.i.tution to ensure that the Const.i.tutional arrangement that is finally evolved in pursuance of the recommendations of this committee is inviolable.

To also examine and recommend measures to ensure a harmonious relations.h.i.+p for the future between the state and the Union.

The committee had nine members, including Dr Karan Singh as the chairman; he resigned in July 1997, and the NC's Ghulam Mohiuddin Shah took over in his place. The committee tabled its report in the a.s.sembly in April 1999, and in it recommended the restoration of the 1952 Delhi Agreement, in which the only things that the Union would be in charge of would be defence, external affairs and communication. It also recommended that Article 370 of the Const.i.tution, which grants special status to the state, be made a 'special provision' in the Const.i.tution instead of 'temporary provision'.