Srinagar: The exhaust from the Mufti’s departure hangs heavy in the mourning tents at Fairview. It smells of absence and of anxiety. With the shepherd suddenly gone, it can’t be easy for the sheep. Especially not if they have to walk with the wolves.
The PDP was always uneasy with the BJP as governing partner. The Mufti took nearly three months mulling its pros and cons, and when he did extend his hand it was with reluctance, probably even an unspoken sense of resignation. He got power but at the expense of denuded public sanction in the Valley.
When Mehbooba Mufti broke down at her father’s cold graveside on the Dara Shikoh Padshahi Park in Bijbehara this morning, she was watched over by a paltry turnout. The Mufti’s south Kashmir hometown had sent out fewer heads than reside in a mohalla. Is the PDP heiress reading signs in the dwindled sentiment?
We don’t yet know, for Mehbooba is still wimpled in grief. She has received guests privately these past days but barely spoken. When she has, it is to admonish those who ventured to broach matters of politics and state.
“She is in a bad way,” one of those who met her told The Telegraph this afternoon. “It is apparent she has been crying a lot: her eyes are bloodshot, her voice is cracked, she is in no frame to engage.”
Fairview cottage was a daylong homage tableau today, thronged by plebeian and patrician. Party workers streamed in and out of marquees where priests chanted prayers and bread and tea were served out.
Along the heavily secured foyer, VVIP convoys zoomed in and out; among the callers, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Union minister Nitin Gadkari.
Top bureaucrats and police officers stood scattered on the lawns. It was chilly out in the open; it helped that the sun shone uninterrupted.
To probing microphones and cameras, the word was unanimously short and unyielding: “No politics, this is about mourning.”
But among PDP ranks, the murmur of apprehension is beginning to puncture the silence of mourning. Will the BJP set new terms? Will they treat Mehbooba with as much respect? Will they not be tempted to push her around? If they are committed to this alliance, why have they not spelt out their support to Mehbooba? What stops them – they aren’t in mourning.
Will she be able to negotiate a credible operating room? Is her political future secure with the BJP? Can she sell it to her constituency? Unlike her father, after all, she has a long innings to play in the Valley, far to go. Can she go the good distance chained in alliance with an ideological opposite?
The likes of Tariq Karra, PDP member of Parliament from Srinagar, have already brought their aversion to the BJP out of the closet: “This is a decisive crossroads, we should re-examine this alliance, the PDP cannot play conduit to the RSS.”
Muzaffar Beg, MP from Baramulla and one of the senior-most in the PDP, too is known to be unhappy in the BJP’s company. Beg sounded enigmatic on Mehbooba succeeding her father as chief minister and the future of the alliance.
“Anything can happen in politics, nothing can be ruled out,” he told journalists at Bijbehara. “The family is in mourning, recovery will take time. There is no great rush to form the government.”
Should it come her way in the days to come, the crown that the grieving Mehbooba Mufti won’t yet countenance will not rest easy on her head. She will find herself stretched between contrary, often conflicting, aspirations.
The BJP is a demanding ally and it may well feel entitled to grab harder at the fruits of power now. The PDP, on the other hand, might feel insecure without the Mufti and seek to define a more protected domain within the alliance.
It is no secret that PDP cadres suffer the alliance with the BJP rather than celebrate it. The pressure will be on Mehbooba to contain and convince them she can hold her own. In the absence of her father, she has new anxieties to combat, at home and beyond.
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