As Kashmir’s ruling party disowns slain leader, its workers wonder if they will meet the same fate

On April 26, a day after suspected militants shot dead the politician Ghulam Nabi Mir in Rajpora, an uneasy calm prevailed in the South Kashmir village. Nearly four kilometres away, Mir’s ancestral village, Dangerpora, was in mourning. A tent pitched in a neighbour’s lawn held dozens of mourning women whose wailing could be heard from some distance away.

Senior Superintendent of Police, Pulwama, Aslam Choudhary said Mir, 65, was likely killed by operatives of the Hizbul Mujahideen who fired at his vehicle from close range. Mir, in the front passenger seat, died on the spot while his two police guards were wounded.

‘Sacrifice in vain’

Though Mir’s killing was widely condemned by most unionist political parties, he was disowned by the ruling People’s Democratic Party, of which his relatives claim he had been a member since 2014.

Mir started his political journey with the Congress in the 1980s, only to leave for the Janata Dal in 1994. He rejoined the Congress at the turn of the century and unsuccessfully contested the 2002 Assembly election on the party’s ticket. He left again in 2008 to contest that year’s state election as an independent. “He stayed away from politics between 2008 and 2014,” said his son Sartaj Ahmad, 24. “He joined the PDP during the 2014 election campaign. Then, Mufti sahab called him a son who had gone astray but who had now come home.”

He was referring to Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, the late chief minister and founder of the People’s Democratic Party. Yet, in a condolence message posted on Twitter, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, Sayeed’s daughter, described Mir as a senior Congress leader. The opposition party, on its part, called him a “senior PDP leader”.

A prominent district leader of the People’s Democratic Party in Pulwama speculated the party may have disowned Mir owing to “complaints from people” – he would not explain the nature of the complaints or who had made them – and his “closeness to Drabu”. Haseeb Drabu was sacked by Mufti as her finance minister in March, apparently for flouting the party line by saying that Kashmir was not a “political issue”. Drabu is the sitting legislator from Rajpora and many local residents said he won the election in 2014 largely because Mir ran a “rigorous campaign” for him.

Mir’s family too suspects the People’s Democratic Party has disowned him because of his association with Drabu. “He was virtuous and had won the hearts of people,” said a relative who spoke anonymously. “We did not get anything from politics and yet they disowned him. From now on we have nothing to do with any kind of politics.”

The only party that seems to acknowledged Mir in any sense is the Bharatiya Janata Party, an ally in the ruling coalition. Reports in local newspapers quoted the BJP’s Pulwama district president, Abdul Ghani Bhat, as calling Mir the party’s “overground worker”. However, Veer Saraf, who looks after the BJP’s affairs in South Kashmir, denied that Mir was affiliated with the party. “The statement was the district president’s, not the party’s,” Saraf said. “He couldn’t bear that [Mir] was disowned by all. He had known him for a long time.”

The grieving family is enraged that the Peoples Democratic Party has not acknowledged Mir’s “sacrifice”, meaning it has been in vain, “He gave his life for the nation and the PDP,” said a family member who asked not to be identified. “He is no more because of the PDP. There is anger against [pro-India] politics because of the promises made but not delivered by the party.”

Among the broken promises the family member listed is the ruling party’s pledge to help start a dialogue between India and Pakistan on the Kashmir dispute, a matter beyond the mandate of any government in the state under the terms of its accession to the Indian Union.

Dangerous occupation

On Thursday, dozens of mourners gathered at Mir’s home in Dangerpora recalled the “sacrifices” he had made for advocating pro-India politics in a place seething with separatist sentiment.

Mir, formerly employed in the state’s health department, had “jumped into politics the day he became an adult” said. “His job and politics went side by side. He had early on taken a liking to Mufti Sayeed and he went to whichever party Mufti was in.”

Mir was popularly known as Ghulam Nabi Patel, after senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel. The story goes that back in the 1980s Patel failed to turn up at a Congress rally in Kashmir. In his stead, Mir took the stage. “He said it did not matter if Patel was not present,” the relative recounted, “his brother Ghulam Nabi was as good as Patel himself.”

According to family members, Mir had survived a bombing of his home in the early 1990s. In 1994, he was forced to flee his village after Hizbul Mujahideen militants “kidnapped and tortured him for two days in the jungle to bring him closer to the tehreek”, the separatist movement. Mir, however, stood firm with the pro-India camp, resulting in two more militant attacks in 2002 and 2004.

Mir’s modest one-storey house, family members said, was proof of his honesty. He had visited home after seven months and was returning to Pulwama, where he stayed in a secure government housing colony with his second wife and their two children, when he was killed. “He did nothing for his own family,” said his eldest son Shahnawaz Mir, 40, adding that he could not study beyond high school when Mir was forced to flee their village. “We are four brothers and all of us are unemployed. All he wanted to do was help and work for the people.”

Mir had recently undergone treatment for cancer. He is survived by his two wives and eight children.

‘Dying like dogs’

The People’s Democratic Party disowning Mir has not only opened it to heavy criticism from other unionist parties, but also caused much resentment within its own ranks. Party workers in Pulwama now worry of “meeting a similar fate”.

Indeed, the district leader who said Mir may have been disowned for his association with Drabu declined to be identified for fear of being targeted by militants rather than of facing action from his party for speaking to the press without permission. “He worked for the party, got it votes, and got disowned for it,” he said of Mir. “Tomorrow someone else will die, he will be disowned too. When we see ministers staying away from funerals of prominent workers, it makes us think. When a BJP worker was killed in Shopian [last November], the entire BJP stood behind his family.”

Workers of pro-India parties, the leader added, “die 10 times every day in this environment of militancy.” “We spend our nights in fear,” he said, “we are dying like dogs and the party leaders are just concerned about their own politics.”