by NYLA ALI KHAN
(The following is an excerpt from the biography Professor Nyla Ali Khan is currently writing about her grandmother Begum Akbar Jehan Abdullah, the wife of Kashmiri leader Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah. Dr. Nyla Ali Khan teaches at the University of Oklahoma. Final Part of V. Ed.)
Regarding the role of women in the PF, illustrious journalist A.R. Nair observed in 1968: “The Plebiscite Front has done remarkable work among the village women who seem to be as enthusiastic as men in these gatherings” (30). Highlighting the position of the woman in charge of the women’s section of the PF, Nair went on to say, “She is the widow of a tonga-driver who was butchered along with 13 others who carried Hindu women and children from Srinagar to Jammu during the troublous days of 1947. . . . This woman, widow of the murdered tonga driver, is now an enthusiastic leader of the women’s section of the PF, and she confronted me with an impressive array of challenging questions relating to the omissions and commissions of the Indian leadership toward Kashmir and the Kashmiri people. An illiterate woman for all practical purposes, she appeared saturated with the new ideas of self-determination and the popular will to achieve their ends at any cost” (31-32). The Plebiscite Front had established itself in the Valley which was its stronghold now. As Syed Mir Qasim, Sadiq’s successor as J & K’s Congress chief minister anxiously predicted, “If the elections were free and fair, the victory of the Front was a foregone conclusion” (132). The regionalist and dissident policies of the Front had garnered overwhelming support, reducing the ruling elite to a caricature.
In January 1971, externment orders were served to the leaders of the Plebiscite Front, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, Mirza Afzal Beg, and Abdullah’s older son-in-law, G.M. Shah. Beg was on his way to Kashmir from New Delhi by road, and Abdullah and Shah were flying to the Valley from the capital. The flight that Abdullah and Shah should have been on was cancelled because of a bomb hoax, and that evening they were served with externment orders, preventing them from reentering J & K. Beg was stopped on his way to the Valley and told to turn back (author’s conversations with political activists of the National Conference, 2007). In addition to the top brass of the Front being confined to New Delhi, a large number of members of the organization was arrested under the Preventive Detention Act implemented in the state. Subsequent to the large-scale arrests of the leaders and members of the Front, elections were held in the state in 1971-1972 in which the Congress orchestrated a landslide victory for itself, managing to acquire five of six parliamentary seats and fifty-seven of seventy-five Assembly seats. I, again, quote Gundevia who observes, “. . . when Sheikh Abdullah threatens to fight an election, for the first time in years, he is banished from Kashmir, obviously because of the fear that he would not lose his deposit—and the other side might” (142).
In an e-mail (dated 12 April 2008) to me, reinforcing Gundevia’s contention, G. M. Shah wrote, “In the winter of 1970, my mother-in-law, Begum Akbar Jehan, my wife, Khalida, sister-in-law, Suraiya, and daughter, Aaliya, went to Delhi to spend some time with Sher-i-Kashmir. In January 1971, after Sher-i-Kashmir Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, Mirza Afzal Beg, Begum Akbar Jehan, and I were served with externment orders, workers of the Plebiscite Front came out in overwhelming numbers in the valley and protested against the unconstitutional action of the Government of India and the stooge Government in J & K. We remained in externment for three and a half years. The revocation of the externment order in 1974 caused our supporters to celebrate with an unquenchable zeal, and our return to the valley was observed with unfettered enthusiasm and rejoicing, manifesting a populist aversion to the despotic abuse of authority.”
It wouldn’t be remiss of me to admit that until 1984 Grandmother was a peripheral presence in my life. She was a benign, affectionate, slightly detached, and much lauded presence in Grandfather’s lifetime, but not at the centre stage of my existence. I remember her as being a self-assured, articulate, politically savvy, and elegant person, whose social and political activism didn’t dwindle till very late in life. In the initial years of my acquaintance with her, she didn’t seem racked by self-doubt but maintained a firm conviction in the ideological platform from which she and her husband had launched an irrepressible fight against iniquitous monarchical and nation-state politics. After the death of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, her older son, Farooq Abdullah, much to the gratification of the indulgent mother, was made head of government. The investiture of Farooq, indubitably, allayed whatever anxieties might have gnawed at Grandmother at Grandfather’s demise. At the time, there was a genuine fear that the death of Grandfather would create an abyss that would cause an unredeemable political bankruptcy in the State, and regional aspirations would be asphyxiated by the politics of the Indian and Pakistani nation-states. Although the National Conference did have a substantive ideology and a mass base at the time, I would argue that the organization had become increasingly reliant on the cult of personality, particularly on the iconic status of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah. Grandmother, who had been his comrade in the years of political exile, well knew that his dominance and clout couldn’t be replaced, but the strength of the mother-son nexus superseded her well-founded doubts. Subsequent to the formation of the cabinet under Farooq’s leadership in September 1982, she ceased to be first lady but she retained her position as the patron of the National Conference, whose counsel was held in high regard by the party cadre. Bilquees Taseer, wife of the renowned educationist Dr. Mohammad Din Taseer, and mother of the late Governor of the Punjab in Pakistan, Salman Taseer, who was assassinated in 2010 by his bodyguard for having opposed the arbitrary and notorious blasphemy law of Pakistan, was an associate and friend of Akbar Jehan. I remember her rather fondly as Aunty Chris, an imposing, voluble, well-read, and politically astute writer, one of the last vestiges of the British Raj. Aunty Chris would affectionately call Akbar Jehan “Ruhi.” She would stay at the Nedous’ Hotel in Srinagar on her frequent visits to the Valley. The Nedous’ Hotel was then owned and run by Salima Nedou, the widow of Harry Nedou, and was a stone’s throw from the Sheikh residence. At the time, Aunty Chris was immersed in carving a sharply defined perspective of Kashmir for her forthcoming book. I quote her perception of Akbar Jehan’s unremitting dedication to her husband in 1982, the year of the Sheikh’s death:
Supervising the treatment of her husband’s illness, showing diplomacy in
receiving all kinds of guests and visitors, deciding who was to see Shaikh [sic] sahib for a few minutes, those with whom she must sit and chat for a while, the supervision of the domestic arrangements, no light task when visitors were pouring in all day. . . . Always she had to show patience, good temper, tact. Her tirelessness was amazing, for after all she is now not a young woman. (89)
Read Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV of this excerpt in last week’s Globeistan.