The man who sang dreamy Kashmiri folksongs on a loop went on to choreograph an anti-India stomp dance. Some see him as the ‘hero’ of the 2010 unrest in Kashmir, others as the ‘instigator’. As the Hurriyat hardliner walks out after years in detention, BASHAARAT MASOOD explains why that is rocking both Parliament and the PDP-BJP alliance

Masarat Alam Masarat Alam

Tche ha tchuk Ishfaq (You are Ishfaq),” glowered Nazir Ahmad Leharwal, an English teacher at Srinagar’s leading missionary school Tyndale Biscoe. All those years ago, it seemed just the kind of thing teachers do — a jab/compliment. But years later, the teacher’s reproach would turn somewhat prophetic. By “Ishfaq” the teacher meant Ishfaq Majeed, the first militant commander of Kashmir. And the Class X boy he was addressing that day was Masarat Hussain Bhat. Ishfaq’s junior by two years, that boy now goes by the name Masrat Alam, the man who is emerging as the most visible face of Kashmir’s separatist politics and whose release from police detention after five years has triggered an upheaval among partners PDP and BJP in the J&K government.

Alam’s friends in Biscoe remember him as the boy with a sartorial preference for yellow and white — yellow shirt, white trousers and white sports shoes. “Oh, and that song that he sang on a loop. It was a Kashmiri folk song: ‘Sanz kar koori, waerev tche gasun, trayi koori khan majar, danus che pewun (Prepare, oh girl, prepare, to go to your in-laws, stop being pampered, you have to light the hearth),” says one of his friends who now works as a general manager at an upscale hotel in Srinagar.

Over the years, a lot changed. Alam took to singing a new tune — fiery and unapolgetically anti-Indian. The Muslim League, of which he is co-founder and which is part of the hardline faction of the Hurriyat Conference, adheres to a brand of separatist politics that sees the Kashmir issue as an unfinished agenda of Partition. At the height of the 2010 unrest in Srinagar, when angry, masked youth pelted stones at the police and the CRPF, his is the face nobody saw (he was underground) but which lurked behind every protest, solidarity video and protest calendar that he organised.

At his home in old Srinagar’s Zaindar Mohalla, Alam, 43, wearing a grey pheran, stands up every few seconds to greet his visitors. The narrow lane outside his two-storeyed ancestral house is crowded with people who have been coming to meet him ever since his release a week ago, on March 7.

“The government didn’t do me any favour,” he tells The Sunday Express, his voice soft. “I was bailed out by the courts and when they (the government) exhausted all their options, they had to release me. They are politicising it only to score some points.”

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Alam’s family once ran one of the biggest readymade garment showrooms in the city and sent him to Biscoe, the “best” school in the city. One of his classmates, who now owns a hotel in Srinagar, says, “In 2010, when Masarat emerged as this leader of sorts, many of my friends called to ask if he was the same boy who studied with us. He once brought a Bajaj scooter to school and everyone was excited, we all wanted to take a ride. When the principal saw it, he seized it. The scooter was returned to him in the evening but without any petrol and we had to drag it to his house.”

The family’s fortunes began dwindling, first when his father Abdul Majeed Bhat passed away — Alam was only six then — and later as he plunged into separatist politics. With Alam spending years behind bars, his uncle Farooq Ahmad Bhat took care of his family — mother, wife and sister.

In 2005, during one of those pauses between jail terms, he had married the sister of a slain militant, who was his neighbour in Zaindar Mohalla. But the couple have rarely been together, with Alam spending most of his married life in jail under preventive detention.

The government has slapped the draconian Public Safety Act (PSA) against Alam 17 times since 1990. Besides, Alam has had 27 FIRs filed against him since 1993 for his separatist activities. As The Indian Express reported earlier, Alam has got bail in 26 of the 27 cases and has been acquitted in the remaining one. The last detention under the PSA was in September 2014.

Alam first came under the police radar in 1990, when, as a teenager, he joined hands with Mushtaq-ul-Islam, who later founded the militant outfit Hizbullah. But his romance with the gun lasted a mere two months. He was arrested during a secret meeting and when he came out three years later, in 1993, he co-founded the Muslim League.

With two competing ideologies emerging within the Hurriyat — the moderates led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and the hardliners led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani — Alam was quick to identify himself with the latter. He has never hidden his dislike for the moderates, openly calling them “traitors”, besides other names. In an alleged conversation with Syed Salahuddin, the Pakistan-based chief of the United Jihad Council, an intercept of which was released by the police, Alam called the Mirwaiz “nika moulvi (the little cleric)” and Abdul Gani Bhat, the other moderate leader, “Gani tambok (Gani tobacco)”.

In the 2002 Assembly polls, when the now-mainstream leader Sajad Lone fielded proxy candidates, the rift in the Hurriyat deepened. Alam then openly backed Geelani, eventually leading to a split in the separatist conglomerate in 2003. “In his address at a joint Hurriyat meeting before the split, he said the driver of our bus (referring to Abbas Ansari, who was Hurriyat chairman and part of the Mirwaiz camp) has lost direction. He then said we either change the driver or get off the bus,” says Showkat Ahmad Hakim, Alam’s associate in the Muslim League who has served several jail terms with him. Geelani and his associates finally got off that “bus” and formed their own Hurriyat faction with Alam as its first convener.

His impatience for anything less than Kashmir’s complete secession from the Indian Union made him a deeply polarising figure. Depending on who you speak with, he is either the “hero” of the 2010 protests or the “instigator”.

“Resistance movements are not run like that. Over 120 boys were killed in 2010 and what did we get out of that?” asks a Hurriyat leader from the rival camp. “We have seen enough bloodshed. We need to devise methods where there is minimal loss to the people of Kashmir. But he (Alam) behaves like an angry man who thinks he can drive India out in a few days.”

Alam’s staunch backing of Geelani brought the two further close. So when Geelani parted ways with the Jamat-e-Islami to form the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, Alam became one of its members, while retaining his position in the Muslim League. This didn’t go well with many in the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat and Alam had to resign from its membership.

It wasn’t until 2007 that he emerged as the de facto No. 2 to Geelani. That year, he enforced a shutdown in old Srinagar city — Mirwaiz’s stronghold — on Geelani’s call to protest against the Mirwaiz’s dialogue with New Delhi. A few months later, he organised a massive public rally for Geelani at Srinagar’s Eidgah, unnerving not only the police and intelligence agencies but also his opponents in the separatist camp. The rally ran into controversy when someone unfurled a Lashkar flag. Alam was promptly arrested under PSA.

This started a revolving door detention for Alam under PSA — he would be booked under the Act and when the court quashed his detention and ordered his release, he would be arrested from the gates of the court to be booked again under PSA.

When he was released in 2008, the Amarnath land row was threatening to erupt, and Alam was the first separatist leader to propose a coordination committee of separatists to resist the government order transferring land to the Amarnath Shrine Board. Close to 60 people were killed in the state and Alam was among the separatists who were arrested for “instigating” the protesters. He remained in jail for two years. Two days after he was released, a Srinagar teenager, Tufail Ahmad Matoo, was killed in police firing, setting off a public uprising. The summer of unrest sealed Alam’s position as a potential successor of Geelani.

Though there are voices in the Hurriyat against Alam’s elevation now, Geelani has never seemed to be in doubt about who his successor would be. In 2010, around the time street protests were gaining ground, during a rally Geelani was addressing in Kupwara, a police officer had gone up to him and said he had orders for his arrest. Geelani sought a few minutes from him. He rang up Alam and told him about the imminent arrest and asked him to take charge of the Hurriyat. “Looks like it is going to be a long detention,” a friend quotes Geelani as having told Alam. “Now it in in your hands. Consult with Sumji (Hurriyat leader Ghulam Nabi Sumji) sahib and don’t let it (the protests) go cold.” A few days later, Geelani sent a letter from jail elevating Alam as Hurriyat general secretary.

Alam used this opportunity well and emerged as the architect of the 2010 street protest that spiralled across the state. The state government reacted with force — 120 youths were killed in the firing by police and paramilitary forces.

A police dossier on Alam in September 2014 says the separatist leader kept getting money from Geelani to keep people on the streets. “He was given about Rs 2 lakh per month which would be collected by Showkat Hakim and Bashir Ahmad Bhat, his trusted lieutenants,” the dossier says.

Alam soon went underground, from where he coordinated the protests and carefully crafted protest calendars that turned him into a darling of the youth. At the height of the 2010 unrest in Srinagar, he also galvanised the youth telling them to stomp their feet to the chant of ‘Go India, Go back’ — a protest dance that came to be known as ‘ragda’— and came out with a video addressing the Army and asking them to ‘Quit Kashmir’. The government announced Rs 10 lakh reward for his arrest.

“He was not just the brain behind the 2010 protests, he instigated the youth to pelt stones. He has a network of workers who would initiate stone throwing at a place and draw in other youth. He would ensure he had workers in every part of Srinagar who kept the city boiling,” says a top police officer who was posted in the city during the unrest. “You can’t change him, neither by detaining him nor by releasing him. I am sure this silence of his will be temporary and he will soon be back to his ways.”

Former chief minister Omar Abdullah, under whose watch Alam spent almost four years in jail under the PSA, said after Alam was released that he has no regrets about having kept the separatist leader “out of circulation”. “Yes, my government detained Masarat Alam. Detention isn’t ideal but difficult situations have to be tackled. Whichever way I look at it, Alam’s detention saved lives and allowed smoother elections,” he said. “The summer of 2010 was never repeated again, not even after Afzal Guru’s execution, and a huge reason for that was the absence of Alam.”

He also tweeted: “One last thing for those insisting on calling Alam a ‘political prisoner’, please check YouTube for his videos & then rush in to judge me”.

The others

The release of political prisoners was one of the poll promises of the PDP. Though the process has been stalled for now after the uproar over Alam’s release, the prominent names on that list:

Ashiq Hussain Faktoo

Husband of separatist leader Asiya Andrabi, Faktoo, also called Dr Mohammad Qasim, has spent 22 years in jail for the alleged killing of human rights activist H N Wanchoo in 1992. In 2003, the Supreme Court sentenced him to life imprisonment though a TADA court had earlier acquitted him.

Ghulam Qadir Bhat

A policeman-turned-militant, Ghulam Qadir Bhat is serving life term. He has been in jail for more than two decades.

Mohammad Shafi Khan

Khan, who also goes by the name Shafi Shariati, was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court in the H N Wanchoo murder case. A professor at Kashmir University, Khan, however, went absconding after the apex court verdict and was arrested in 2011. Khan too had been acquitted by the TADA court in the case.

Ghulam Mohammad Bhat

A lawyer, Bhat was arrested from the outskirts of Srinagar city in 2010. Bhat, a close aide of Hurriyat chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani, was arrested for his alleged hawala links. But Hurriyat maintains he has been picked up for political reasons.

Questions and Answers

‘We will resist, like in 2008, if BJP tries to change demography’

On the new PDP-BJP government

“We don’t care who is in power. But we have apprehensions that BJP may attempt to change demography of this state. We will not allow it at any cost. They (government) tried this (demographic change) in 2008, though there was a different government. People gave sacrifices and didn’t allow that. If it is tried again, we will resist again – like in 2008.”

On peace talks

“We don’t take individual decisions. If there is an offer for talks, it will be discussed in the forum led by Geelani sahib. It will be decided there whether we should participate in a dialogue process or not but the decision will be based on our principled stand.”

On succeeding Geelani in the Hurriyat

“I am no successor. I am just an ordinary worker of this resistance movement. I could not have managed anything alone. We did everything after consulatations. Others helped me. There was (Hurriyat leader Ghulam Nabi) Sumji sahib, (Peer) Saifullah sahib, Asiyaji (Andrabi)”.

On the 2010 protests

“2010 was a peoples’ movement. People came out into the streets and they were showered with bullets. Many people were martyred and that only strengthened the resolve of others. When we weren’t allowed to campaign on the streets, we started a social media campaign. It was a historic moment. It nailed Indian lies. We were able to send a message to India and the international community. It only helped us get more support from youth studying outside Kashmir”.

On Kashmir

“Kashmir is an occupation and there will be no debate or discussion over it.”

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