Dr. Mehmood Hussain
On Wednesday night, Kashmir lost another brave, visionary, and determined son Syed Ali Geelani who fought for the freedom struggle for his entire life. His unfortunate demise is an irreparable loss to the Kashmir movement.
Syed Ali Geelani was an iconic personality in the Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir struggling for the right of self-determination and dedicated his life to the peoples of Kashmir. He was also a leader of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), an umbrella group of parties fighting for the freedom of Jammu & Kashmir. Due to his staunch stance and firm opposition to the Indian tyranny, he spent most of the time in imprisonment and house arrest. In the past 11 years, he was rarely allowed to move independently except for health checkups and court hearings. India has designated his house a permanent jail and all the communication means we’re under the stringent control of Police and paramilitary forces. Even on the night of demise, he was experiencing a prolonged house arrest.
Syed Ali Geelani was a prominent voice in the Indian Occupied Jammu & Kashmir for the freedom struggle and merger with Pakistan. Unlike the young Kashmiri leadership, he strongly opposed any dialogue with India in the absence of plebiscite. For him, India has illegally occupied the area which is an overt violation of self-determination and freedom of nations, and the only solution was the complete withdrawal of Indian troops from the occupied Kashmir.
The veteran Kashmiri leader was born on September 29, 1929, in the Sopore area of Kashmir’s Baramulla district. He traveled to Lahore for higher studies, where he completed his degree in Islamic theology in 1940. He also studied Islamic jurisprudence, Urdu, and Persian. After returning to Kashmir, he started teaching in a public school, but after joining politics resigned from the job and devoted time to politics. His resolve promoted him to the rank of district chief of Jammat-e-Islami of Baramulla and Kupwara. As stated earlier, Geelani was a strong critic of Indian occupation so the Indian forces arrested him in 1962 on the charges of raising Kashmir’s cause and imprisoned him for around 13 months. In 1965 Indian forces arrested him again and imprisoned him for another 22 months. From the JeI platform, Geelani won the legislative assembly seat in 1972 but walked out on the first day of the assembly session for not being allowed to talk in Urdu, the state’s official language. The 1987 elections marked a paradigm shift in the thought of Geelani. He participated in the elections and managed to win with three other candidates from the platform of the Muslim United Front, a loose grouping of political parties seeking freedom from India. The election was largely rigged by the pro-India National Conference and Congress igniting armed resistance in Jammu and Kashmir. Geelani with three other winners was arrested and imprisoned.
Once disappointed from the troika politics and Indian tyranny, Geelani laid the foundations of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) in 1992 intending to fight for the right to self-determination. For his unbreakable resolve for freedom, Geelani became a true leader of the Kashmiri peoples. Shafi Shariati wrote, “His ‘unambiguous’ stature rose to such heights that his single call could shut the entire Kashmir valley and people could hit the roads any time,”. Syed Ali Geelani strongly resisted the 4Point formula forwarded by former President Pervez Musharraf. He urged a referendum rather than joint control of the disputed region. Geelani became a prominent and most respected leader of Kashmir due to his commitment to Kashmir cause and was able to draw support from all segments of the Kashmiri society. He led various freedom movements i.e. demilitarization movement, post-2008 mass uprisings, and post-Burhan Wani massive protests.
Unlike other pro-India and Independent Kashmir leaders, Geelani has always voiced for the merger with Pakistan. He used to say that “Pakistan Hamara hai aur hum Pakistani hn”, means Pakistan is ours and we are Pakistani. For him, the two nations theory has already set the path for the peoples of Kashmir and Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan must be realized. He stood strong against every tactic of Indian brutality and never budge an inch from his standpoint. When India revoked the Article 370 and 35A, he was the only leader from Indian occupied Kashmir raising fears of demographic change. He argued that India would settle the Hindus in the Kashmir region transforming the Muslim majority into a minority. He urged Pakistan and the nations around the globe to stop India from committing genocide of Kashmiri peoples. His care and affection for the people of Kashmir earned him the rank of a true leader of Kashmir. In recognition of his enduring struggle for the Kashmir cause, Pakistan on its 74th Independence Day awarded him the Nishan-e-Pakistan – the country’s highest civilian award.
Syed Ali Geelani was a man of the Kashmir resistance movement who drove the people out of their comfort zones and urged them to stay firm and brave. Kashmir will rarely witness a leader like him. He was a man of great vision, firmness, principles, bravery, and resistance who has dedicated his life to fellow Kashmiri’s. Kashmiri’s across the globe lost a true leader in a critical moment of freedom struggle and will be unable to find one like him.
Author: Dr. Mehmood Hussain (Coordinator of the Department of International Relations, the University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Muzaffarabad Pakistan).
Image credit: File Picture/NISSAR AHMAD