Iltija Mufti: Is this the new face of mainstream politics in Kashmir?

On 5 August, 2019, when India’s government revoked the special status of Kashmir and detained the region’s entire political leadership – both separatists and India-supporting politicians – it was 32-year-old Iltija Mufti who started appearing on TV news channels to speak out about her sense of betrayal.

Mufti also took over the Twitter handle of her mother Mehbooba Mufti, one of Jammu and Kashmir’s best-known leaders, a former chief minister and leader of the mainstream People’s Democratic Party, and began to speak out against the Indian government, including prime minister Narendra Modi.

In a way, she became an unofficial representative for many Kashmiris at the time who found themselves unable to find a voice due to a crackdown on the internet. Mufti was catapulted to national attention, but says it all happened by accident.

She tells The Independent from her home in Srinagar, Kashmir: “Luckily, I had very little bandwidth of broadband that was working. I started contacting journalists that I knew, to tell them what exactly was happening. That’s how it started. And that built up. Because, you know, there was complete silence here. Nobody was talking, the ones who would talk were taken away.”

India put more than 5,000 people across Kashmir in jail between August and November 2019. This included politicians, separatists, lawyers, students, grassroots political workers and social workers.

Mufti continues: “There was a sense of complete paranoia, people had no inkling of what was to come.” Forty-six days after her mother was taken away by police, she posted on Mehbooba Mufti’s verified Twitter handle — which has more than 370,000 followers today — and said that she had been given “due authorisation” to post.

Earlier this month, the People’s Democratic Party [PDP] official Twitter handle posted a video of Iltija Mufti who spoke about launching a video series titled #AapKiBaatIltijaKeSaath — that roughly translates to “Conversations with Iltija.”

The post announced: “An air of despondency & despair has seeped through Kashmir. Every day new blows are inflicted on us & it’s important we #SpeakUp. The purpose of these fortnightly videos is to throw light on issues & decisions that affect our lives.”

Many took this as a sign of yet another dynasty joining mainstream politics in Kashmir. But Iltija isn’t sure, just yet. “My priority right now is not even the party, to be honest,” she tells me. “My purpose of these videos is to speak about what’s happening.”

Last year, when PDP was battling an exodus of members, the president of the party [and Iltija Mufti’s mother] Mehbooba Mufti had revamped its organisational structure. Local reports said at the time that she was all set to put up new faces in many constituencies. Reports even said that by bringing political debutants, the party wants to tap “democratic space which is still intact”.

And Iltija Mufti knows there is a lot happening in Kashmir.

Three years have passed since the special status of Kashmir was revoked. There is no elected government in the valley. There are targeted killings and daily incidents.

Iltija Mufti, who turns 35 this month, speaks about the youth in Kashmir. She tells me she can sense their disillusionment, the alienation and the fears.

“They are looking at what’s happening to their peers. When Kashmiri boys go to other states, Rajasthan or Madhya Pradesh, they are assaulted. Sometimes they are even attacked, you know. Youngsters here [in Kashmir] see Muslims in the rest of the country being marginalised in an institutional manner.”

Since Article 370 was removed in 2019, unemployment in Kashmir has risen even though the central government promised investments. Latest government figures show unemployment among educated youth in J&K has reached 46.3 per cent.

“Now, if you have a young man who’s unemployed, who doesn’t have jobs, doesn’t have any sense of security, on one hand, and, on the other hand, sees what is happening to our brothers and sisters, minorities, Dalits, Christians in the rest of the country now — he makes a very conscious choice,” Iltija Mufti says.

The “conscious choice” she is referring to is to become a militant. Kashmir has suffered from a violent insurgency movement since the late 1980s, leading to a conflict with Indian state forces that had claimed anywhere from 40,000 to 80,000 lives by 2002. Attacks on Indian troops, as well as targeted killings of both ordinary Hindus and Muslims caught up in the violence, continue to this day.

It may seem controversial, but Iltija Mufti says she understands the urge some young people feel to join the militants’ ranks, and says it is not just a draw for those who are uneducated.

“It is the youth with PhDs, doctors, lawyers, academicians  — the educated ones — that are joining the ranks of militants in the valley.

“The crippling sense of despair and drifting every Kashmiri young man here feels has increased massively after the illegal abrogation of article 370,” Mufti says.

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“Not a single day goes by when the government doesn’t issue edicts to disempower Kashmiris. There is no sense of dignity, safety and livelihood and security here.” She continues: “These feelings of alienation are compounded by the fact that India is well on its way to becoming an ethnic democracy where economic and social othering and marginalisation of Muslims has been institutionalised.”

Iltija believes that it “serves BJPs purpose to attribute the spike in local militancy to radicalisation done by Pakistan and project it as a clash of civilisations and religions when the truth is that a young Kashmiri man is pushed to the wall and disillusioned because of the treatment meted out to minorities by the present government”.

Ever since the PDP formed an alliance with the BJP in 2015 — the party faced criticism from all quarters. BJP withdrew support from the PDP-led government in Jammu & Kashmir in June 2018. There has been no elected government in the valley since.

“The reasons are very obvious for everybody to see [for PDP’s plummeting popularity and distrust in the valley],” Iltija Mufti says. “There are ups and downs in any political party.”

She believes that even though the party is in the dumps, it is “not likely to stay in the dumps forever”.

There has also been an exodus of members from the party, which Mufti dismisses by claiming that a lot of fresh blood has joined the party ranks too. Home minister Amit Shah said earlier this year that assembly elections shall be held in Jammu and Kashmir after the completion of the delimitation process and that statehood shall be restored once the situation in the union territory becomes normal.

Iltija Mufti rubbishes Shah’s comments. She believes that this is an attempt by the BJP to change the demographic of the state. “Absolutely,” she says, adding that it is no secret that this was “created with the purpose of maintaining a check and balance of power”.

The Independent has reached out to BJP for a comment.

Iltija Mufti believes that political parties in Kashmir need to look beyond their party interests at this time. If not, she fears “then we are definitely looking at a very bleak future”.

She is very careful about how she is perceived. “I don’t want to be a Twitter or a social media sensation who is not connected to reality.” She also doesn’t want to be dismissed as “an elitist, bourgeois kind of girl”.

In fact, some party workers are keen for Iltija Mufti to join mainstream politics. In a meeting of the PDP in the Rajouri district on 16 June, party workers urged Iltija Mufti to come into the fold. Many party insiders also see her as the successor to her mother.

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Speaking about the toll of oppression and conflict on the mental health of Kashmiris, she believes that every political party that fights elections — whenever elections take place in Kashmir — should have mental health on their manifestos. “As somebody who struggled with it [depression] myself,” and she says “I know that mental health, depression has nothing to do with how privileged or not you are.”

However, some are sceptical of Iltija Mufti bringing any change to the political landscape of the valley. Prof Siddiq Wahid, a senior visiting fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, tells The Independent that he is “sceptical” of any “recovery” the PDP might make in Kashmir.

“I am sceptical of a PDP comeback in Kashmir politics because a) it is the party that allowed the current BJP entry into state politics and b) they are prone to back room deals rather than a shared structure of internal political pushback.” He adds that “if they can overcome these self-imposed obstacles, they may have a chance of restoring their credibity”.

For now, Mufti says she doesn’t have any solutions to help revive PDP, but believes that the first step is to “give them [people of Kashmir] a sense of security and dignity. That’s what’s missing.”