Irshad Hussain
In July last year, the three-time former MLA from Budgam Agha Ruhullah Mehdi created a sensation over the internet and the possible infighting within Kashmir’s leading political party, the National Conference.
Ruhullah believed to one of the many members of the National Conference who have silently or overtly started opposing the deafening silence of the party leadership over their silence on the Centre’s decision to abrogate J&K’s special status in August 2019 made a strong speech while speaking to his party workers in the Central Kashmir’s Budgam district.
Ruhullah, from the influential Aga clan, a strong Shia clergy in Kashmir that holds a popular base in the minority Shia population across the Kashmir valley. He joined the National Conference after the assassination of his father, Aga Syed Mehdi, in an IED blast by suspected Militants in 2000.
In arguably one of the most liked and widely shared speeches from a Kashmiri Politician post abrogation situation after 5th August 2019 in Jammu Kashmir, Aga Ruhullah Mehdi bashing the BJP Government said that the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Minister of Home Affairs, President of Bhartiya Janta Party, Amit Shah has snatched the rights and identity of people of Jammu Kashmir by abrogating the special status of Jammu Kashmir.
Reaffirming his belief and support on the Jammu Kashmir National conference Ruhuallah said, “Elections are important but when your basic rights are denied, for what purpose elections are done, the parties who are presently working have to demand the rights of people, not have to run after power, National conference is not a party, it is a movement in itself, people need a national conference of the 1950s and 1930s.”
He said that unity was the dire need of the hour and so was the need to reaffirm our faith in the fact that “Allah decides the fates and nobody is as powerful as Allah is”. Speaking to the workers’ convention in Budgam he said that Sheikh Abdullah signed the instrument of accession in 1947, so it was never the National Conference or the people of Kashmir, who broke the promise, it was the leaders of India who continue to backstab us, but now is the time to come out of our delusions and fight tooth and nail for the restoration of Our “identity”.
On August 05, 2019, the BJP led- Government unilaterally abrogated the special status of Jammu Kashmir breaking down Jammu Kashmir into two union territories. Thousands of people including leaders and activists of pro-establishment groups were detained, many booked under the Public Safety Act.
“In August 2019, they did not abrogate the article 370 and article 35A it was our identity that was stripped like our Pheran is nowadays, it was our right that was snatched from us.” Calling upon the party leadership to lead from the front for the restoration of Articles 35A and 370, Agha Ruhullah Mehdi said, “Look at Punjab, even though it too seems impossible that they will ever repeal the farm laws, but the farmers are giving their best, Amit Shah and Modi are not as powerful, Allah will grant us victory if we chose to be in the fight .”
Condemning what he called an attack on Kashmir’s cultural identity he said, “Such things will be normalized in Jammu Kashmir in the next decade or two, and we will have no place, this fight is not for us, it is for the future generations of Kashmir, it is time for Kashmiris to decide whether they still want to engage in trivial issues for the fight for the future of Jammu Kashmir,” adding, “I have decided my path, I will not accept this as the new normal.”
Pointing towards his party leaders, Ruhullah said, “you might think Modi will allow you to held elections in the state that will be your misconception, becoming a cabinet minister in the state, you are an employee of the Indian government, you will not have any right to oppose the decision of the centre, if that is against your choice, they have the full authority, you do not hold the power any more.”