Srinagar: Kashmir is waiting for Atal Behari Vajpayee; it may instead get to see Narendra Modi soon.
Prime Minister Modi is scheduled to address an election rally at Srinagar’s Sher-e-Kashmir Stadium on Monday, where Vajpayee’s shadow is waiting to both welcome and haunt him.
Though the BJP is among the front runners to form the government after the ongoing election in Jammu and Kashmir—the third phase of polling is on December 9—the opinion is divided on Modi and the BJP.
Depending on whether you are north of Banihal Pass or south of the divide between Jammu and the Valley, Narendra Modi is seen both as a divisive figure and hope for the future in the state.
But the BJP is hoping that the division would disappear on Monday when around ‘one lakh’ people will come and listen to Modi at the cricket stadium.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Reuters image
“You are here, I am here. Let us all wait for him to speak at the stadium. He will change the game completely,” says BJP’s Kashmir spokesperson Khalid Jahangir.
Jahangir is sitting in his office at Hotel Pamposh, just a grenade’s throw away from Lal Chowk, where five people were injured past week when somebody lobbed one at a CRPF team but instead hit some civilians.
Till a few years ago it was unimaginable for the BJP to have its office in Lal Chowk; a fact that is constantly reminded by the two armed security guards who hover over Jahangir. But it is a clear sign that the BJP has finally arrived in the heart of Kashmir, both geographically and literally, even if under the umbrella of security.
Supporters are now looking at Modi to give the final, dramatic push to the BJP’s march into the Valley. When the Prime Minister lands here on Monday, his party is planning to bring one lakh people to Srinagar to listen to him.
“It would be a record,” gush his enthusiastic supporters in the party. “Vajpayee was the last PM to have been welcomed by a huge audience in Srinagar,” says Vir Saraf, a BJP office-bearer from Srinagar’s Habbakadal constituency.
In 2003, Vajpayee had addressed around 20,000 people at the Sher-e-Kashmir Stadium, where the Indian team had to almost abandon a one-day match against the West Indies in 1983 when the pitch was dug up by protesters during the lunch break.
Moved by the atmospherics, the cool breeze from the Dal Lake and the swaying Chinars, Vajpayee declared with a poetic flourish that flowers will bloom again and nightingales would return to the Valley. With chief minister Mufti Mohammed Syeed by his side, Vajpayee made an emotional appeal of friendship to Pakistan and announced a new era of peace in the Valley.
Many Kashmiris, even those who are wary of the BJP’s attempt to form the next government, remember the Vajpayee era as the ‘golden age of Kashmir.’ They feel his announcements helped in restoring diplomatic ties with Pakistan and starting formal dialogue between the Centre and the separatists.
Modi is no Vajpayee; not just because he is fond more of alliterations than couplets. His government recently broke all diplomatic engagement with Pakistan when its envoy met Hurriyat leaders. To expect him to do a Vajpayee and take a U-turn on Pakistan and Kashmir would be premature optimism.
But Jahangir says Modi may announce something big and his decision would redefine the BJP’s equation with the Valley. So, Kashmir awaits his arrival.
“Finally he is reaching Kashmir with his agenda…In Jammu and Kashmir Modi is not presently following Vajpayee’s agenda even as he wishes to make the latter’s dream about Kashmir come true,” says Kashmir Times on its front page on Thursday.
“Except for the slogan of hollow development, the present PM has nothing to offer…,” the Daily argues.
But his rally at the stadium may still attract a huge crowd. Mushtaq War, a TV journalist based in Srinagar, says a lot of people want to see Modi, though each one of them may have a different reason. ‘Dekhen to sahee kaun hai,’ is the defining emotion among the curious Kashmiris, he says.
The BJP understands the importance of a successful Srinagar rally. If thousands of Kashmiris are seen cheering Modi on Monday, it would be a mammoth PR triumph for both the government and the PM.
Will Modi leave behind a lasting legacy? Nobody knows if Modi would sing like a dove or talk like a hawk at the rally. But Vajpayee and his nightingales would be watching.
And everybody would be hoping that flowers bloom again in the Valley.
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