J&K Assembly to remember hardline separatist leader Geelani today

Srinagar (The Uttam Hindu): The Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) Assembly will remember its members and also national leaders on Tuesday who have passed away, and prominent among them is the hardline separatist leader, late Syed Ali Shah Geelani. The list of business for Tuesday released by the Assembly Speaker, Abdul Rahim Rather, includes obituary references to the past members of the House and also national leaders like former President Pranab Mukherjee, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Somnath Chatterjee and Jagmohan Malhotra, former J&K Governor, who have passed away. Syed Ali Shah Geelani represented the Sopore Assembly constituency in the J&K Assembly thrice in 1972, 1977, and 1987.

When separatist violence started in J&K, Geelani, who had sworn faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the state, became the ideologue of separatists and he publicly advocated the merger of Kashmir with Pakistan. He was the Chairman of the separatist conglomerate, All Parties Hurriyat Conference, which was a combination of 26 political, social, and religious parties formed on March 9, 1993. The ostensible objective of the Hurriyat Conference was to provide a political platform to the insurgent movement in Kashmir. Paradoxically, the Hurriyat included parties of divergent and often disagreeing political groups. The Jamaat represented then by Geelani stood for the merger of Kashmir with Pakistan while the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) stood for independent Kashmir. Geelani's hardline, uncompromising attitude resulted in the split of the Hurriyat on September 7, 2003, into the so-called hardline and the moderate groups. Geelani left the Jamaat-e-Islami and formed his own party called the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat in 2004.

When MPs of all party delegations went to call on Geelani at his Hyderpora residence in Srinagar on September 4, 2016, he refused to speak to the MPs and even slammed the door on them. He passed away in 2021 and was buried in the graveyard close to his residence in the Hyderpora area. Geelani's politics remained paradoxical throughout his life, a school teacher, turned preacher, turned mainstream politician, turned separatist ideologue, and in the end, died without formal mourning by those he claimed to represent.