Omar's Journey

"To accept that the man (Farooq Abdullah) will accept anything that you throw at him like some sort of grateful dog waiting for scrap is to add salt to the wounds you have inflicted”, Omar Abdullah said in an interview to a TV channel much to the dismay of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. The statement of then 32-yearold Omar Abdullah in June 2002 demonstrated his political immaturity. Actually the statement was adding salt to the wounds of the already alienated people of Kashmir as it only proved that National Conference’s alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was for getting family benefits rather than based on sound political reasoning and convictions.

Exactly six years later, Omar made a remarkable speech on the occasion of noconfidence motion in the Indian Parliament against the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. His core argument was that India’s interest and the Indian Muslim interest are the same. He used the platform of Indian Parliament to admit the political blunder of allying with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) a few years back. “I made the mistake of siding with them [BJP] once on the question of Gujarat. I did not resign when my conscience told me to. And my conscience has still not forgiven me. I’ll not make the same mistake again”, thundered Omar Abdullah, president of National Conference in the Lok Sabha. This surely prompted Sonia Gandhi to take no time in deciding to give her party’s support to Omar as chief minister for six years.