✒️ :. Mohammad Rafique Rather
PDP leader and District President Baramulla, Mohd Rafique Rather, has reacted to a social media post by an NC leader and MLA regarding an incident in which a young man reportedly raised some uncomfortable questions before Dr. Farooq Abdullah at a media enclave.
Without naming the NC leader, Rafique Rather said that while an elderly political leader should certainly be questioned with due politeness and respect, questioning the very right of people to ask uncomfortable questions and then stretching the issue into a selective interpretation of JK political history does little justice to the complexities of the past.
“I agree that an elderly leader should be questioned politely and respectfully.But questioning the question itself, and then taking the matter to a point where even historians would struggle to explain our political destination, appears more like an attempt to become a ‘good boy’ in the eyes of the NC leadership than an honest engagement with history,” Rather said.
He added that before lecturing others on history, political morality and the accession of Jammu and Kashmir, those occupying positions of political influence should also be prepared to answer some uncomfortable questions.
“Isn’t it a fact that we have lost a generation and decades of peace, political stability and democratic opportunities as a consequence of political decisions taken by the leadership of the time?” he asked.
Rafique Rather said that from the transformation of the Muslim Conference into the National Conference in 1938, to plebiscite politics and the 1975 Accord; from the controversy surrounding the 1987 elections to the repeated debates over the autonomy promise of 1996, and the subsequent political developments including what many regard as a betrayal of the 2024 mandate, every chapter deserves honest and dispassionate scrutiny.
“Why should one particular political narrative be treated as if it were the unquestionable word of the Bible, while every uncomfortable question about its consequences is dismissed as sacrilege?” he asked.
He said history cannot be the private property of any political party, leader or political family.
“No leader, party or political family has the right to demand permanent immunity from questions about decisions that shaped the destiny of generations. Political accountability cannot be selective, and history cannot be rewritten according to political convenience,” Rather said.
Rather urged said NC leader to stop behaving as though everything begins and ends with their own interpretation of Jammu and Kashmir’s history.
“We need honesty, not selective outrage; accountability, not political sermons; and a complete reading of history, not a convenient version of it. The people of Jammu and Kashmir deserve nothing less than honest answers and the freedom to ask difficult questions,” he added.
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