Full text of Darbu’s letter to PDP chief

KL Report

SRINAGAR

Eminent economist and J&K Bank former chairman, Dr Haseeb A Drabu, Tuesday joined PDP. According to a party spokesman, Drabu wrote a letter to party president Mehbooba Mufti about his desire for joining the PDP. Following is the full text of the letter:

Haseeb A Drabu

30th June, 2014

Dear Ms Mufti,

ASAK!

The stunning victory of the PDP apart, the just concluded Parliamentary elections will be remembered for bringing to fore the extent of political polarization in the state.

This, along with the existing alienation and fragmentation, sets the stage for a political structure wherein the demographic majority could well become a political minority.

Indeed, the forthcoming assembly elections can potentially throw up results which marginalize the demographic majority bringing the state, yet again, to political cross roads.

In such a situation, the greatest political challenge is to find a new ideological consensus that lies somewhere between the invasiveness of the integrationists and the imperviousness of the separatists.

Between the two, what we have is a Kashmir where young boys get wrapped in coffins of symbols; a Kashmir where a tragic death gives life to vendors of alien ideologies and peddlers of surreal solutions; and a Kashmir that paralyzes itself in the process of seeking to immobilize the other.

To get out of this political “double bind”,where the only unifying force today is the opposition to the oppressor and its oppression, it is imperative that positive, proactive and assertive actions complement the reactive defensive politics. For the emancipation from domination is not tantamount to achievement of freedom.

For the last 60 years life in Kashmir has been a battlefield, not only physically but intellectually, emotionally and morally. An ordinary life has been a constant witness to pain, anguish, despair, and humiliation. This can’t be allowed to continue.

The Kashmir issue is indeed a Gordian knot, but like the fabled one, it can’t be cut through; it has to be untied with political wisdom, economic vision and social emancipation; all within the framework of ethno-nationalism. This is what, I believe, PDP has articulated in its document: Self Rule: A Framework for Resolution.

Through political participation and legislative interventions, the idea should be to alleviate the status ofthe state legislative assembly: from beingseen as a sinecure for the compromised to being a forum for the creative political thinking, empowered legislative action and inclusive governance initiatives.

It is this that will create the enabling environment for resolution of conflict; first within individuals, then within our own civil society, and then between nation states. Each will complement the other.

It is not only about politics and political leadership. Even as we see want to see a change in the political arena, a similar change has to straddle business, gender, culture, environment, bureaucracy and the fourth estate. This change will be informed by a well-founded understanding of the context in which new generation politics is going to operate. The change that is needed has to be about thought leadership.

It is this agenda that will help banish apathy of the youth towards political parties and the cynicism toward the prospect of a resolution of the issue.

It is this agenda that will inspire the younger generation which has been shaped by unprecedented civil strife, political disruption, and social chaos and lies at the heart of their radicalization.

And eventually, from this will emerge a new age concept of ideology and political participation which make political struggles contests of will.

For inspiring the new generation into action, this new age political process has to culminate in one value: integrity. This must be all pervasive; personal, moral and ideological integrity.

It is in this context and, with this agenda that I want to leave the perch of punditry and slug it out in noise and chaos of politics.

I have earlier had the occasion to work with and for the people of J&K. Not only was it professionally an absolute privilege but also personally it was by a long way the most satisfying.

I want to participate and, to the extent that I can, contribute, to this overall change by working within aegis of the PDP. I do hope you will provide me the opportunity to do so.

Let us aspire! We will see change being inspired!

Sincerely,

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