The Silent Coup: A History of India's Deep State by Josy Joseph

Author:Josy Joseph [Joseph, Josy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

The Valley sank into a deceptive calm before the storm burst.

‘Pindi, Pindi, Pindi!’ A few months after the 1987 elections, bus attendants in Kashmir Valley shouted ‘Pindi’ from their vehicles at bus stops, offering to drop people to the border free of cost if they were headed to Rawalpindi. Hundreds of angry youngsters would board these buses, or use other means, to cross the border. After a few days of trekking, they would reach training camps in PoK.

This is how MUF candidate Yusuf Shah, aka Syed Salahuddin, turned into a guerrilla leader. Yasin Malik and Javed Mir joined hands to form the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), which would lead the resurgence of militancy in the region. JKLF traces its origins to the armed faction of the Plebiscite Front, founded in 1955 after Sheikh Abdullah was ousted as prime minister and jailed in 1953.

The Front would play a key role in ushering hundreds of Kashmiri youngsters into militant-training camps in Pakistan. One of its founders, buried in an unmarked grave in Delhi’s Tihar Jail in 1984, was now resurrected as an icon for the restless region. Maqbool Butt, a resident of Kupwara district’s Trehgam village, and other activists had established the National Liberation Front, the precursor to JKLF, in 1965 to lead an armed struggle to free Kashmir. Butt’s fierce commitment to Kashmiri independence meant that he ran afoul of authorities on both sides of the border. He has the unique credit of being an enemy to both India and Pakistan—tortured and jailed in both countries before being hanged by India in February 1984.

Until 1987, Butt’s story had been part of a marginal narrative. With three colleagues, he had secretly crossed over to Kashmir from Pakistan to initiate an armed rebellion in 1966, but Indian security forces had already been tipped off by a local informant. As the two sides exchanged fire, police officer Amar Chand and Butt’s colleague Aurangzeb were killed. Butt and two others were arrested and tried for murder and illegal border crossing, among other charges, and given capital punishment. In Srinagar Jail, the young inmates would not give up. On the morning of 8 December 1968, the three of them escaped through an almost forty-foot-long tunnel. They reached Pakistan, but were soon arrested there. Butt relentlessly campaigned for free Kashmir on both sides of the border, and in 1976, he was arrested once again on the Indian side of the LoC, where his death sentence was still valid. His supporters hijacked a plane and staged other terror acts to free him. Butt even petitioned the Indian president for clemency. However, the kidnapping of Indian diplomat Ravindra Mhatre in the UK, on 3 February 1984, and his subsequent murder three days later, to demand Butt’s release, dramatically turned the narrative against him. He was hanged on 11 February inside Tihar. He had been a well-liked prisoner in Tihar Jail, who fought for the rights of other inmates. Within the jail, he is still known to be a good-natured ghost, and many inmates claim to have seen his spirit near the gallows.

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