In Kashmir everything is in a confused and shocked state. I live here, but I really can’t connect and look up to anyone here as a leader of Kashmiris. So what I did is run a quick google search on “Kashmiri leaders”, and as expected I see the following names:
1 – Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chairman of the Hurriyat’s moderate faction
2 – Syed Ali Shah Geelani heading Hurriyat’s hardline faction
(Hurriyat is the main Kashmiri separatist alliance, encompassing about two dozen political factions, some of them hardliners who want to merge with Pakistan.- source: BBC website)
3 – Muhammad Yaseen Malik of the JKLF
4 – Shabir Ahmad Shah of the DFP Democratic Freedom Party
5 – Omar Abdullah of National conference
6 – Gulam Nabi Azad, the current CM from Congress
7 – Muftis (father & daughter duo) of the PDP
8 – Sallahudin (leader of Hizbul Mujahideen)
I ask around and I heard some names including Tarigami, Ali Sagar, Sakina Yatto, Bhim Singh, Muzaffar Beg, but then lets just leave them alone for a while, because not even one of them stands out as a leader to me.
Leader – a person who can actually be a person people look upto, with charisma that makes people want to believe in him. Does any one of these have anything that would make them stand out as a leader?
Why dont we have leaders in kashmir… where is this leaderless crowd going? Who is heading this herd?
This ‘leaderless’ crowd is surviving, living, moving on least concerned that it has none to lead. For this crowd ‘I’ matters and for ‘I’ the abscence of a leader does not make much difference.