Mr. Geelani was an uncompromising opponent of the Indian government’s control of the Kashmir valley and favored Pakistani sovereignty over the mostly Muslim region.
SRINAGAR, Kashmir — Syed Ali Geelani, an influential and uncompromising leader of the separatist movement in Kashmir who refused to engage with India over the future of that troubled Himalayan region, died on Wednesday while under house arrest in Srinagar, Kashmir’s biggest city. He was 91.
His death was confirmed by his son Naseem. He did not specify a cause but said his father had been struggling with heart and kidney disease for the past two decades and dementia more recently.
Even in death Mr. Geelani showed he could make the region’s Indian-led authorities nervous: They shut down the internet across the Kashmir valley when word of his death spread and beefed up security forces patrolling empty streets.
The police took his body away just hours after he died, Naseem Geelani said, leading to a quiet funeral for a resistance leader who could once summon thousands of people into the streets to protest.
For years Mr. Geelani resisted dialogue with India over the future of Kashmir, a picturesque valley of eight million people, most of them Muslim. Controlled by India, the valley is also claimed by Pakistan. Their bitter territorial dispute has fueled decades of bloodshed.
Mr. Geelani had long argued that the valley should fall under Pakistan’s control because of its geographical and religious affinity with that largely Muslim country. He said India should remove its troops from Kashmir and hold a long-promised vote over whether Kashmir should be part of India or Pakistan, though he hinted in recent years that he would side with independence if that option were to prevail in a referendum led by the United Nations.
In a tweet on Thursday, Imran Khan, the prime minister of Pakistan, said Mr. Geelani had “struggled all his life for his people and their right for self determination.” He said Pakistan would observe an official day of mourning.
Officials in Kashmir and in India’s central government, which long regarded Mr. Geelani as a major hurdle in resolving the region’s violence, declined to comment.
The Kashmir valley has long been under the control of Indian security forces. In recent years, India’s Hindu-nationalist government has made taming Kashmir a top priority.
A charismatic leader, Mr. Geelani was often called “Bab,” or “father” in Kashmiri, and he won popularity for his steadfast resistance to Indian rule. His followers would chant in demonstrations: “The one who doesn’t bow, Geelani! The one who can’t be bought, Geelani!”
“He was the most recognized face of Kashmiri resistance against India and an iconic political figure,” said Noor Ahmad Baba, a political analyst in Kashmir. “No other political figure from the valley matched his popularity.”
The authorities had long kept Mr. Geelani under watch. With only a few breaks, he had been under house arrest for 11 years.
His opposition to engaging with New Delhi was at odds with other factions of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, an umbrella group of organizations seeking self-determination for Kashmir. India, he argued, pursued negotiations on the ground that Kashmir was an integral part of that country, a position he rejected.
His anti-negotiation stance put him at odds at times even with sympathizers in Pakistan. In 2006, Pervez Musharraf, then Pakistan’s military dictator, unveiled an ultimately unsuccessful four-point formula to settle the Kashmir dispute with India. Mr. Geelani rejected it.
Despite his popularity in Kashmir, his many critics dismissed his strict Islamic worldview. They also faulted him for failing to support the region’s independence movement, which sparked violence against Indian forces in 1989.
Syed Ali Shah Geelani was born on Sept. 29, 1929, in Zoori Munz, a village in northern Kashmir. His family subsisted on manual labor. He graduated from high school in 1945 and went to Lahore, Pakistan, to study the Quran before later earning a bachelor’s degree in Persian literature.
Mr. Geelani was imprisoned in 1962 for 13 months for participating in anti-India activities. He was arrested again in 1965, accused of nurturing secret contacts in Pakistan, and spent another year or more in prison.
The arrests and jailings continued after he joined an Islamist organization, Jamaat-e-Islami, and was elected to the State Assembly in 1972. The Indian authorities seized his passport in 1981 and never returned it, though they let him travel to Mecca in Saudi Arabia in 2006 for the Muslim hajj pilgrimage.
He began calling for public protests of Indian control in the 1980s, finding a receptive audience among angry Kashmiris. After violence broke out in 1989 — the beginning of more than 30 years of conflict — Mr. Geelani became perhaps the movement’s most visible leader. His calls for workers to strike could shut down activity in the Kashmir valley for days. He was a fixture at the funerals of those who died fighting Indian forces.
His public profile may have reached its peak in 2008, when he became the face of resistance after a land dispute unleashed a new wave of demonstrations and violence.
In 2016, protests and violence again erupted, this time after the Indian police killed a militant commander, Burhan Wani. In response, Mr. Geelani and other resistance leaders issued “protest calendars,” which dictated when demonstrations would be held and when shops would open and close. The Indian authorities tried to persuade him to help ease tensions, but he refused, calling the outreach a “mere optic for Indian media.”
Mr. Geelani’s influence ebbed in recent years. He resigned as leader of the Hurriyat Conference last year. citing infighting within the group and its inability to stop India’s crackdown in Kashmir in 2019, which swept aside a degree of autonomy that New Delhi had long extended to the region.
In addition to his son Nassem, Mr. Geelani is survived by his wife, Jawahira Begum; two daughters, Zamshida and Chamshida, and another son, Nayeem, from that marriage; and two daughters from a previous marriage, Anisha and Farhat.
Despite his growing frailty, Mr. Geelani remained defiant. In a video posted online in 2018, as he remained under house arrest, he is shown knocking at the door of his home from the inside, telling Indian soldiers outside to let him out so that he could offer prayers at the funeral of a relative.
“Open the door, I won’t fly away,” he tells the officers. “We want to perform a funeral for your democracy.”
Suhasini Raj in Lucknow, India, contributed reporting.
World - Latest - Google News
September 03, 2021 at 04:48AM
https://ift.tt/3kStQ8W
Kashmir Separatist Leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani is Dead - The New York Times
World - Latest - Google News
https://ift.tt/2SeTG7d
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Kashmir Separatist Leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani is Dead - The New York Times"
Post a Comment