CLICK TV SPECIAL
They realize that throughout his life, Late Geelani brought benefits only to his own family, through the proxy ideological warfare which devastated scores of impressionable minds and wasted the young Kashmiri talents. He left his own people in the lurch and both factions in disarray!
Syed Ali Shah Geelani (SAS Geelani), the separatist Kashmiri leader, passed away yesterday (September 1, 2021). Of course, people will remember him for numerous reasons; he was the foremost pro-Pak separatist leader, and an ex-president of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) which was formed on July 31, 1993, as a political platform of the secessionist and Pak-supported separatist movement, which gave birth to the Hurriyat.
No wonder then, Pakistan is observing “One-Day State Mourning” over Geelani’s death and has even passed anti-India remarks and usual rants. SAS Geelani’s infamous slogan “Hum Pakistani and Pakistan Hamara” is being recounted and chanted in Pakistan after his ‘sad demise’. Pak PM Imran Khan has expressed grief over Geelani’s death. Geelani died in Srinagar, the summer capital of the Indian Union Territory, Jammu & Kashmir also known as J&K UT after prolonged illness. He was suffering serious health-related issues and had been a patient of kidney disease for the past 20 years. At the age of his death, Geelani was 91 years old.
Geelani’s death was not that much tragic was his life: He was born in an aristocratic family in Sopore, in the Baramulla district of J&K in 1929, went to Lahore for his higher studies in the Oriental College, got inspired by Maulana Maududi’s theocratic views and then joined the rightwing Islamist movement, Jamaat e Islami, in his young age. Back home in Kashmir, he represented the Hurriyat Conference and continued his faction after the Hurriyat split in 2003. He recruited the gullible Kashmiri youths in large numbers, snatching away their education and career in the name of ‘Kashmiri people’s political aspirations’, while at the same time educating his children abroad and accumulating wealth and prosperity at his own home.
Now when Geelani has passed away, he has left Kashmiri youth in the lurch. His own people are in disarray. Youth are left at the crossroads. They realize that throughout his life, the late Geelani brought benefits only to his own family, through the proxy ideological warfare which devastated scores of impressionable minds and young Kashmiri talents. He left his own people in the lurch and both factions in disarray!
The sudden death of SAS Geelani does not denote an end to the Pak-sponsored separatist movement under the grab of the pan-Islamist politics in the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir. In fact, it indicates that now old players will be discarded and new ones will be introduced which will keep parroting the Pak narratives of ‘Azadi’ with or without the sentiments and sympathies of the local people in J&K.
