Sajjad Lone's wife defends his meet with PM Modi
ASMA, the daughter of Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front founder Amanullah Khan, further said that her husband was "an outlier to the elitist political club, hence the vocal resistance to his gatecrashed entry."
With certain sections in the Kashmir Valley criticising the meeting between her husband Sajjad Gani Lone and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Asma Khan Lone came out to defend the meeting and described the condemnation of Lone as "harangue."
"The selective diatribe against Lone smacks of political entitlement. While actual and ideological opposition is understood and respected, motivated maneuvers are not. Was he the first Kashmiri politician to have ever met the Prime Minster of India? Or for that matter any BJP leadership? Was there not favorable anticipation before the parliament elections towards the BJP voiced by Kashmiri leadership across the board? Do not political entities across the divide in Kashmir meet various functionaries of Government of India even at times for their personal requests? Why single out Lone?" Asma wrote in English daily 'Greater Kashmir' on Tuesday.
"For too long recipients of political patronage and privilege from New Delhi, the entrenched political parties have little tolerance for shared political space wanting to keep it monopolised and at their bidding. They have in turn spun a web of political patronages of their own creating a coterie of cronies whose fortunes are linked directly to the interests of these parties," she said.
"It is these minions of various hues more than the party leadership itself that seeks to protect its interests through a constricted political space, discourse and participation -elbowing out the common Kashmiri being their time tested survival tactic," she added.
ASMA, the daughter of Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front founder Amanullah Khan, further said that her husband was "an outlier to the elitist political club, hence the vocal resistance to his gatecrashed entry."
The meeting in Delhi has also evinced new terms of engagement on the part of the BJP, extended beyond the knighted few to "manage" Kashmir which is the main cause of jitter within certain quarters, she asserted. "If the BJP is able to keep factious policies at bay and actually implement its ambitious plan of good governance and development in the state in-keeping with PM Modi's statesmanship aspirations, it can blow the wind right out of the sails of these tillnow-patronised political parties bursting the bubble of empowerment and development that they have so falsely been selling to the people sans any deliverables," she argued. "It is this calling off of their bluff that they fear the most."
"What is wrong in seeking assistance as a Kashmiri for the betterment of Kashmir without over stepping the larger sentiment of its people? It's about time Kashmir sieved the reality from the contrived, self-interest from selfdefeat, however dark and painful it may initially seem."
Soon after Lone's meeting with Modi on November 10, a section of the media had criticised the former separatist leader for reaching out to the prime minister.