India is Indira’ for me, says Mehbooba Mufti

New Delhi: Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership, but said for her “India is Indira”. Ms Mufti she was saddened to see the idea of India projected on television prime times that widens the gap between Kashmir and the rest of the country. 

At an event in the national capital on Friday, the J&K chief minister said that she has not known this India projected in “hyperventilating” TV debates. “I am sorry to say that the image of India which the (TV) anchors project is not what India is about, is not the India I know,” she said. 

Jammu and Kashmir, defying the two-nation theory that was based on religious divide, had aligned to a more secular and accommodative India where Hindus and Muslims pray together at shrine and statues of Hindu gods are being made by Muslim artisans, she said.

“To me, India is Indira Gandhi. When I was growing, she represented India for me. Maybe some people won’t like it but she was the India,” the J&K chief minister said. 

However, Ms Mufti was all praises for “the man of the moment”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who, she believes, can be the true harbinger of peace and stability in the Valley.

“Prime Minister Modi has the potential to become the man of history and his leadership is an asset which needs to be harnessed. Our hopes are pinned on him to work together and bring Kashmir out of the mess,” said Ms Mufti.

“I want to see that India which cries, feels the pain of Kashmir. The India that embraced us on our terms. We are a diverse state with all kinds of multi-diversity of religion and everything. Kashmir is a mini India in India,” Ms Mufti said.

Strongly opposing any move to revoke Kashmir’s special constitutional status, she said some people were talking “about our flag, sometimes about Article 370. which are very dear to the people of the state and they help preserve the state’s unique identity”.

Ms Mufti said the government of India and the people of the country needed to do more to accommodate the aspirations of Kashmiris even as the sentiment of ‘azadi’ needed to be replaced with a “better idea”. The chief minister pinned her hopes on Prime Minister Modi for resolving the issue of Jammu and Kashmir.