Former Hurriyat chairman Abdul Gani Bhat passes away at 90
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Srinagar: Abdul Gani Bhat, former chairman of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference and widely regarded as the “voice of moderation” in Jammu and Kashmir’s separatist politics, passed away on Wednesday after a brief illness. He was 90.
A founding member of the separatist conglomerate, Bhat consistently advocated dialogue as a means of resolving the Kashmir issue. He often took a middle-ground approach, even when it meant defying the Hurriyat Conference’s constitution, a stance that drew repeated controversies and calls for his expulsion from the separatist camp.
Born in 1935 in Botengoo village of Sopore, Bhat completed his bachelor’s degree from Sri Pratap Singh College, Srinagar, where his contemporaries included Farooq Abdullah and Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, both of whom later became chief ministers of Jammu and Kashmir. He went on to earn an LLB and a Master’s degree in Persian from Aligarh Muslim University.
After a brief practice as a lawyer in Sopore, Bhat joined academia as a college lecturer in 1963, starting his teaching career in Poonch. Over the next 23 years, he taught Persian at various colleges across Jammu and Kashmir.
In 1986, during Governor Jagmohan Malhotra’s administration, Bhat and four other government employees were dismissed for security reasons. With his job gone, he moved towards political activism, becoming instrumental in the formation of the Muslim United Front (MUF), which emerged as the first major political and electoral challenge to the National Conference in Jammu and Kashmir.
Following the MUF’s defeat amid allegations of poll rigging, Bhat was arrested for the first time, marking the beginning of multiple arrests over the years. When the Hurriyat Conference was formed as a separatist alliance in 1993, Bhat’s Muslim Conference became one of its founding constituents, and he was inducted as one of seven executive members before later being appointed chairman of the amalgam.
In the early 1990s, Bhat was known for his fiery speeches in chaste Kashmiri, which often bordered on the fantastical and inspired his audiences to believe that azadi (freedom) was within reach. Over time, however, he adopted a more pragmatic approach.
A staunch proponent of reconciliation, Bhat was part of the Hurriyat delegation that met then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and then deputy prime minister L. K. Advani in New Delhi, underscoring his commitment to dialogue as a path to resolving the Kashmir issue.