Syed Ali Shah Geelani (29th September 1929 – 1st September 2021) was a Pakistani not by birthright or emigration but by sheer conviction: He was a Pakistani where it was a crime even to favourably mention Pakistan – and he steadfastly remained a Pakistani when being a Pakistani was going out of fashion even in Pakistan.
The titan of Kashmiri resistance breathed his last on 1st September 2021. His son Naseem Geelani confirmed the news of his death to the media without specifying a cause. He had been known to struggle with heart and kidney disease for over two decades.
Indian occupiers knew well who Geelani was. They tried to silence his voice and staunch his struggle while he lived – and they tried even harder after he died. They miserably failed. Geelani triumphed in death when minions of occupation, in their desperation to hush his funeral, laid bare the illegitimacy of the Indian rule.
“Death is inevitable, but what followed after our old man passed away, has been horrifying”, his granddaughter Ruwa Shah tweeted. “Aba’s home was a jail for over a decade and now his graveyard is a jail too.”
Born in 1929 in the Zurimanz village in Bandipora tehsil (now called Sopore) of occupied Kashmir’s Baramulla district, Syed Ali Shah Geelani was the son of a landless labourer in the canals department. He received his early education in Sopore before moving to Lahore where he studied at a madrasa attached to the Masjid Wazir Khan and at the Oriental College.
After completing his education, Geelani returned to Kashmir and took up a teaching job. At around the same time, he became active in politics, joining the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference (JKNC) and becoming the secretary of the party unit in Zurimanz.
In 1946, during the Quit Kashmir movement of the National Conference, he joined
the JKNC newspaper Akhbar-i-Khidmat as a reporter – a job that afforded him valuable exposure and experience that would later stand him in good stead as a leader and author. He has left behind more than a score of books, pamphlets, and letters, including the memoirs of his imprisonment.
He joined Jamaat-e-Islami Kashmir in 1953 and remained a member of the Islamist party until 2004, when he founded his own Tehreek-e-Hurriyat. He initially participated in electoral politics and was elected to the Legislative Assembly on a Jamaat-e-Islami ticket from his native Sopore constituency three times – in 1972, 1977 and in 1987.
But his discomfort with that line of action grew as more and more Kashmiris became disillusioned with India’s hollow promises for a plebiscite. Eventually, he quit electoral politics as political upheaval gathered steam in the occupied valley. He, however, came round to supporting armed struggle only in 1991, when an armed insurgency had already engulfed Kashmir.
The veteran leader held the Kashmiri’s right to self-determination above everything else, and steadfastly opposed any proposal for an ‘outside the box’ solution to the issue whether floated by India or Pakistan. To him, the only legitimate way to determine the will of the people of Kashmir was a plebiscite as promised by the United Nations in 1948.
In 1993, Geelani cofounded – with Abdul Ghani Lone, Abdul Ghani Bhat, and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq – the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC). He served as the Chairman of the umbrella organisation of pro-independence parties of occupied Kashmir until June 2020.
His relentless and articulate defiance of Indian rule won Geelani massive popularity throughout occupied Kashmir. He led widespread shutdowns and massive public protests throughout his political career.
Geelani was a great friend of Pakistan – and he made no secret of his desire to see Kashmir become part of Pakistan. He will always be remembered as the creator of the popular slogan chanted by Kashmiris at their rallies, ‘Ham Pakistani hain, Pakistan hamara hai’.
But he never shied away from criticising the policies of Pakistani leaders. He was bitterly critical of the Pakistani military’s Kargil adventure. He appreciated Pakistan for extending moral, diplomatic, and politically support to Kashmiris’ just and indigenous struggle for independence, but asserted none of this meant “Pakistan can
take a decision on our behalf”.
Geelani’s love for Pakistan was reciprocated by the government and people of Pakistan. The news of his death led to widespread mourning in Pakistan. Leading publications published effusive obituaries and television channels ran sombre packages for him, and in absentia funerals were held for his eternal peace in several cities.
While he lived, the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi kept in touch with him. In March 2015, a three-member delegation from the High Commission led by the Pakistani High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit paid Geelani a visit at his residence to enquire after his health.
On the occasion, Ambassador Basit assured Geelani of Pakistan’s unwavering commitment to the liberation of occupied Kashmir, and extended him an invitation for the Pakistan Day commemoration at the High Commission on 23 March.
On 14 August 2020, the government of Pakistan conferred on Geelani the country’s highest civilian award, the Nishan-e-Pakistan.
Geelani’s selfless struggle for the emancipation of his people from Indian bondage won him wide respect throughout the Islamic world. In 2015, he was invited to participate in the annual meeting of the foreign ministers of member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Kashmir Contact Group to be held in New York from 27 September.
When unrest broke out in occupied Kashmir in the wake of the custodial death of Burhan Wani in 2016, Geelani wrote to the United Nations listing six confidence building measures India must take to restore normalcy in occupied Kashmir.
Syed Ali Geelani’s role as a patriarch of resistance and his love for Pakistan earned him infinite ire of the Indian occupation. He was hounded and persecuted all his life on one pretext or the other.
In 2010, Geelani, along with Indian writer Arundhati Roy among others, was slapped with a raft of charges under a notorious Indian sedition law.
In the wake of the 2019 Pulwama attack, occupation authorities punished Geelani with a penalty of INR 1.44 million and ordered the confiscation of nearly 0.7 million in cash under a repressive law targeting possession of foreign exchange.
Even before his home became a veritable jail, a police vehicle was stationed permanently outside his residence to keep tabs on his activities.
Gilani gave his life to spearheading the Kashmiris’ struggle for liberation from illegal Indian occupation. It is apt that his death turned the spotlight on the issue once more time, highlighting for the world to see the brutal tactics of the illegal occupation, when India’s minions denied him a proper funeral, fearing an upheaval would break out.
