Born to Farooq Abdullah and a British mother, Omar Abdullah was far removed from the violence that was happening in Kashmir. He could barely speak Kashmiri. His mother, Mollie, who was shocked by the rise of militancy in Kashmir and had left India along with her three daughters for England, had declared to her husband, "He will join politics only over my dead body."
Jammu and Kashmir's historic mandate
Ten years later, Omar Abdullah is all set to become the chief minister of Jammu & Kashmir. At 38, he will be the youngest chief minister in the current crop. He has brought National Conference back into the reckoning in the state. More important, he has stepped out of the shadow of his father, Farooq Abdullah, who is widely seen as careless and flamboyant.
The mood in the valley was dead against the Abdullahs not so long ago. After all, Omar Abdullah had served in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance, first as the minister of state for commerce and then as the junior foreign minister. The NDA liked to project him as its Muslim face. But, back home in Kashmir, it was seen as another deal by Farooq Abdullah to get his son a ministerial berth. This was also the period when the Gujarat riots were held and anger amongst Muslims ran high.
The PDP should follow NC's footsteps
Naturally, the National Conference did badly in the 2002 assembly election. Omar Abdullah lost from the family's traditional seat of Ganderbal. Nevertheless, he learnt his lesson and moved quickly to control the damage. At a press conference in Srinagar, he admitted his mistakes and sought forgiveness. The next year, he snapped all ties with the NDA. Omar Abdullah followed it with the disclosure that he had on several occasions, after the Gujarat riots, offered to resign.
Henceforth, he said and did what the people of Kashmir like. Unlike his father's constant tirades against Pakistan, he took a more conciliatory route; he proposed a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to probe custodial deaths and other human rights violations; and in the recent Amarnath row, he came out openly in favour of the Kashmiris.
'You can't just wish away problems in Kashmir'
He cleverly built bridges with the Congress in New Delhi during the recent trust vote in Parliament forced by the Left parties, though the Congress was in an alliance with the People's Democratic Party in Srinagar.
Omar Abdullah, whose National Conference has just two Lok Sabha MPs, came to meet a senior minister to negotiate their support. For one-and-a-half hours, he grilled the minister on different technical, legal and diplomatic aspects of the India-United States nuclear deal.
"My only requirement was that I should be satisfied about various questions. Now I am satisfied with your explanations. But I have to talk to my father and convince him," Omar Abdullah told his host.
'It's not just a numbers game in J&K'
The senior minister was none other than External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee. He took it upon himself to convince Omar. "I just told him, 'Omar saab, you have to support us. This is in national interest'. And he readily agreed," said Mukherjee. "I can see traits of Sheikh Abdullah in Omar Abdullah."
His 'I am a Muslim and an Indian too' speech in Parliament during the trust vote made him an instant hit with the country's youth. Victory in the Jammu and Kashmir election was the logical next step.
Second homecoming for Omar Abdullah
Omar Abdullah has friends in other places too. He is treated literally as a son by Sharad Pawar, the Union agriculture minister and the powerful chief of the Nationalist Congress Party. His links with Pawar became stronger when he attended Sydenham College in Mumbai for his commerce degree.
It was in Mumbai, where he was working for a private firm, that Omar met his future wife Payal, the daughter of a senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader from Haryana. His sister, Sara, is married to the rising Congress star, Sachin Pilot.
