Pulwama redux

My enemy’s enemy is my friend — that sums up how the Opposition in general, and the Congress in particular, is reacting to former governor Satya Pal Malik’s recent revelations about Pulwama. A report says that Malik has offered to campaign for the Congress in 2024, while also stating that he does not want to contest or take any other role in active politics. The Congress might want to treat the offer with caution — while he is a handy stalking horse, Malik has enough skeletons in his own cupboard that the BJP can rattle any time it chooses to.

What is most interesting about the former governor’s revelations is that there is almost nothing new in what he says: much of this was known, and discussed, at the time.

The Satyapal Malik files

Sometimes, who says something is as important as what is being said — and the public utterances of former governor of, successively, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Goa and Meghalaya Satya Pal Malik falls in that category.

Malik, like so many others, has been a political chameleon, changing his colors to suit the landscape he has found himself in. Equally, it is true that while he has sailed across the political spectrum, he has been a member in good standing of the BJP since he joined the party in 2004, and has held a series of important posts in the party hierarchy. So much so, that the ‘high command’ hand-picked him for governor of J&K in the lead-up to the abrogation of Article 370. Having seen the party through the immediate aftermath of the revocation of special status to J&K, he was given the governorships of first Goa, then Meghalaya before eventually quitting public life in October 2022.

In early January 2022, he first blotted his copybook when he took the side of the farmers in the then-ongoing protests, and said that he had gone to see Modi to request him to heed the demands of the farmers. Malik said that when he told Modi over 500 farmers had died, Modi said, Malik quotes, “Did they die for me?”