Syed Ali Shah Geelani

Syed Ali Shah Geelani (29 September 1929 – 1 September 2021) was an Islamist, Pro-Pakistan Kashmiri-separatist leader in the Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, regarded as the father of the Kashmiri jihad.

Syed Ali Geelani was born in 1929 in a village called Zurimanj, in the Bandipora tehsil, in the Baramulla district of North Kashmir.

He was the son of a landless labourer in the canals department.

Geelani was educated partly in Sopore and the rest in Lahore.

He studied in a madrasa attached to the Masjid Wazir Khan and later enrolled in the Oriental College.

He completed Adib 'Alim, a course in Islamic theology.

Returning to Kashmir after studies in Lahore, Geelani became active in the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference.

He was appointed the secretary of the party unit in Zurimanj.

In 1946, during the Quit Kashmir movement of the National Conference, he came in contact with Maulana Sayeed Masoodi, the general secretary of the National Conference, who took a liking to him and made him a reporter to the party newspaper Akhbar-i-Khidmat.

Masoodi also sponsored further studies for Geelani, who completed an adib-i-fazil course in Urdu and other courses in Persian and English.

After this, he took a job as a school teacher, first at Pathar Masjid and later at Rainawari in Srinagar.

Here he came in contact with Saaduddin Tarabali, a follower of the Jamaat-e-Islami founder Maulana Abul A'la Maududi.

Maududi advocated a hardline Islamist ideology, whereby Islam had to be the foundation of the entire political order.

Geelani had borrowed a book of Maududi from the local book store, which made a deep impression upon him.

He was to later say, Maududi had "beautifully.. expressed the feelings that lay deep down in my own heart".

The National Conference headquarters, Mujahid Manzil, where Geelani apparently stayed, soon began to be seen as "a den of Pakistanis".

Geelani was soon moved out of Srinagar, and he came to work in the Intermediate College in Sopore.

He stayed in this position for six years.

During this time, he was reading the literature of Jamaat-e-Islami and conveying its contents to his students in lectures.

He also addressed congregations in mosques.

He had become a full-fledged member of Jamaat in 1952.

He was a member of Jamaat-e-Islami Kashmir since 1953, and was regarded as one of its most significant leaders.

Geelani entered into electoral politics ahead of the 1971 Indian general election.

Geelani had claimed that the Jamaat-e-Islami wanted to use it as an opportunity to spread its ideology, keep the Kashmir issue in prominence and protect basic and fundamental rights of the people.

Geelani contested as an independent candidate but lost to Syed Ahmed Aga, with the Jamaat alleging ballot rigging.

Geelani was also a three-time Member of the Legislative Assembly from the Sopore constituency, elected on a Jamaat-e-Islami ticket in 1972, 1977 and in 1987.

He participated in the 1972 legislative assembly election from Sopore.

He won from the seat in that year and again in the 1977 legislative assembly election.

Geelani also contested the 1977 Indian general election as an independent candidate due to the banning of Jamaat in 1975, but lost to Abdul Ahad Vakil.

He was however defeated in the 1983 election due to the sympathy wave generated for the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference by the death of Sheikh Abdullah.

In the 1987 legislative assembly election, Jamaat-e-Islami candidates including Geelani participated under a coalition of parties called the Muslim United Front (MUF).

Geelani won the seat from Sopore, but was expelled from the MUF in 1988.

Geelani resigned as an MLA in August 1989 due to alleged widespread ballot rigging in the 1987 election.

Geelani was viewed as a key separatist leader in Kashmir.

Omar Abdullah, former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, blamed Geelani for the rise in militancy and bloodshed in Kashmir, while his father and former Union Minister Farooq Abdullah urged Geelani to follow a path which would "save Kashmiri people from further destruction".

Geelani helped found the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) in 1993 and served as its chairman from 1998 to 2000.

In 2003, he formed his own faction of which he was later elected as the lifetime chairman.

He founded the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat party in 2004, which became the leading organisation in the separate "Geelani faction" of the Hurriyat Conference.

Geelani served as its chairman until he quit the position in March 2018, though remaining the chairman of his faction of APHC.

He later quit from his faction in 2020.