In 2014, Hina Bhat gave up a promising career as a dentist and joined the BJP. The same year, the 36-year-old stood for her first election, in Amira Kadal assembly constituency in Srinagar, and lost.
In the past three years, though, she has deftly negotiated the state’s political and bureaucratic maze to become the BJP’s Muslim face in Kashmir. The party is banking on her to play a key role in scripting a success story in the valley, where it has not been able to win support despite having been a member of the ruling coalition for the past three years.
Soon after it came to power, the BJP had appointed her as vice president of the state unit of the Mahila Morcha, the party’s women’s wing. Early this year, she was made a member of the north zone of the Khadi and Village Industries Commission. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his Mann ki Baat, praised her role in reviving the Pampore training centre of the KVIC after 25 years.
As a grassroots leader, Bhat has been coordinating party programmes meant for women and young people in the state. She focuses on ensuring that people have access to welfare schemes, and that their grievances are speedily resolved. As a ruling party leader, she has built a reputation as someone who gets the job done.
“That is how my father used to work,” Bhat said when THE WEEK met her at her office at Rajbagh, where security personnel and her four pet rabbits keep her company. “Even during the 90s [when militancy peaked], my father would go and meet people in Maisuma [a separatist stronghold in Srinagar].”
Her father, Mohammad Shafi Bhat, had twice won from Amira Kadal on a National Conference ticket—in 1996 and 2002. He also represented the NC in the Lok Sabha after winning from Srinagar in 1989. In 2002, he quit the party over differences with its leadership and joined the Congress in protest. He returned to the NC towards the end of his political career, and died last year.
Hina Bhat still holds a grudge against the NC for “mistreating” her father. “I made the right decision by joining the BJP,” she said. “As a woman and a Muslim, I am treated with a lot of respect in the party.”
She is mindful of the fact that most people in Kashmir view the BJP as a communal party. “Nobody wins such a huge mandate as the BJP did solely because of religious reasons,” she said. “There is something that people appreciate about the BJP.”
She said more Kashmiris joined the BJP after she did. “The Congress has been here for long, but it never fielded anybody from Srinagar,” Bhat said.
But didn’t the Congress field her father, in 2002? “Yes, because he was an electable veteran with 26 years of experience,” she said. “In the last elections, the BJP fielded 13 candidates from Kashmir alone. This shows how serious the party is about Kashmir.”
Bhat campaigned for the BJP in the Delhi assembly elections in 2015 and the civic polls in Goa and Mumbai this year. She regularly takes up cudgels on her party’s behalf in debates on the security situation and alleged human rights violations in the state. The BJP has also found her particularly effective in countering the separatist view on how to resolve the Kashmir issue.
When asked about the BJP’s support for the abrogation of Article 35A, which empowers the state government to bar outsiders from settling in Jammu and Kashmir, she said, “Article 35A snatches the rights of a woman of the state if she marries an outsider. The BJP supports a debate on that.”
The BJP has strengthened its support base in Jammu and Leh district in Ladakh, but Kashmir remains a challenge. The growing separatist sentiment among the youth is hindering the BJP from making inroads in the region.
Bhat, however, feels that if politics is carried out like social work, the party can win the public’s trust. “When people used to approach my father for help, he would accompany them to government offices and get their grievances addressed,” she said. “I am following his example, and it is working fine.”
But, unlike her father, who enjoyed widespread support in Amira Kadal, Bhat is facing tough competition from the NC and the Peoples Democratic Party, the BJP’s ruling partner. “It is not easy, but I am working hard,” she said. “If my father was around, it would have greatly helped.”
Despite her busy schedule as a politician, Bhat is a caring homemaker who spends time with her mother and son, a class III student. “I cook, clean the house, do the laundry, help prepare my son for school every morning and check on him when he returns,” she said. Bhat is divorced; her former husband, Parvez Bhat, is a doctor.
Balancing work and family is at times difficult, she said. “The other day, I had to rush home from Leh after my son was taken ill. And the following day, I had to again leave for Delhi for work. I miss spending more time with him,” she said.
Does her son get to spend time with his father? “Yes, he does,” said Bhat. “Ours was a peaceful divorce, no hard feelings. We cooperate to make our son comfortable. I am still on good terms with my former in-laws.”
Does she have plans to remarry? “That is not my priority,” Bhat said, smiling. “My son is.”
