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ShamS Khwaja
Parliamentary candidate from South KaShmir
‘An idea should be

battled with an idea’

ShamS Khwaja, a Supreme Court lawyer, is the
first non-state subject candidate to fight an
election in J&K. He is a candidate from volatile
South Kashmir parliamentary constituency of
Anantnag. A resident of New Delhi, Khwaja’s grand
father Khwaja Abdul Wajid was the associate
editor of Al-Balagh, an Urdu weekly published
by Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad. In an interview
with Tehelka, Khwaja tells riyaz wani that he
was moved to contest from J&K after seeing the
inability of the local leaders to properly represent
and articulate the situation in the state.

edited excerpts from An interview •
You are the first non-state subject who
has chosen to contest election in Kashmir.
Why?
I am a Constitutional expert and I was moved
by the inability of the current Kashmiri leaders
to fight the constitutional breakdown in Kash-
mir. At the same time, I don’t think that those
contesting polls in the state are the real leaders
of KashmIr. They, like me, are little more than
scarecrows. The real leaders are behind jails
now. Take for example Shabir Shah, Yasin Malik,
Asiya Andrabi or for that matter Geelani Saheb.
I believe that an idea should be battled with
an idea. You must release all jailed leaders and
let them express their ideas. And then their
ideas can be contested by people like me and
the other leaders. Let people then decide. So,
why jail them.
You have not been a politician before?
No, I have not been a real politician. I have only
had a political interest. Before contesting for
Anantnag, I have fought an election from a
Constituency in Uttarakhand. I don’t want to
say it for reasons of modesty, I am from a dis-
tinguished freedom fighter’s family. My late

tehelka / 15 may 2019 32 www.tehelka.com