Shah Faesal

Shah Faesal was born in the Sogam area of Lolab Valley, a district in Kupwara, Jammu and Kashmir. His father, Ghulam Rasool Shah, was a teacher who was killed by militants in 2002.[9][10][11] Shah Faesal was 19 at the time.[1] Not only was his father a teacher, but his mother, Mubeena Varrier, as well as grandfather were teachers.[3]

He is a 2008 batch graduate of the Jhelum Valley Medical College.[12] He holds an MBBS degree from Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS), Srinagar as well as has a master's degree in Urdu.[13][14] He finished MBBS at 26 and left IAS at 35. In 2018, he was a recipient of the Fulbright-Fellowship at Harvard Kennedy School.[15]

Before Cracking Civil Service exam Faesal was the gold medalist at Sher I kashmir Institute of medical sciences (SKIMS) Medical College, Srinagar, where he studied medicine.[16] In 2009, he became the first Kashmiri to get first place in the UPSC civil services exam, which he also cleared on his first attempt. He was also the first candidate from Kashmir in several years to be selected to the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) through open merit.[1] He was the fourth Muslim (after Independence) to top the civil service exam.[17] During his career as a civil servant, Shah Faesal served in postings such as deputy commissioner (Bandipora), assistant commissioner (Pulwama) and director school education, Kashmir.[18] He resigned from IAS on 9 January 2019 citing "unabated killings" in Kashmir among other things, announcing the resignation through a Facebook post.[4] He was also generally disillusioned with his role as a bureaucrat, which included jailing people and imposing curfews.[3] At the time of resignation, he was a Fulbright fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and as an IAS officer was the managing director of the State Power Development Corporation in Jammu and Kashmir.[4][5]

On 4 February 2019, Shah Faesal began his political life by giving a public speech in his hometown of Kupwara.[6][7] During this speech he compared his experience in the IAS with feeling like having "spent the last 10 years in a jail."[19] On 25 February 2019, he announced during a live debate on NDTV that he is launching his own political party and has already applied to the Election Commission regarding this.[20] On 16 March 2019 he announced through Facebook that he would be launching his own political party on 17 March, the Jammu & Kashmir Peoples' Movement (JKPM), at a football ground in Rajbagh area, Srinagar.[21]

Shah Faesal wrote bold social media posts even as a bureaucrat.[22] In July 2018, when he was a civil servant, he had posted a tweet, writing:

"Population +patriarchy +illiteracy +alcohol +porn +technology +anarchy = rapistan".[23]

People had said his tweet was in relation to India, but he had later clarified it was not.[24] However disciplinary action was taken by the Jammu and Kashmir government as well as the central government's Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions and the inquiry is still going on.[4][5]

During the 2016 Kashmir unrest, Shah Faesal had urged the national media not to use his pictures for drawing a comparison with Burhan Wani, a Kashmiri militant and commander of Hizbul Mujahideen. During this episode he had threatened to resign through a Facebook post if such primetime propaganda did not stop.[25][26] In 2019, Hizbul Mujahideen circulated a poster warning people about Shah Faesal.[27]

In February 2019, the Ministry of Home Affairs withdrew the security cover of 155 people in Jammu and Kashmir, and this included Shah Faesal, who had until then had been provided security as a bureaucrat.[28][29]

On August 14, 2019 he was detained while flying out of IGI Airport to Turkey and sent back to Kashmir [30]

He was first kept at the Centaur Hotel in Srinagar and then shifted to the MLA hostel where he spent the next six months. In February 2020, he was detained under the Public Safety Act. Other major Kashmir politicians also similarly detained now include Sajjad Lone and Mehbooba Mufti.[31]

On 13 May 2020 his detention has been extended by 3 months.

As of 3 June 2020, PSA against Faesal has been revoked. [32] and he has been released after a detention of 10 months. [33]

Apart from the Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan, Shah Faesal has also named Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal as a role model.[34][35] Mani Shankar Aiyar, another Indian bureaucrat turned politician who went on to become a Union Minister, wrote an article on Shah Faesal called "Kashmir's Arvind Kejriwal".[3]

On 3 March 2019, Shah Faesal recommended the Nobel Peace Prize for Imran Khan for "saving South Asia from a nuclear catastrophe."[36]

Shah Faesal, during a talk in New Delhi in February 2019 at the India International Center, said that Kashmir is like a "High Altitude Graveyard".[37] He has suggested ways forward including "humanising the discourse" and advising people not to see the Kashmir issue as a mere "law and order problem".[38]

• Khalid Shah (2019). Shah Faesal and the paradox of Kashmir. Observer Research Foundation
• Murtaza Shibli (2019). Shah Faesal: A Forged Journey. Countercurrents.org

• Shah Faesal on Facebook