Kashmiris won’t embrace any ideology coming from outside: Mehbooba Mufti

SRINAGAR: J&K CM Mehbooba Mufti has said that the social and religious fabric of the state was too strong to be affected either by the RSS ideology or extremist brand of Islam practised in certain Muslim countries. Echoing PM Modi, she said the state was a land of Sufi saints and Muslims were keeping away from extremism and violence. “Kashmiris will not embrace any ideology coming from outside. Don’t you have trust in our roots? RSS ideology cannot influence the state,”

Mufti said and added: “Some Muslim countries are trying to replace our culture with something else. It will never happen. Our women still go to shrines for prayers,” Mufti said in the legislative council in Srinagar on Tuesday.

According to the CM, even today there were some Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu who swore by the name of Muslim saints, reflecting the strong sense of ‘Kashmiriyat’. Mufti claimed that the decision to form an alliance with the BJP was as crucial as the state’s accession to India in 1947. She said that if the alliance had not happened, a ‘1947-type situation’ — when people were divided on religious lines — would have been created in the state. “We didn’t want to create communal situation in J&K by negating the mandate of the people,” she said.