‘I didn’t change, situation in Kashmir did’: Ex-Modi critic on her ‘U-turn’

Explaining the ‘U-turn’ in her stance towards Narendra Modi, activist Shehla Rashid, once a fierce critic of the prime minister, said she has not changed, but it the ground situation in her native Jammu and Kashmir, that has undergone a positive change.
“We saw how the common Kashmiris lined up for PM Modi’s rally recently. My agenda is not to butter up to the regime. It is not that the Valley is chanting the prime minister’s name constantly, but people are now raising complaints to a government that they consider their own,” she said at CNN News18’s Rising Bharat Summit.
The former vice-president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU), also pointed to how there has been a change in issues being raised on the ground.
“I agree that there are issues that are still to be resolved, such as power cuts. But, this in itself is a change that now you have issues related to roads and power cuts. Years ago, the only burning issue was the demand for freedom,” she stated.
Rashid was then asked when was it that her views for the prime minister began to change. She replied that the Covid-19 pandemic changed her views.
The ex-student leader, who has a PhD from JNU, elaborated: “I realised that sometimes, we were opposing crucial issues such as masking up, vaccine, and lockdown. Your opposition sometimes because of the ‘camps’ that are created. The government had a different theory of change and we had one too. For instance, 10 years ago, we were opposing Aadhaar on issues of surveillance. But now, we use apps like Digi Yatra and Digi Locker.”
Shehla Rashid first came to national attention in February 2016, alongside fellow JNU students Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid, during the sedition controversy, which led to the arrest of the then-JNUSU president Kumar, Khalid, and others. She became the face of the student protests that broke out following the arrests and, in the following years, continued to oppose the Modi government.
Kumar is currently a member of the Congress, as the grand old party’s national spokesperson and in-charge of its student wing, the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI). Khalid, meanwhile, is in jail for his alleged role in the February 2020 northeast Delhi riots.