Umar Farooq was just 16 when assassins walked into his family's home and shot dead his father. The teenager was "roaming around" the sprawling house in Srinagar, capital of Indian Kashmir, when he heard a burst of automatic weapons fire. He and the rest of the family raced to the study to find his father, Kashmir's top Islamic cleric and separatist leader Mohammad Farooq, crumpled in a pool of blood.
"My uncles were there and rushed him to hospital but he couldn't make it," recalls Farooq, who still lives in the same home where his father was shot.
The memory of that date -- May 21, 1990 -- is etched in the memory of Farooq as the day his destiny changed. The assassination catapulted the computer crazy student into the job of the region's chief Muslim priest, a post he inherited by birthright.
"My life was completely changed in one day. I wanted to be a computer engineer," says the neatly bearded cleric, who resembles a university student with his owlish eyes that peer from behind fashionable wire-frame spectacles.
Now Farooq has emerged at the age of 32 as the leading separatist player seeking to bring peace to the flashpoint region wracked by a deadly insurgency against New Delhi's rule.
"We have to talk about a political solution. This can't be solved by guns," says Farooq, who led separatists in talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh this month over Kashmir's future.
His willingness to parley with New Delhi has put him in danger of meeting the same fate as his father, at constant risk of assassination by separatist rebels who brand him a traitor. Ironically, he is protected by troops of the Indian government whose rule separatists oppose. It has given him "Z" class security -- the highest.
His swift grin and engaging charm is the antithesis of the severe image projected by many Islamic preachers. But Farooq leads a totally different life from the one he envisaged before his father's murder.
'I WAS A NORMAL SCHOOLBOY' Farooq had just graduated from the top-rated Tyndale Biscoe School, a Christian missionary school attended by Kashmir's elite. He recalls with a rueful smile that he had been annoyed with his father before he died because he had not praised his exam results.
"The uprising had just started and my father was totally involved," says Farooq, clad in grey T-shirt and casual trousers. "I knew he was very busy but I was still upset he hadn't congratulated me."
Farooq's father never had a chance to make amends. Police reports said three young men calmly signed the visitors' book before entering the cleric's study and pumping 15 bullets into him. The killers fled.
Hard-liners and Indian security agencies traded blame for the assassination, which came six months after separatists took up arms in a revolt aimed at detaching Kashmir from India and making it independent.
The insurrection was rooted in the partition of British India into mainly Hindu India and Islamic Pakistan at independence in 1947.
Farooq, who wears a traditional peaked Kashmiri cap and elegantly cut long shirt and pyjamas in public, says he does not know who killed his father.
The slaying sparked hysteria. Tens of thousands of enraged, grief-stricken mourners crying "Azadi!" -- meaning freedom in Urdu -- clashed with security forces who opened fire, killing around 40 and wounding at least 200.
The mourners implored Farooq to assume the hereditary post of mirwaiz or chief priest -- a role about which he had only the barest knowledge.
"I was a normal schoolboy," he says, sitting in his pastel-coloured, simply furnished living room.
"My only religious training was I'd read the Qura'n but I'd no other experience in religion. I didn't know Arabic or Persian," he says. "And though I'm from a political family, I'd no interest in politics.
'MAYBE I'M DESTINED TO DO SOMETHING' Still, he took on the job, becoming the 13th in his family to serve as mirwaiz in the four centuries since their migration from Persia. The post of mirwaiz -- in Persian mir means head, waiz means preacher -- is passed from father to son or to the nearest male relative.
"I was asked by my family if I wanted to do it. I didn't know what my life would be like but I thought, 'Maybe I'm destined to do something,'" says Farooq, who remains fascinated by computers and gadgets and likes to flick through Sports Illustrated in his rare free time.
Less than a week after his father's death, Farooq was addressing thousands from the pulpit of Kashmir's biggest mosque, the Jamia Masjid, notable for its roof supported by 300 tree-trunk sized pillars.
"I had to find the words the first Friday after my father died. There was a sea of people. I don't know how or where I got the strength -- I had no education in Islam," he recounts.
"I had to change gear completely," says Farooq, a Sunni Muslim who wields huge moral and political influence as the mirwaiz.
Farooq, who was dazed by grief and shock, does not recall exactly what he said in his first sermon. News accounts say he told the crowd his father's last wish was for "Kashmiris to fight for independence" as people bellowed "Farooq's blood will bear fruit."
In the tradition of Islam, religion and politics can be intertwined and preachers often deliver sermons that contain a serious political message.
Farooq says it was hard to adjust to his new role but he realised he had a duty to serve.
"Just after I became the mirwaiz, an old man of about 70 came up to me and asked me to pray for him. I thought, 'What's he saying? He knows so much more than me.' Then I realised it wasn't me -- it was the institution."
In the early years, Farooq fumbled for words in his sermons and speeches. But now he is "one of the best speakers" in Kashmir, according to Tahir Mohiudin, editor of leading Urdu weekly Chattan.
From the beginning, he has used his position to press for a peaceful resolution of the revolt that claims eight to 10 lives daily. Since its start, 44,000 people have died by official count, making it one of the world's deadliest conflicts. Separatists say the toll is at least double.
"When you talk about a solution you have to be flexible'
Twelve years ago, when just 19, Farooq combined 23 political groups into the Hurriyat -- which means freedom -- to work for a peaceful settlement. Hard-liners, who oppose talks with New Delhi, split from the alliance in 2003 and formed a splinter wing backed by the rebels.
He imbibed from his father the view that the fight for self-determination should be waged through politics, not violence. He also fervently believes Islam should be broad-minded, saying the religion "teaches tolerance."
Now, many say the uprising's original goal has been lost. Of the 12 rebel groups fighting Indian rule, 10 want all of Kashmir to be folded into Pakistan and have their bases in the Pakistani zone of Kashmir.
Farooq, who has an elder sister who is married and lives in Srinagar and his mother who lives with him, says his new life as a cleric meant he had to sacrifice his dream of going to university and was tutored at home.
Instead of studying his first love -- software engineering -- he took bachelor's and master's degrees in religious studies and is doing a doctorate in the same field between performing "nikkahs" or marriages, giving sermons and leading the All Parties Hurriyat Conference.
He was Kashmir's most sought-after bachelor until 2002 when he wed the daughter of a prominent Kashmiri family in the United States who, he says, does social work. It was an arranged match as is the case with most marriages in the subcontinent.
"My mother said it was time for me to marry," he smiles.
His plain talking has made him enemies on both sides. He has called Indian security forces "killers and looters," while this month he launched a stinging attack on hard-line separatists who have criticised his dialogue with New Delhi, accusing them of being "happy to see the genocide go on in Kashmir just to maintain their leadership."
In his living room, damage from a grenade hurled by attackers in June 2004 is still visible on the wall. On the same day, assailants gunned down Farooq's uncle at a mosque. A militant group said the attacks were a warning not to betray the "freedom cause."
"They couldn't reach the mirwaiz so they made a target of his uncle who was non-political. His only crime was he was related (to Farooq)," says Chattan editor Mohiudin.
To protect the cleric, the Indian government provides a phalanx of gun-toting security guards, and Farooq lives behind high spiked walls.
He finds the security oppressive and sometimes breaks free of it, plunging into crowds, which one security officer said makes guarding him a "nightmare."
Farooq says he cannot dwell on the risk of being killed. Wherever he goes, Farooq is swarmed by people straining to touch him and talk, but his focus is on the future of Kashmir rather than personal safety.
Farooq refuses to define a settlement but says "when you talk about a solution you have to be flexible."
"Some people say Kashmir should be independent, some say it should go to Pakistan."
He says he is optimistic peace could finally return to Kashmir, which one Mughal emperor long ago called a paradise on earth.
"Hopefully the environment is better than before. India and Pakistan are positively engaged," he says.
While warning people not to expect "miracles", he says he will pursue any settlement that "restores the dignity of the people of Kashmir".
"The suffering and dying can't go on like this," he says. "You can't just wait for the last gun to fall silent."
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