It was almost surreal because not long ago we were detained by the government and our detentions were justified using all sorts of claims. In my case, for instance, the Public Safety Act detention was justified saying that I had mobilised people to vote in the face of an election boycott!
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00:00Umar, you met them in the first week of August 2019. It's been close to two years now,
00:07a lot has changed in the interim. Give us a sense of what the mood was like when you met them
00:12like face to face after this gap. Well, I mean
00:18in some ways it was almost surreal because not long ago we were detained by the government of
00:32J&K with the permission of the government of India and our detentions were justified
00:40using all sorts of claims. Take mine for example, my public safety act detention was justified
00:48saying that I have mobilized people to come out and vote in the face of a boycott. So I would be
00:56lying if I said that it was all completely as if nothing had happened. There was, I mean there was,
01:07I mean it was a bit surreal to begin with but the fact is that we have a responsibility
01:16beyond ourselves. I can't be governed by how I was treated in terms of how I approach my
01:26interaction with the government of India. The fact is the Prime Minister of India reached out
01:31to us for a dialogue and it was absolutely the appropriate and the correct thing to do
01:39to respond positively to that dialogue and to try and take this process forward. I will never
01:46forget what I went through but I've always said it's not about the individual, it's about the
01:53wider cause. We are fighting a much wider battle than what individually may have happened to myself
02:00or my father or Mehbooba Mufti Sahiba or to the others and for that wider cause it's important
02:08that we keep channels of communication open as much as possible.