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‘A priest-king’: Kashmiri IAS and ex-politician Shah Faesal in birthday post for PM Modi
Shah Faesal, an IAS exam topper, had resigned from service in 2019 but was later reinstated as his political stance on Kashmir evolved
Kashmiri bureaucrat Shah Faesal, who once launched a political party and called for a non-violent mass movement, on Wednesday wrote a birthday post for Prime Minister Narendra Modi equating him with “a priest-king” for allowing him back into the IAS.
“A true visionary recognized the worth in my modest beginnings and the struggles that had shaped me. He seemed to read the intent behind my journey, he forgave, the way a priest-king might, measuring not pedigree but purpose,” read the X post by Shah Faesal.
A medical doctor by education, Shah Faesal first shot into the limelight when he became the first Kashmiri to top the civil services examination 15 years ago. A decade later, by 2019, he was disillusioned.
He resigned from the IAS over — in his words at the time — "unabated killings" in Kashmir and “marginalisation of Indian Muslims”.
He launched the Jammu and Kashmir People's Movement (JKPM) soon after. Former JNU student leader Shehla Rashid was a co-traveler for a bit.
In the months after the Modi government scrapped Jammu and Kashmir's special status — by hollowing out Article 370 in August 2019 — Shah Faesal was among those kept in detention. One of his later-deleted social media posts after the Article 370 abrogation said: "Kashmir will need a long, sustained, non-violent political mass movement for restoration of political rights."
He remained away from the public eye thereafter, and was eventually restored to the IAS in 2022.
“(Article) 370, for many Kashmiris like me, is a thing of the past. Jhelum and Ganga have merged in the great Indian Ocean for good. There is no going back. There is only marching forward,” he posted in 2023, after he and Shehla Rashid withdrew their petitions from the Supreme Court against the scrapping of J&K's special status.
Explaining his U-turn, he later said, among other things, that “idealism let me down”.
In the post now on PM Modi's birthday, he wrote: “A time came in my life when I found myself at the bottom of a ditch, professionally and personally. My qualifications still mattered on paper, but the world had moved on. Friends had vanished, recognition had faded, and the future felt sealed shut.”
That's when he “resolved to make one last attempt to return to public service”, he wrote, but said he doubted anyone would take a chance on him. “Would I be judged for being a Kashmiri , being a Muslim?” he wrote.
A “true visionary” — referring apparently to PM Modi – recognised that he had modest beginnings and gone through struggles, he wrote. “He seemed to read the intent behind my journey, he forgave, the way a priest-king might, measuring not pedigree but purpose,” Shah Faesal wrote.
He said he would tell the whole story some other time. “Many happy returns of the day to the man who transformed a billion lives,” he said, tagging PM Modi.
Shah Faesal, currently deputy secretary in the union ministry of culture, was among many politicians and bureaucrats, and others, who shared tributes to mark PM Modi's birthday.
Faesal made his X post as a quote-reply on top of cricketer Mohammed Siraj's post in which Siraj spoke about how Modi had lifted the Indian team's spirit.
