Time, in Kashmir, doesn’t just pass – it runs out. The 2024 elections, like a bus speeding through a narrow mountain pass, offered a fleeting chance to reclaim lost ground. The National Conference (NC), once the unchallenged driver of Kashmir’s political aspirations, promised to steer the people back toward what was taken from them. Three months later, the road ahead is blurring, and the passengers – who voted with hope – are now waiting for a sign. Omar Abdullah does not have the luxury of delay. In Kashmir’s politics, missed turns don’t just cost time, they change the entire destination.
Political journeys, much like long-distance bus rides, are riddled with unplanned detours. Abdullah, the NC’s frontman, seems to have eased off at the crossroads of principle and pragmatism. The bold, defiant rhetoric of reclaiming Kashmir’s special status has softened into cautious requests for statehood – a bureaucratic plea. The passengers, however, remember the ticket they purchased: one promising a return to dignity, not an administrative upgrade. They peer out the windows, wondering if the bus is headed anywhere.
But the confusion doesn’t just lie on the road ahead. Within the NC itself, a quiet tug-of-war is unfolding. Aga Ruhullah, the MP from Srinagar, sits near the aisle, his voice sharp and unsparing. In his interviews he questions the journey’s altered trajectory: “We said 370. We meant 370.” His challenge has laid bare the party’s internal divide – one faction standing with Abdullah’s cautious navigation, the other demanding a straight, unapologetic drive back to pre-2019 constitutional status. The bus rattles on, but the tension between the drivers makes every mile feel longer than the last.
Yet, Kashmir’s political journey isn’t entirely in NC’s hands. New Delhi, seated comfortably in the control room, has installed strategic checkpoints along the route. The promise of statehood isn’t tethered to administrative logic but political optics. Why hand over the wheel to leaders they spent years discrediting? Statehood would dilute the lieutenant governor’s authority, weaken the newly anointed political actors of the post-2019 era and reignite the very constitutional debates Delhi claims to have buried.
For the Union government, the status quo isn’t inertia, it’s insurance. The existing arrangement ensures direct administrative control while leaving elected officials to manage the discontent. Why disrupt a structure that works so efficiently in their favour? The carrot of statehood dangles just ahead – a political mirage that moves further each time Kashmiris step closer.
Abdullah stands at an unforgiving junction. Pragmatism urges him to seek incremental gains, to sit across the table in Delhi’s chambers and negotiate the return of statehood. Principle demands he honour the people’s mandate – a clear, collective plea for Article 370’s restoration. His outreach to central leaders has yielded little more than polite smiles and ceremonial shawls, while his critics, led vocally by Ruhullah, grow louder. They argue that pragmatism, in Kashmir’s context, often morphs into submission.
The 2024 vote was never about potholes, pensions, or public sector jobs. It was a statement of identity, a collective declaration that Kashmiris refuse to let a constitutional rupture define their future. The turnout wasn’t driven by nostalgia for a bygone era but by the hope of reclaiming constitutional dignity. Statehood, in this narrative, feels like an insult wrapped in a concession – an offer to paint the walls while the foundation lies in ruins.
Delhi’s playbook in Kashmir is time-tested: delay decisions, dilute demands, and divide dissent. The emergence of new political actors in the post-370 landscape fits neatly into this plan. Handpicked, propped up, and microphone-ready, these players peddle the narrative of “development” and “integration” while sidestepping the constitutional fracture. Like persistent hawkers on a bus ride, they offer solutions no one asked for while ignoring the passengers’ actual destination.
The road ahead, though rough, is clearly marked. The 2024 mandate wasn’t for half-measures or administrative handouts, it was a call for the revival of a political identity long held hostage by strategic compromises. For Abdullah, the challenge is not choosing the route – it is choosing the passengers. The voters have made their aspirations unequivocally clear. Now the driver must decide: will he heed their call, or remain fixated on a map drawn elsewhere? The wheels keep turning. The road stretches on. And the passengers, weary but resolute, remain determined to reach the destination they voted for.
Saqib P Yetoo is a writer based in Srinagar.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.