SHABU

For the last 2 years, the atmosphere around the Cabinet expansion by the NC was created in such a way that it felt like once it is done, half of Kashmir's problems would be solved. And today, what did we get: Ali Mohd Sagar: 68+ years old. Saifullah Mir: 65+ years old. Shameema Firdous: 60+ years old. Altaf Kaloo: 55+ years old. How can almost an entire Cabinet, who have crossed the retirement age, be considered wise enough to be Ministers to decide the future of a generation they have no connection with? How can they understand challenges they have never lived and never felt? If a 27 to 31-year-old has the potential to clear the country's toughest exam & is trusted to run the entire civil & police administration of a district, why shouldn't he be in the Assembly using all his potential, knowledge & energy for his own people? Why should that place be filled with people old enough that the Govt itself has declared retired from service? How can they become the decision-makers for our future? You trust the youth to crack UPSC, JKPSC, IIT and NEET. You trust them to hold the gun at the border & the pen in the DC office. But you exclude them from the decision making. For how long? At a time when nearly 70% of J&K's population is youth, and when AI & robotics are redefining the very concepts of livelihood, education, jobs, security and human relationships, the entire Cabinet has been handed over to old lot. Can they understand the trauma of youth who are being systematically excluded from all institutions because of an unjust reservation policy? Can they understand the depression and anxiety of students across all fields spending 10 hours a day inside libraries for years with no outcome? The humiliation of exam scams, years wasted waiting for recruitment lists, and interviews that never come? Can they feel the pain of a boy or a girl who desperately wants to live and work here, but is forced to leave home for a job in Delhi or Dubai just so that his family can eat? Can they understand the fear of an AI-driven world where degrees are useless without skills, while 80% of our education is still traditional and outdated? These are young people's battles & only the youth understand the gravity of these issues. Old energy can’t give new answers. If Kashmir's future is youth, why is there no youth in power?

The tale of leadership of 2 protests in India: Anti-CAA (2019-20) Anti-ECI/SIR (2026) Umar Khalid Abhijeet Dipke Sharjeel Imam Saurav Das Gulfisha Fatima Neha Bohra Safoora Zargar Ratna Singh Shifa-ur-Rehman Ashutosh Ranka Today, the protests happening in Delhi led by Abhijeet, Neha, Saurav, etc is an extension of the same resistance that was first lit & led by Umar, Gulfisha, Sharjeel, etc in Shaheen Bagh. But the difference in how the two were treated is heartbreaking. What is being fought for at Jantar Mantar today, the people in Shaheen Bagh, AMU & Jamia were fighting for almost the same in 2019-20. But how is it that the pain of Jantar Mantar becomes the conscience of the nation, while the pain & tears of Shaheen Bagh, AMU, Jamia are buried, criminalised & jailed in silence? When Abhijeet, Neha, Saurav & others were touched, the entire civil society, media & political ecosystem erupts in one voice. Editorials are written, debates are held, and they are hailed as defenders of democracy & the future of the nation. But when students were lathi-charged inside AMU & Jamia, when Shaheen Bagh was met with brute force & young activists were branded as anti-nationals & thrown into jails to rot for years without trial, there was ominous silence. No political party called for a protest, no studio held a debate that democracy was in danger. Instead, the same media that is defending Jantar Mantar today presented them as anti-nationals. We are celebrating Jantar Mantar today, but we abandoned the daughters & sons of our nation when they were fighting for what is being fought today in 2019 at Shaheen Bagh. History may remember that in 2026 all opposition parties assembled together to stand with student activists to save democracy, but it will never forget that in 2019 they closed their eyes & ears and let poor Muslim students pay the price for saving that same democracy. #delhijantarmantar #AISAProtest #cjp_पार्टी #Srinagar #resigngyaneshkumar

The Muslim Conference was converted into the National Conference by Sheikh Abdullah with the support extended by leaders like Gandhi and Nehru, not by Allama Iqbal. For this, he embraced a new ideological framework "Kashmiriyat" at the cost of remaining dominant in Kashmir's political landscape. This marked the birth of Kashmiriyat, an ideological shift that replaced the earlier framework of Muslim consciousness. The alignment of Sheikh Abdullah with this framework played a decisive role in this ideological replacement of rejecting the Muslim League’s Two-Nation Theory. One of most important outcome of historical significance for Kashmir that came out after the Glancy commission report (1931-32) on discrimination faced by muslims which exposed the systemic oppression faced by the Muslim population under the Hindu Dogra ruling class was formation of J&K Muslim Conference in 1932, a party centred around the cause of Muslims. This was the first ever mass movement in modern history of Kashmir emerged that gave vocabulary & structure to nascent Muslim consciousness, BUT when everyone was conceivable that this movement might eventually evolve into a Muslim nationalist movement, this did not happen. Instead, the SHEIKH ABDULLAH changed the ideological framework rooted in Muslim consciousness of that time & replaced by a new framework by converting Muslim Conference into the National Conference. With this conversion, Sheikh Abdullah buried J&K Muslim Conference, initially created to explicitly represent Muslim identity, by transforming into the J&K National Conference in 1939. This conversion almost killed the space for any strong Muslim political organisation & was the verdict against the framework of "Religion as nationality." The decision for the Muslim-majority region of Kashmir to accede to India was influenced by this transformation that the NC, under Sheikh Abdullah’s leadership, remained dominant in Kashmir’s political landscape. This dominance was maintained for years & years. But in 1944, Sheikh Abdullah sought approval from Muhammad Ali Jinnah to gauge whether his party, the National Conference, or the Muslim Conference was more popular among Muslims in Kashmir. This raises a crucial question: if Abdullah later rejected the Two-Nation Theory and aligned with secular nationalism, why did he seek Jinnah’s approval in the first place? The invitation was a strategic move to assert Kashmiri autonomy, and showcase Abdullah’s focus on addressing class-based oppression over religion-based identity. It is paradoxical that Sheikh Abdullah and the NC, despite their opposition to the oppressive Dogra regime, eventually became more acceptable to the Hindu Maharaja than organizations like the Musim Conference. The latter, despite being exclusively Muslim in membership and advocating for Muslim nationality, was sidelined in favor of the National conference. In this entire process of transformation , the Kashmiriyat framework was sold as the dominant alternative. This shaped Kashmiri politics for years to come, but the cosmetic use of Kashmiriyat failed to reflect the common will of all masses. Instead, contradictions emerged, and Muslim consciousness remained a persistent force in Kashmiri politics.

From 1947 till this day, whenever the NC is questioned about the crimes it inflicted on the people of Kashmir, it uses the accession with India as a shield & instantly brands you as anti-national. Let the facts be put straight today: the first person who went against India was not Syed Ali Shah Geelani or Maqbool Bhat, but Sheikh Abdullah himself. Way back in the 1950s, it was he who sowed the seeds of separatism among the people, and then used it as a bargaining chip to blackmail Delhi that either he remains in power, or Kashmir will not stay with India. Today, on the same old playbook, the NC ecosystem is telling Delhi that only they are Indians and the rest of Kashmir is anti-national. Here is a brief history of the contradictions of the Abdullah-led NC and how it used both Delhi and the people of Kashmir. 1) Isn't the very foundation of NC's politics rooted in anti-Hindu sentiment, when in 1931 Sheikh Abdullah mobilised Muslims against the Dogra Maharaja in the name of religion? 2) Didn't Sheikh Abdullah start backchannel contacts with Pakistan and the US for self-determination and independence just 7-8 years after J&K merged with India? 3) Isn't it a historical fact that NC backed the Plebiscite Front from 1953 to 1975? Wasn't that the first ever separatist movement against India? Wasn't Syed Ali Geelani himself a product of this Plebiscite Front politics? 4) Didn't NC use the state machinery in 1979 to crush its opponents — torturing religious people, burning the Quran, killing and disappearing people — and then sold the narrative that it was India that committed these crimes? 5) Didn't NC and Congress rob the public mandate in broad daylight in 1987? Didn't they torture, humiliate and terrorise those who dared to challenge them within the democratic mainstream, and then made people believe that it was India as a country doing this? 6) Didn't NC create the Ikhwan and use them to loot, rape and kill with impunity? Didn't they break our youth in torture cells and then sell the lie that Delhi did it? 7) Didn't Farooq Abdullah nurture the JKLF and use them when he felt he was losing his chair, to create fear in Delhi that if he is out of power, Kashmir will slip out of India's hands? 8) Didn't Farooq Abdullah in 2016 urge the Hurriyat leadership to continue the violent separatist movement and say, "We will never be free until we are united [against India], and I am asking NC workers not to stay away from the movement"? PS: This is just the tip of the iceberg. If a Truth and Reconciliation Commission is established and a postmortem of NC's politics is done, even the sky will weep at how they ruined Kashmir. They destroyed our past, mortgaged our future and are criminalising our present. They made Delhi suspicious of Kashmir and made Kashmiris suspicious of Delhi. For 75 years, Kashmiris paid the price in blood, in graves, in jails, in half-widows and orphans, while the Abdullah clan built palaces over our pain. The time has come to reclaim Kashmir for Kashmiris & re-engage with Delhi. We need a Messiah to do this.

Re-sharing this for the 6th time. You don't need a history book to understand Omar Abdullah as CM or the NC as a party. These 23 seconds are enough & they will never get old.