The Ambush Within Kashmir’s Politics
There are moments in politics when an event is smaller than the meaning it carries. Mehbooba Mufti’s visit to the under-construction AIIMS at Awantipora may outwardly appear to be a quarrel over protocol. It. . .
There are moments in politics when an event is smaller than the meaning it carries. Mehbooba Mufti’s visit to the under-construction AIIMS at Awantipora may outwardly appear to be a quarrel over protocol. It is a symptom of something far more serious: the approaching fragmentation of Kashmir’s remaining regional political space. The controversy is not about a hospital alone. It is about power, access and legitimacy. In a normal state, a former chief minister visiting a public project might be dismissed as political theatre. In Jammu and Kashmir, now reduced to a Union Territory with a truncated elected government, such theatre acquires constitutional meaning. When a leader with no official executive authority appears to review a major public project, speaks to a Union minister, and projects herself as a parallel channel of delivery, the act cannot be treated as innocent activism. It becomes a political signal. That signal is simple: the elected Chief Minister may sit in office, but Delhi remains the source of real power; and those who can access Delhi can claim relevance even after electoral defeat. This is why the National Conference has reacted with anger. But anger is not strategy. Omar Abdullah’s government is already boxed in by the Union Territory structure. Its authority is narrower than its electoral mandate. Police, public order, security, services and much of the operational architecture of power remain outside its full command. In such a situation, every public embarrassment becomes larger than itself. Every rival intervention becomes an attempt to show that the Chief Minister is ceremonial while others retain operational access. The PDP understands this very well. Since its defeat in the 2024 Assembly elections, it has behaved not like a marginal party reconciled to opposition, but like a formation preparing for the next opening. It has activated cadres, expanded its public ceremonies, cultivated joinings from different walks of life, built digital amplification networks, and kept itself constantly visible. Its messaging is relentless: PDP is not finished; PDP is rebuilding; PDP has reach; PDP can still deliver. There is nothing illegal in political rebuilding. But the timing, method and symbolism matter. The PDP is not merely criticising the government from the opposition benches. It is attempting to occupy a parallel space between the people and Delhi. That is precisely the space New Delhi has always found useful in Kashmir: a regional actor weakened enough to be dependent, but visible enough to be useful. What should worry the NC most is not Mehbooba Mufti’s provocation alone, but the visible lethargy within its own ranks. Many of its legislators appear tired, faceless and absent from the Valley’s everyday political anxieties. The PDP, despite its reduced Assembly strength, is acting with the energy of a party that has understood the vacuum. Its joinings, digital amplification, field visits and public theatre are steadily reclaiming ground that NC has surrendered through complacency, entitlement and invisibility. In politics, numbers matter; but presence matters more. At present, PDP is behaving like a defeated party preparing for recovery, while NC often looks like a victorious party already exhausted by power. Mehbooba Mufti’s political history makes the suspicion unavoidable. The PDP shared power with the BJP after the 2014 election. The alliance was sold as pragmatism, but it eventually became one of the great moral and strategic disasters of Kashmir’s mainstream politics. It gave the BJP an unprecedented opening into J&K’s governing structure and helped normalise a political relationship that many in the Valley had voted precisely to prevent. The later collapse of that alliance did not erase the channels it had created. Nor did it erase the memory of the calculations that made it possible. This is where HaseebDrabu’s role becomes politically significant. As one of the central intellectual architects of that arrangement, he understood better than most the grammar of Delhi-facing Kashmir politics: speak one language to the Valley, another to the Centre, and present compromise as inevitability. Today, when he warns of “mutual ruin”, the diagnosis is partly correct. But it is incomplete unless one asks who benefits from that ruin. The answer is obvious. The BJP does. The BJP does not need to storm the Valley. It only needs to wait while NC and PDP hollow each other out. It has already built a formidable position in Jammu. It has expanded its organisational presence through booths, beneficiary networks, youth outreach, women’s mobilisation, cultural events, seminars, student exchanges and the language of integration. Its strategy is patient. It is not merely contesting elections; it is re-educating aspiration. It is telling young Kashmiris that dynastic politics produced paralysis, while integration promises mobility. It is telling women that the old parties remembered them only as voters, mourners and beneficiaries, while the new system sees them as participants in a national project. It is telling the middle class that politics is obsolete; delivery is the future. This is not casual outreach. It is cadre construction. At the same time, the coercive atmosphere of national politics cannot be ignored. Across India, opposition parties have repeatedly alleged that central agencies are used as instruments of pressure. The message travels without being spoken: power can investigate, summon, freeze, frighten and fracture. In a small political ecosystem like Kashmir, where many legislators carry vulnerabilities, ambitions or grievances, the mere possibility of such pressure can become a political weapon. One does not need to arrest everyone. One only needs to make everyone believe that a file exists. This is why disgruntlement within NC matters. The Union Territory has fewer ministerial rewards. Many legislators who expected office, influence or patronage must now live with diminished spoils. Such frustration is politically combustible. If Delhi ever decides to engineer a shift, it will not necessarily need a dramatic 1984-style coup. It can proceed more quietly: cultivate defectors, encourage independents, pressure vulnerable MLAs, amplify PDP’s attacks, promote “development-minded” local formations, and then present the resulting instability as proof that regional parties cannot govern. The irony is bitter. NC and PDP should have understood this danger better than anyone. Yet they are structurally incapable of acting together. Their hostility is not routine competition; it is dynastic enmity. The Abdullahs and Muftis do not merely disagree. They delegitimise each other’s right to speak for Kashmir. Each sees the other not as an adversary, but as an intruder into its inheritance. NC carries the greater historical burden. For decades it treated Kashmir as a family estate and rural Muslim sentiment as electoral raw material. It invoked identity when useful, negotiated compromise when convenient, and converted public anxiety into dynastic advantage. Its record is scarred by opportunism, arrogance and devastating miscalculations. The Rajiv-Farooq accord did not heal Kashmir; it deepened the cynicism that culminated in the disaster of 1987 and the insurgency that followed. PDP later emerged by exploiting that disillusionment, only to reproduce its own version of family control, emotional symbolism and opportunistic compromise. Now both are being outplayed by a national party that studies society more seriously than they do. The most likely outcome is not immediate collapse. It is staged erosion. First, PDP will continue to embarrass NC through hyper-visible interventions. Second, NC will overreact, appearing insecure and arrogant. Third, BJP will watch, occasionally nudge, and repeatedly argue that Kashmir’s regional parties are self-serving, dynastic and incapable of stable governance. Fourth, sections of the public, exhausted by unemployment and political theatre, will drift towards whichever formation appears capable of delivery. Finally, by the next major electoral cycle, BJP may not need to win the Valley outright. It may only need enough allies, defectors, independents and fragmented regional actors to become the unavoidable pivot. That is the ambush. Kashmir’s old parties are not being destroyed from outside alone. They are assisting in their own reduction. PDP may believe it is staging a comeback. NC may believe it is defending its mandate. But the larger result may be the same: the Valley’s political voice will become divided, discredited and negotiable. The tragedy is not that NC and PDP are fighting. The tragedy is that they are fighting inside a cage whose keys are elsewhere. And while they scratch at each other, the hunter waits.