Kashmir will never be at ease as long as it refuses to look in the mirror. The mirror is bloody, broken, and bitter – but it is the only thing left that tells the truth.
This truth is not found in slogans, ceasefires, or speeches from red-bricked podiums. It lies in tombs without names, in homes without heirs, in temples stripped of bells, and in mothers who outlived all their sons. Kashmir’s greatest ailment is not militancy, militarism, or marginalisation. It is mendacity – the chronic addiction to untruth.
“Truth is the property of no individual, but is the treasure of all.” – Kalhana, Rajatarangini
The Satisar Parable: Cleansing the Lie Beneath the Lake
The Nilamata Purana speaks of Satisar, the primordial lake that covered the Kashmir Valley. Sage Kashyapa, seeking refuge for his people, pleaded with Vishnu to slay the demon Jalodbhava, who haunted the depths. Once the demon was vanquished, the waters receded, and the valley was born.
But even in this myth lies metaphor. The first act of peace in Kashmir required truth to confront terror, for no sacred land can rise where falsehood reigns. The demon was not merely aquatic; it was the lie allowed to fester. What was true of Satisar then remains true today: Kashmir must drain the waters of its own deceit.
Kashmir’s Golden Age: Tarnished by Betrayal
When Abhinavagupta composed his Shaiva sutras and Kalhana penned the Rajatarangini, Kashmir was a beacon of spiritual and literary brilliance. Yet, Kalhana’s own chronicle is not a saga of peace, but of perfidy:
“Kings fell by poison, brothers by brothers, and temples by tyrants who bowed to none but their greed.” – Rajatarangini, Book IV
From King Harsa’s desecration of shrines to internecine palace wars, the very soil that birthed sages also nursed scorpions. Even at its pinnacle, Kashmir chose expediency over ethics, appearance over atonement.
King Harsa (reigned c. 1089–1101 CE) was a tyrannical ruler of Kashmir from the Lohara dynasty, and is best known not for grandeur but for cruelty, temple desecrations, and economic oppression – a reign remembered as one of the most turbulent in medieval Kashmiri history.
The Sword and the Crescent: Islamisation and Amnesia
In the 14th century, the gentle winds of syncretism were replaced by storms of iconoclasm. The reign of Sikandar Butshikan turned shrines into rubble and silence into survival. More than 1,300 temples were destroyed.
“The idols of Martand trembled as hammers fell. Brahmins hid in groves, and scriptures burned like dry leaves.” – Jonaraja, Rajatarangini Supplement
What followed was not conversion but civilizational collapse. A once-philosophical people became witnesses to erasure. Yet, modern discourse romanticizes this rupture as “reform” – a tragic untruth that sanitizes suppression.
To this day, there is no public monument, no day of reckoning, no apology for this rupture. A lie left unaddressed festers into pride.
The Betrayal of Partition: Silence in the Snow
1947 came like a winter fog. The Maharaja delayed. Pakistan invaded. India responded. The ceasefire line became the Line of Convenient Forgetting.
Neither Nehru nor Abdullah told the full truth. A promised plebiscite never came. Article 370 became a veil – not of autonomy, but ambiguity. In the name of special status, Kashmir was handed neither dignity nor direction.
The valley learned to thrive on half-truths: “We are not with India, not with Pakistan, we are with ourselves.” But who is the ‘we’? And what self denies half its people their homeland?
1990: When Truth Was Shot Between the Eyes
The year 1990 will forever stand as Kashmir’s civilizational suicide. The forced exodus of over 60,000 Kashmiri Pandits was not just a demographic shift. It was the expulsion of memory.
“We left not just homes, but history. We carried gods in cloth bags and watched them cry through broken roofs.” – A Pandit in exile
The slogans that rang that January were not of liberation but liquidation. The valley did not speak for its Pandits. The silence was louder than the gunfire. And silence is the greatest lie.
No Truth Commission. No return plan. No apology. Peace cannot sprout in ground salted with denial.
The Empires That Took, Never Gave
Mughals annexed Kashmir not for inclusion but indulgence. Akbar called it paradise, but governed it like a possession. The Afghans ruled with swords unsheathed; the Sikhs with religious imposition. The Dogras brought structure but deepened feudal injustices.
Nowhere in these centuries do we find a sustained era of truth. Each regime simply added its varnish of deceit.
“The rulers wore different crowns, but spoke the same lies: that Kashmir was theirs to plunder, not to protect.”
This serial subjugation bred a culture of victimhood that refused to introspect, only to accuse. Thus began the greatest lie of all: that Kashmir’s people were always innocent, never complicit.
The post-1947 era saw not just political transition but the rise of a new feudal class – the Abdullahs.
Sheikh Abdullah, lionized as the “People’s Leader,” accepted the Maharaja’s rule until it suited him, then aligned with Nehru to secure his own political fiefdom. His rhetoric of “Naya Kashmir” was never fulfilled; land was redistributed, but power was centralized in his hands. Farooq Abdullah inherited not just the surname but the style: ruling through charisma and contracts, while corruption flourished unchecked. Omar Abdullah, the third generation, mastered the language of diplomacy abroad while disconnecting from his own people.
Despite decades of rule, what did the Abdullahs leave behind?
- A broken education system.
- A generation bred on grievance.
- An economy chained to subsidies.
- A politics soaked in betrayal.
They took the people’s trust and bartered it for Delhi’s favors. They claimed the people’s voice but silenced dissent. They promised identity but delivered insecurity. “They built shrines to their surname, but not a single monument to truth.” In many ways, the Abdullahs were not kings, but clever courtiers of history, ensuring that Kashmir remained on a leash long after the empire was gone.
If the Abdullahs built their legacy on illusion, the Muftis polished it with pretension. Emerging as “moderates,” they styled themselves as bridges between Delhi and Srinagar. In truth, they became brokers of a broken peace.
Mufti Mohammad Sayeed rose through Delhi’s power corridors, not Srinagar’s streets. As Home Minister of India in 1989, it was under his watch that Rubaiya Sayeed, his own daughter, was kidnapped and exchanged for militants – unleashing a chain reaction of bloodshed.
Later, as J&K Chief Minister, he donned the garb of “healing touch” while mainstreaming separatist sentiment under the garland of democracy.
Mehbooba Mufti, his daughter, inherited the throne under the same pretense of soft-separatism. She invoked compassion while presiding over intensified radicalization, silent on stone-pelting mobs, and complicit in cultivating victimhood.
What did the Muftis give Kashmir?
- Legitimacy to soft terror.
- Normalization of anti-national discourse.
- Patronage to radical clerics.
- Tactical silence during the Pandit tragedy and temple desecrations.
They mastered the art of being with Delhi and against it in the same breath. They took New Delhi’s trust, Kashmir’s mandate, and returned neither development nor dignity.
“They stitched slogans out of both grief and gunpowder.”
In the end, the Muftis turned moderation into manipulation. Their politics was not of vision, but of visible vacillation – the art of standing nowhere while pretending to stand for all.
Post-370: Prosperity Without Penitence
August 5, 2019, rewrote the map. Articles were revoked. Bifurcations occurred. Delhi promised development. Yet, the valley remains uneasy.
Because roads cannot replace remorse. And jobs cannot substitute justice. Where is the census of grabbed lands? Where is the audit of desecrated temples? Where is the compensation for three lost generations?
Kashmir’s peace project is upside-down. It begins with perks, not penitence. But until Kashmir says, “We wronged our own,” no central scheme will suffice.
“He who plants a tree in poisoned soil grows only thorns.”
Kashmir Today: Power Over Peace
The tragedy today is that Kashmir seeks not peace but power. One side seeks ideological dominance. The other, bureaucratic conquest. But the common Kashmiri, Pandit or Muslim, Shia or Gujjar, has no voice.
Peace is not the silence of guns but the presence of truth. And truth must be whole, not curated. It must admit:
- That Islamisation destroyed pluralism.
- That Delhi patronized puppets.
- That Pandits were victims of hate, not history.
- That terror was glorified, not grieved.
The Final Mirror
The Mundaka Upanishad declares:
“Satyameva Jayate – Truth alone triumphs, not untruth through clever speech.”
Kashmir has spoken cleverly for too long. It is time to speak clearly. To tell its children why temples became bunkers. Why neighbors became enemies. Why saints were exiled.
Only then can Kashmir be reborn. Not through military might. Not through foreign mediation. But through the courage to confront itself.
Until then, peace will remain a pretense – like calm water over a drowned city.
