Here is a peculiar trait in the Indian state’s political psychology – an inconsistency that has persisted from Nehru to Modi, from soft separatism to muscular nationalism. India prides itself on eliminating terrorism at the “lower rungs,” yet hesitates when the theatre of conflict shifts to the elite spaces where narratives are manufactured, legitimized, and internationalized. It wins the skirmishes but shies away from confronting the factories that produce the skirmishes. This is not a military flaw. It is a civilizational confusion.
For decades, India’s internal conflicts – be it in Kashmir, Punjab, or the Northeast – have been successfully controlled at the operational level. The soldier does his job. The police officer does his job. The counter-insurgency grid does its job. But at the top, where ideological oxygen is supplied, where separatist discourse is polished into political vocabulary, where hostility is dressed up as dissent, India behaves like a student desperate to impress the English-speaking examiner. And that is where the rot begins.
Yet the Indian state rarely confronts them at the level where it matters: the ideological apex, the leadership core, the narrative machine. Instead, New Delhi displays an inexplicable softness toward the very actors who kept Kashmir in a state of suspended animation for 75 years plus. The ordinary Indian does not suffer from this syndrome. The Indian state does.
Perhaps the answer lies in India’s prolonged desire to be seen as a “good democracy” by the West. This desire is not inherently wrong. But when it starts dictating domestic priorities, it becomes a liability. A sovereign nation cannot outsource its self-image to foreign opinion. Especially not when the stakes involve national unity, territorial integrity, and the lives of ordinary citizens who have suffered for decades.
Kashmir is a classic example. The people of the Valley have moved on. The larger Kashmiri society is tired of turmoil. The youth want jobs, mobility, peace, and opportunities. Terrorism has collapsed to micro-level pockets. But at the top, the same old voices recycle the same old gaslighting, confident that India will respond with hesitation rather than strategic clarity.
Soft-Separatism Cloaked in Politics
Take the case of Farooq Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti. Their politics – on record – is not of peaceful integration, but of contested identity, conditional loyalty, and open nostalgia for autonomy.
- On 27 May 2014 – years before the 2019 revocation of Article 370 / Article 35A – Omar Abdullah tweeted: “Mark my words & save this tweet – long after Modi Govt is a distant memory either J&K won’t be part of India or Article 370 will still exist.”
- In 2019, after the unilateral revocation of Article 370 and 35A, Mehbooba Mufti condemned the move as “the blackest day of Indian democracy.”
- Both she and Abdullah warned then that the abrogation would “unravel” Kashmir’s trust in the Indian State. Their criticisms – however legitimate one might debate them to be – were not mere dissent; they revived public debate over Kashmir’s constitutional status, implicitly re-opening the question of autonomy (if not separation).
- The detention dossier of 2020 laid bare what the security establishment already suspected: that Mehbooba Mufti “collaborated with separatists”, maintained “pro-militant tweets and speeches”, and used her political platform to echo separatist demands.
- For a region traumatized by exodus, blood, and loss – this is not harmless dissent. This is a continuing threat under the guise of mainstream politics.
These are not fringe voices speaking from ghettos. These are leaders who governed, still govern, or desire to govern; leaders with access to media and foreign platforms, and whose soft-secessionist rhetoric enjoys repeated broadcast, debate, and amplification. India does nothing to stop it, or them, whereas at times, it appears India lets it go on with some purpose.
In October 2017, when the Centre offered to begin a dialogue with stakeholders in Kashmir, Mehbooba Mufti welcomed the initiative, calling it a “confidence-building measure” and asking stakeholders – including separatists – to join. Her acceptance of talks with separatists – just as they were being targeted by security agencies – threw into sharp relief which side she truly empathized with. In the same breath, members of her party and alliance refused to disown the separatists.
This is not a marginal misstep. This is a conscious choice: to lend legitimacy to those who target the national fabric, under the pretext of political negotiation. A decision that tells every vulnerable Kashmiri Hindu, each displaced Pandit, and every silent victim of cloak-and-dagger hostility: your pain is negotiable, but their politics is respectable.
Meanwhile, the state continues to fight at street-level: raids, arrests, counter-terror operations. It wins skirmishes; it claims success. But the bigger war – the war over perception, narrative, identity – remains untouched.
Because why bother? The rulers tell themselves. Confronting formidable names like Abdullah or Mufti publicly might upset global optics. Diplomatic leverage could be lost. And critical media commentary abroad may resume.
This is the fatal arrogance of half-measures – strong on force, weak on accountability.
It perpetuates a dangerous cycle:
- Militant infrastructure collapses – but only to re-emerge in subtle, political form.
- Violence subsides – but grievances are re-packaged in political debate.
- The valley sleeps – but the lull conceals suppressed discontent, ready to ignite with the next provocation.
The Need to Neutralize the Narrative, Not Just the Gun
This is the real battle India must win – not just the gunfight behind smoky night raids, but the propaganda war played out in plush offices, op-ed pages, and foreign policy journals.
For that, three things are non-negotiable:
- Equal accountability for narrative-makers and guns-for-hire. If a person has rallied votes, addressed media houses, or spoken at rallies advocating constitutional ambiguity – they must be questioned. Detained. Investigated. Not to impose authoritarianism; but to hold space for peaceful dissent – while shutting down separatist legitimacy.
- No selective ‘liberalism’ based on optics. The state must shed its colonial hangover of craving Western approval. A sovereign nation must refuse to let foreign opinion shape its internal justice.
- Restore faith of the marginalized, especially victims of land-grabs, exodus, displacement. For the last 35 years, thousands lost their homes, their identity, their future – while the same political elite thrived, negotiated, and drew sympathy abroad. Strengthening Kashmiri Hindu rehabilitation, protecting minority rights, reclaiming illegal encroachments – these must be priorities, not an afterthought.
Victories on the ground are meaningless if the fire of separatist ideology still burns in palaces and parlors. It may as well be burning in the Assembly, and yet no one would have a whiff of it. No one had a whiff of anything that happened in the years 1989-90 onwards. India has shown it can dismantle terror cells. But the real test of sovereignty lies in dismantling the factories that produce them: the political patronage, the media platforms, the ideological safe-havens.
Until that happens, Kashmir will keep India on tenterhooks. The people may sleep, but under the covers of “mainstream democracy,” the ghost of soft-secession will keep whispering. India must choose: continue being partial, or finish what it started. If it fails to do the latter – then it will have only replaced open violence with silent, insidious subversion. That, as much as bullets, destroys nations.
