True Grit

The aftermath of Pahalgam has seen Jammu and Kashmir CM Omar Abdullah consistently rising above politics to speak for the soul of Kashmir.

Jammu and Kashmir

In a region often engulfed by fogs of mistrust and communal division, it is rare to find a leader who speaks with moral clarity. It is rarer still to find one who manages to turn tragedy into an opportunity for reflection rather than recrimination. In the wake of the horrific April 22 terrorist attack in Pahalgam, in which 26 people, mostly tourists, were slaughtered at a bucolic meadow in south Kashmir, Omar Abdullah, the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, has offered something that has long eluded the state: dignity in mourning and sobriety in leadership.

The bloodletting in Baisaran, where innocent visitors were gunned down in cold blood, triggered national grief. The retaliatory fury followed in form of Operation Sindoor, which struck nine terrorist installations across Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. But Islamabad, too, answered with a grim barrage of cross-border shelling, missile strikes, and drone intrusions. In Poonch district alone, 20 civilians were killed, among them children like Zoya and Ayan Khan, twin siblings whose deaths underlined the senselessness of this escalation.

At a time when war drums beat loudly and politicians sniffed opportunism in blood, Omar Abdullah chose a quieter, nobler path. Touring bombed-out villages in Poonch and Surankote, condoling with families of the dead - Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims alike - Abdullah reminded the state and the country that the costs of war are borne not in Parliament or on primetime news but in tin-roofed homes near the Line of Control.

What set Abdullah apart was his refusal to use the moment to further his own political agenda. The statehood of Jammu and Kashmir, a cause his National Conference has championed vociferously since the Centre revoked Article 370 in 2019, was pointedly kept out of his speech to the Assembly. “Is my politics so cheap?” he asked. That rare restraint deserves acknowledgment.

In a moving address to the Assembly, Abdullah read out the names and home states of each of the 26 victims of the Pahalgam massacre. From Gujarat to Arunachal Pradesh, from Kerala to Kashmir, he painted a map of national grief. And yet, he was unafraid to confront uncomfortable truths: that while the nation rightfully mourned the Pahalgam dead, few seemed to spare tears for those killed in Pakistani shelling in Kashmir. In a polity increasingly deaf to nuance, this was an echo worth hearing.

Abdullah also issued a chilling warning: while Operation Sindoor might have yielded a tactical victory, the strategic cost was allowing Pakistan to once again internationalise the Kashmir issue. He reminded the country that security is not measured in body counts but in lives left unprotected.

He also struck a powerful blow against those who justify terrorism as resistance. “Those who did this claim they did it for us,” he said. “Did we ask for this? Did we say these 26 people should be sent back in coffins in our name?” His voice was not merely one of condemnation but one of exorcism, ridding the Valley of the false prophets who kill in its name.

Perhaps the most remarkable moment came not in the Assembly chamber, but outside it. Across towns and villages, from Kathua to Kupwara, people spontaneously came out in protest against terror, against its false logic, against those who seek to make Kashmir synonymous with violence. “Not in my name,” they said. This eruption of civic conscience is fragile, but it marks something rare: a spontaneous moral uprising in a state long exhausted by fear.

Omar Abdullah may not command armies, nor be in control of the Centre’s security apparatus for Kashmir. But in refusing to politicise grief, in centering victims rather than vendettas, he has done something arguably more valuable: he has offered real leadership. In the heart of a wounded Valley, that counts for much.