Whether or not the Ladakh unity can bring the Centre to eventually bend on the issues of constitutional safeguards for the cold desert, if not the statehood, the underlying unity – the trivial and occasional differences notwithstanding - that enhances the possibility of this outcome is itself a tangible achievement. And so, it provides an epiphany to the political beings of Jammu and Kashmir. Or it doesn’t?
Former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti has written to Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, and other political groups to forge a unity on the lines of Ladakh and the latter has responded. Earlier, National Conference’s own MP, Aga Ruhullah Mehdi, who has relentlessly targeted Chief Minister Omar Abdullah for going soft on the BJP-led Union government, called the Ladakh breakthrough a ‘slap on the face’ of J&K's political leadership, asking why Kashmir's leaders couldn't do what a small region like Ladakh had managed. Almost everyone is chiding each other for the wreckage of the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD).
Before one begins to dissect the noisy orchestra this past week, let’s get one thing clear. Jammu and Kashmir is not Ladakh. When the state was split into two Union Territories, Jammu and Kashmir did not inherit the same geographical terrain, the same strategic, environmental, political, and cultural challenges as Ladakh. Its challenges are similar but differently complex. Ladakh is a small region in terms of population, comprising primarily Muslims and Buddhists, with a slight Muslim majority. Despite its recent history of polarisation, it has a longer history of unity and cohesion. Despite differences, the population here has, by and large, aligned itself with the Indian Union.
Compared to Ladakh’s size of roughly 280,000 people, Jammu and Kashmir’s 14 million are a complex mosaic of multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious living in a geography that is equally diverse. These complex identities further overlap with different political ideologies and political aspirations that need not be elaborated. The region has a longer history of contested narratives and polarisation, and it is here that New Delhi pits one ideology against another, one region against another by design, ensuring a self-perpetuating cycle of divisions in which the outcome of chaos is a fertile ground for control. Unlike Ladakhis, who are viewed as nationalistic, the Indian imagination about Jammu and Kashmir is different – varying from region to region and community to community.
These are crucial contexts to understand why it is difficult for Jammu and Kashmir to emulate Ladakh’s bonhomie. Nonetheless, this cannot be a pretext for not trying to attempt one. It’s not impossible to achieve. This brings us back to the present noise called ‘unity song’. That’s an oxymoron. Noise and unity don’t go together. And, that’s precisely the problem with this moment of sudden inspiration.
The exchange between Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah reveals as much about the fractured state of Kashmiri politics as it does about any genuine desire for unity. Mufti's letter, sent simultaneously to the chief minister and a wide cross-section of political and civil society leaders, is framed as urgent and a call for collective action ‘above politics’. The mechanics, however, contradict that framing: they are publicly made. Omar Abdullah matched her register of public performance by responding on X and went a step further: the public spectacle was supplemented with a hostile framing. To him, it wasn’t urgent because he had already conveyed his timeline to Mufti. His instinct was also to deflect: consulting NC leaders before formally responding looks more like postponing than meaningful engagement.
The substance of Mufti's proposal - a united outreach to Delhi, drawing on the Ladakh precedent - is indeed pragmatic. But its credibility depends on the messenger's motives being seen as unimpeachable, and on that score, the PDP's history of opportunistic alliances, including its controversial coalition with the BJP, continues to haunt Mufti's attempts to position herself as a moral anchor for the region.
In the Mahabharat, when Krishna is sent to Hastinapur as a peace emissary in a last-ditch effort to avert war with a lucrative offer, leaving just modest crumbs for the Pandavas, Duryodhana refuses – not simply out of greed or pride, but out of suspicion of the messenger who is not a neutral mediator but an invested party as Arjuna’s charioteer. Another leaf from the epic is instructive. When the eldest of the Pandavas continues to talk about righteousness, Draupadi is simply tormented by the memory of being wagered in a game and humiliated while Yudhishtra watched in silence.
A message that sounds right is, therefore, not enough. How it is delivered, who delivers it and what moral authority that person has – it all matters. Unity cannot be a public spectacle. It needs a great deal of groundwork before it is announced. It is created by building trust and confidence through consistent talking and ironing out differences. It requires patience, consistency, ability to hear, reflect and respond, and formulating strategies and road maps. None of this can be substituted by a performance of outdoing each other and pointing fingers. That’s scoring brownie points – just the very antithesis of unity.
And, so while Ladakh painstakingly preserves its unity, despite attempts to pull them apart, Jammu and Kashmir seeks to revive unity from the ruins of PAGD with theatrics that can only evoke acrimony, not applause. And when the leader is happy to deflect rather than lead, there’s no ground left for unity. Ironically, while we see J&K’s politicians squabbling, Mufti acknowledges the widespread ‘despair and disillusionment’. The problem is that the rhetoric of unity and the reality of a slugfest over who can spit out better are out of sync with each other.
The tragedy with Jammu and Kashmir is that everyone realizes the house is burning. But nobody knows how to put out the fire. They all want to be seen carrying a bucket of water to extinguish it.
This is exactly the kind of fresh chaos that the BJP wants and will quietly exploit – for administrative control, as well as electorally. Meanwhile, the fire is turning into an inferno. But all they see is a bucket.
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