Recent calls to partition Jammu and Kashmir along regional or communal lines should alarm anyone who cares about democracy, pluralism, and lasting peace in the region.
People’s Conference chairman and Handwara legislator Sajjad Gani Lone recently went so far as to welcome the idea of separating the Kashmir Valley from Jammu, calling it “true liberation.”
Days earlier, Panun Kashmir, an organisation representing displaced Kashmiri Pandits, staged a high-profile protest seeking a separate “homeland” in the Valley. At the same time, long-standing demands for a separate Jammu state are being amplified by political actors who draw comfort from majoritarian narratives.
Taken together, these pressures to separate Jammu and carve up a territory for Pandits from the Valley look less like administrative reform and more like deliberate communal engineering.
The demand for a separate Jammu state is not emerging in a political vacuum. It is unfolding in a climate reshaped since August 2019, marked by the abrogation of Article 370, the downgrading of the erstwhile state into two Union Territories, new domicile rules, and a delimitation exercise that altered electoral arithmetic.
These are not neutral or technical changes. They determine who votes, who gets government jobs, who can own land, and ultimately, who holds power.
When a region is stripped of constitutional protections and its political mechanics are tightly controlled from New Delhi, this is not administrative tidying-up. It is a rewriting of political possibility. In practice, new domicile rules and the enhanced authority of the Lieutenant Governor have widened the space for non-local influence, particularly in Jammu. Delimitation, based on contested data, has further tilted representation. The cumulative effect favours Dogra-majoritarian politics and commercial interests aligned with it.
This should unsettle anyone committed to plural citizenship.
Redrawing boundaries in a historically diverse region risks institutionalising exclusion. The pattern is familiar: reshape borders to consolidate a favourable majority, relax domicile and land rules to enable inward settlement, manage recruitment and postings to ensure bureaucratic loyalty, and invoke the suffering of selected groups to provide moral cover. The result is not better governance but a patchwork of communal enclaves.
Equally troubling is the instrumental use of pain. The trauma of Kashmiri Pandits demands justice and dignity. But they were not the only victims. Every community in Jammu and Kashmir has suffered, and the scale of violence endured by Kashmiri Muslims has been immense.
Legitimate Grievances
When legitimate grievances are repackaged as exclusive territorial claims, justice risks becoming a pretext for partitioning a mixed society. The Panun Kashmir protest must be seen within a wider political ecosystem that stands to gain from deepening religious divides.
There are also hard political realities at play. By delaying full statehood while continuing to restructure electoral, demographic, and administrative levers, the Central government is only buying time. New rules become normalised, new majorities entrenched, and any eventual restoration of statehood risks being hollow in substance. Democracy in name, engineered outcomes in practice.
The projection of selective local support adds another layer of concern. When a handful of Kashmiri voices are elevated, rewarded with platforms or office, and then showcased as endorsing territorial reconfiguration, the appearance of consensus conceals an uneven and managed political field. Such voices cannot substitute for the consent of communities whose future is being reshaped without their participation.
What, then, is the alternative?
First, any discussion of reorganisation must begin with transparency. Independent and public audits are needed of development spending, land transfers, recruitment, postings, and demographic data, all subject to judicial scrutiny.
Second, domicile, land, and employment rules must protect long-term residents of all communities, rather than facilitating speculative settlement that alters social and economic life chances.
Third, the restoration of statehood must come with firm guarantees: decentralised authority, meaningful minority protections, and constitutional safeguards against border changes driven by communal advantage.
Above all, political leaders and civil society must refuse the language of fear and revenge. Addressing Jammu’s genuine grievances over development and representation does not require dismantling the plural fabric of Pir Panjal, Chenab, or the Kashmir Valley. Restoring dignity to displaced communities does not require carving out exclusive enclaves in mixed regions.
There is a democratic path that heals without dividing. What we are witnessing instead is a slow administrative march toward fragmentation.
The stakes go beyond local politics. Rather than pushing Jammu and Kashmir toward communal partition, the demand should be for a democratic settlement.
Inclusive dialogue, impartial monitoring, and confidence-building measures offer a more credible route to peace. Such an approach would prioritise human rights, protect plural citizenship, and rebuild trust.
Peace built on segregation will not endure. Only a transparent, participatory, and democratically sanctioned process can secure a just and lasting future for all communities of Jammu and Kashmir.
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