Dressed in a simple pheran, a kangri warming his hands, and a Rumi cap resting lightly on his head. That image of Prof Abdul Ghani Bhat — simple, dignified, and serene — will always remain etched in my heart.
He was a voice of wisdom, moderation, and courage that we needed most in these trying times. The passing of Prof Abdul Ghani Bhat has created a void in the political landscape of Jammu and Kashmir forever. For me, it is a personal loss and deeply saddens me.
When Hurriyat was formed, I was all of 20, young and learning the ropes of my job. He was an elder colleague in the Hurriyat, whose experience and wisdom were something I held in awe. But soon his simplicity and affection endeared me to him, and he became a mentor cum friend with whom I shared a beautiful association of more than three decades. To lose him is to lose a beloved companion.
Prof Sahib was a man of intellect, integrity, and openness. His home and heart were always open to friends and critics alike. Even those who harshly opposed him politically were welcomed by him with grace and respect.
He firmly believed that no opinion should be shunned, that listening to the other was not a sign of weakness but a mark of strength. This rare ability to embrace all shades of thought made him stand out in a time when political discourse often bred division and animosity.
A respected academic and a professor of Persian, he was deeply grounded in history, society, and culture. In our conversations, he would often refer to the resilience of the Kashmiri people, saying that centuries of repression under different regimes had taught us the art of survival.
With a wry smile he would remark, “We are the descendants of the naga, the snake. Just as a snake crawls in a zigzag, never in a straight line, but still reaches its destination, so too do Kashmiris find their way despite all obstacles.” This imagery stayed with me, because it reflected his deep understanding of our people’s instinct to survive and endure, even when the path ahead is difficult and uncertain.
What made him exceptional was his ability to balance realism with aspiration. He would say with characteristic clarity, “We may not be with India, but we are in India, and we must calibrate our approach accordingly.”
It was not a compromise of principle, but an acknowledgement of ground reality — a call to strategise with wisdom without giving up on our aspirations. To him, dialogue was not a slogan but a lifeline. He consistently upheld peaceful engagement as the only viable way forward for the Kashmir issue. At a time when many thought otherwise, he dared to declare that “guns must give way to talks.”
His conviction that dialogue was the way forward gave encouragement and direction to our collective efforts in Hurriyat. For him, peace in the subcontinent was not an illusion but an urgent necessity.
On a personal level, my relationship with him went far beyond politics. He guided me in my PhD work, drawing from his vast knowledge of Persian and literature. Our discussions often drifted from strategy into poetry, Sufism, and philosophy.
He would quote Rumi or Iqbal to explain patience, justice, or courage. And in his own unique way, he would always begin our meetings by asking if I had seen any dream lately, and then go on to interpret it with a mystical depth that blended faith, folklore, and intuition.
These moments of lightness and insight made him more than a political guide; a spiritual companion, a dreamer of peace.
He bore personal tragedies with extraordinary resilience. The killing of his brother, the assassinations of our colleague Abdul Gani Lone Sahib and my uncle Molvi Mushtaq, the attack on Fazal Haq Qureshi, and my father’s assassination could have hardened hearts.
But Prof Bhat would say, “In politics, for the larger good one must sometimes drink venom silently.” That capacity to absorb grief without letting it turn into bitterness defined him.
His answer to every loss was the same — persist in dialogue, persist in engagement, that is the sure way forward. Such moral courage defined him, and it strengthened me and others among us to stay the course on the path of rejection to violence and pursuance of dialogue, even when the cost was unbearably high.
It pains me deeply that I was not there with him in his final journey, denied by the state the right to walk with him to his final resting place.
Locked inside my home, prevented from shouldering his bier, saying the final goodbye and knowing that thousands who wished to mourn him and console his family were also barred, was a cruelty that compounded the grief of his passing.
Prof Abdul Ghani Bhat’s legacy will endure as that of a scholar-statesman, who combined intellect with humility, courage with patience, and conviction with compassion. His life was a lesson that leadership is not about rigidity but about imagination, not about exclusion but about embracing, not about bitterness but about hope.
His absence has created a void that cannot be filled, but his words, his wisdom, and his charisma will continue to guide us.
As Rumi said:
“Don’t get lost in your pain,
Know that one day your pain will become your cure.”
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