Among Kashmiris, there is a saying: “After death, even the thorn is seen as a flower.”
It reflects a deep-seated tendency to praise the departed without reservation, while the living are subjected to relentless scrutiny. Flaws are magnified, virtues muted, and only when death closes the final chapter do we soften our judgment. This trait is not peculiar to Kashmir, but in a land burdened by decades of political upheaval and personal sacrifice, it carries weight.
In the days following the passing of Professor Abdul Ghani Bhat, tributes have poured in, portraying him as a visionary and a man of impeccable intellect and dignity. While such eulogies are natural, true homage lies not in unqualified praise but in recognizing the man in full — his ideas, his contradictions, and his struggles.
At heart, Bhat was a teacher and a scholar. His early years were devoted to the classroom, to books, and to the life of the mind. Politics was never his calling. That path opened unexpectedly when Governor Jagmohan dismissed him. A bureaucratic decision shattered his academic career and thrust him into the rough and relentless arena of politics.
It was not ambition that guided him there but compulsion. Stripped of his institutional space, Bhat brought into politics the temperament of a scholar, reflective, deliberate, and inclined toward dialogue. While others surged ahead with fiery slogans and uncompromising rhetoric, Bhat sought to create room for conversation, believing that even the bitterest conflicts could be bridged through reason and engagement.
This defining belief shaped his role within the Hurriyat Conference, where he quickly emerged as a mediator in an environment fraught with ideological rigidity. Former RAW chief A. S. Dulat, in his book Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years, recounts how Bhat’s instinct was always to “talk, talk, talk.”
His unwavering faith in dialogue stood in stark contrast to the prevailing climate of anger and suspicion. Dulat recalls a conversation with the noted Kashmiri intellectual, Agha Ashraf Ali. In a moment of sharp wit, Agha told Dulat, “You were sent to disrupt the Kashmir movement in the friendliest possible manner.” It was a remark layered with irony.
Bhat’s relentless pursuit of negotiation was, for some, a bridge towards reconciliation, while for others, it seemed to blunt the momentum of resistance. His engagement with all sides earned him admiration from moderates and suspicion from hardliners alike.
Within the Hurriyat itself, Bhat often yielded the spotlight to towering figures like Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Whether out of respect or a desire to preserve fragile unity, his silences were interpreted in many ways. Some saw them as caution, others as weakness. This was the paradox of Bhat’s politics. His restraint helped prevent open schisms but also led to accusations of passivity. In a landscape where fiery declarations were prized, his measured voice was easily misunderstood.
Yet beyond the public stage, Bhat revealed a different side — warm, generous, and intellectually vibrant. I witnessed this personally when he entrusted me with his manuscript, sending it to my home so that I could read, edit, and reflect on his work. That simple act was a gesture of profound trust and faith in the power of ideas.
Our conversations were marked by depth and sensitivity. Bhat spoke of Kashmir’s tragedies with sorrow and of its possibilities with quiet hope. Even in the midst of political turmoil, he retained the contemplative calm of a teacher weighing ideas carefully before presenting them to his students.
His intellect was his greatest asset. Bhat possessed an extraordinary ability to listen, to analyse patiently, and to bring clarity to the most tangled questions. In the chaos of Kashmiri politics, he was often a stabilising force. But his very strengths could also become limitations. His commitment to dialogue made him slow to act when circumstances demanded swiftness.
His reluctance to openly challenge dominant voices within the Hurriyat sometimes left the impression of hesitation, even when he privately held strong convictions. This duality defined his career. By championing dialogue, he prevented the movement from splintering further; by holding back, he sometimes allowed deep wounds to fester unresolved.
One of his most remarkable acts of courage came in 2005, when he convened a landmark meeting at the Hurriyat headquarters in Rajbagh. At a time when mistrust and hatred between Kashmiri Muslims and displaced Pandits had hardened, Bhat brought members of both communities together in an extraordinary dialogue. In that gathering, he declared that both groups were bound by a shared cultural identity, saying with profound candour that he too was a Saraswati Brahmin by ancestry and a Muslim only by faith.
In those words, Bhat articulated a vision of Kashmir that transcended religious divides, a vision rooted in the valley’s composite heritage. It was a moment of rare bravery, a gesture of reconciliation at a time when polarisation seemed irreversible.
Bhat’s pragmatism was not merely tactical; it sprang from a deepening realization over time that the movement he had dedicated his life to had gone awry.
In the final phase of his journey, he spoke with startling frankness, admitting that decades of struggle had brought devastation to Kashmiri lives and property without yielding a resolution. This was no ordinary statement. It was an act of moral reckoning.
For a leader of his stature to acknowledge publicly that the cause he had once championed had instead brought ruin was both courageous and deeply tragic. It implied that the movement had, whether wittingly or unwittingly, been manipulated by leaders and external forces, turning the suffering of ordinary Kashmiris into political capital.
This confession resonated widely. Some hailed it as a necessary truth-telling, a brave attempt to confront the failures of the past. Others dismissed it as too little, too late. For many Kashmiris, it raised painful questions: Had they been led into a cycle of endless exploitation? Had their sacrifices been in vain? Bhat’s words suggested that liberation movements, even when framed in noble ideals, can sometimes perpetuate the very suffering they seek to end.
The path that led to this reckoning had been long and turbulent. The 1987 elections, marred by allegations of rigging and violence against the candidates of the Muslim United Front, marked a watershed moment. The sense of betrayal that followed gave birth to the armed militancy that engulfed the valley. Bhat navigated these storms with the steady instincts of a scholar, though the world around him was anything but steady.
In the end, as tributes continue to flow, there is a risk of simplifying his legacy. It is tempting to remember only his eloquence, his soft-spoken nature, his vision of dialogue. But Bhat was neither saint nor villain. He was a human being caught between extremes — a teacher turned reluctant politician, a negotiator who believed in words amid a landscape of guns, a leader both respected and doubted.
His life stands as a testament to the dilemmas of moderate politics in an age of rage. He held fast to reason even when the world seemed to reward only passion. In remembering him, Kashmir must resist the urge to turn him into an unblemished symbol.
The thorn must be seen as a thorn, the flower as a flower. Only in that clear-eyed remembrance can we truly honor the man who, until his final days, wrestled with the hardest question of all: whether the path he had chosen had brought peace to his homeland or merely prolonged its storm.
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