TWENTIETH CENTURY KASHMIR

In his fourth books, Khalid Bashir Ahmad accesses rare documents to rediscover many people between Allama Iqbal and Sheikh Abdullah to various events from Roti Agitation to the making of National Conference

- Allama Iqbal and Sheikh Abdulla

Sheikh Abdullah with some of his colleagues, a year after the 1975 accord. The photograph shows the highest flood level in the background.

For fifty years beginning in 1931, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah ruled the politics of Jammu and Kashmir, both from within and outside of jail as well as within and outside of power. One of the most enigmatic politicians of his time, he was accused of having conflicting views on issues depending on the time and place he was positioned in. He was loved and hated in equal measure by his admirers and adversaries. His politics was known to be pro-India and anti-India at the same time. A considerable period of his political career, over a decade, was spent in jail which he blamed on New Delhi for misunderstanding him. Architect of the constitutional autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir within the framework of the Indian Constitution—the status diluted over the decades and finally scrapped on 5 August 2019 through a Presidential order—Abdullah was a strong opponent of Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s Two-Nation Theory and Jammu and Kashmir joining Pakistan in 1947. Yet, his adversaries within India refused to see in him a pro-India politician. Recently, there have been some overt efforts to, what his supporters feel, dislodge him from the history of Kashmir by withdrawing the annual public holiday on account of his birthday and renaming a police gallantry award named after him.