Urdu, elections, and unasked questions: How Kashmir's politics rewrites history

By Raqif Makhdoomi* 

The political atmosphere in Jammu and Kashmir is charged. While Chief Minister Omar Abdullah was occupied running a marathon alongside his MLAs, a quiet but consequential controversy was unfolding — one that deserves more scrutiny than it has received.

Iltija Mufti's protests against the reported removal of Urdu as a mandatory language for revenue officials sparked a wave of public attention. Rather than addressing the substance of her concerns, leaders of the ruling National Conference responded by redirecting the conversation toward the PDP-BJP alliance of the past. A pattern emerged: deflect, attack, and narrate. But when the facts are laid out plainly, a very different picture emerges.

A journalist recently filed an RTI to determine how many additional votes the BJP candidate received to win a Rajya Sabha seat. The response revealed that eight votes made the difference. Critically, the RTI did not identify which party those votes came from. Yet the National Conference was swift to point fingers at the PDP.

Let us examine what the numbers actually say. The PDP holds only four seats in the assembly. Attributing eight votes to a four-member party is arithmetically impossible without supporting evidence. Furthermore, one NC MLA publicly acknowledged having mistakenly voted for BJP's Shammi Oberoi instead of NC's Imran Nabi Dar — meaning at least one of those eight votes came from within the ruling coalition's own camp. Congress, NC's ally, reportedly fielded only one polling agent, meaning their agent's vote also went uncounted toward their preferred candidate. That accounts for two votes from the ruling side itself.

Even if one were to assume, purely for argument's sake, that all four PDP MLAs voted for the BJP candidate, the origin of the remaining four votes remains unexplained. The NC has not answered this question. Independent MLAs, who are under no obligation to disclose their voting choices, could account for some of those votes. But the ruling party has chosen political convenience over factual accountability.

Before approaching the PDP for support, when asked about the Rajya Sabha vote, Mehbooba Mufti held a press conference and stated clearly that PDP would vote for the third preference, not the fourth. Her reasoning was explicit: the NC already lacked the numbers to secure the fourth seat, and PDP did not want to be held responsible for its loss. This was not a secret — it was said publicly.

The NC, aware of its own vote count, chose to push three of its own candidates rather than consolidate votes around securing the fourth seat. That strategic miscalculation, not PDP's position, allowed BJP to secure the seat with relative ease. NC's own party president — also Omar Abdullah's father — subsequently thanked the PDP for helping NC secure three seats. For the Chief Minister to now accuse PDP of helping BJP, without acknowledging his father's own words, reflects the inconsistency at the heart of this narrative.

There is one more relevant fact: the NC reportedly promised PDP support on a legislative matter in exchange for their backing in the Rajya Sabha elections. According to available accounts, PDP honored its commitment. NC did not.

The weaponization of history has become routine in Kashmiri politics. The NC frequently invokes the PDP-BJP alliance to remind voters of the 2016 unrest and the widespread use of pellet guns, citing figures of approximately 1.3 million pellets fired. These are serious figures and deserve serious engagement.

However, a complete account must include context that is rarely offered. It was during the NC government of 2010–2014 that pellet guns were first introduced in Kashmir and defended as a "non-lethal" crowd-control measure. A study conducted at SKIMS during the 2010 unrest documented 198 pellet gun injury cases in a single cohort. Thousands more were affected in that period, including minors. The NC's use of pellet guns preceded the PDP's tenure by years — a fact that is conveniently absent from their current political messaging.

Similarly, with regard to Article 370: the NC has repeatedly suggested that PDP's alliance with BJP led to its abrogation. The documentary record — including the signatures on the relevant government accord — tells its own story about who authorized and facilitated that decision. On PSA and UAPA: the Public Safety Act was introduced during an earlier NC administration. UAPA, originally enacted under a Congress government in 1967 and significantly amended in 2008, was further expanded in 2019 under BJP. Accountability here is distributed across party lines and cannot be selectively assigned.

Political parties, by their nature, construct narratives that serve their interests. That is not unique to Kashmir, nor to the National Conference. What is concerning is when those narratives go unchallenged — when voters accept framing without verification, and when the media does not press for specificity.

The Urdu controversy that began this cycle of accusations deserves its own honest examination. Whether Urdu's status has been formally altered in revenue administration — and what that means for ordinary citizens — is a question the government has an obligation to answer directly, not deflect with counter-accusations.

Voters in any democracy are best served not by loyalty to a party's version of events, but by demanding that version withstand factual scrutiny. The RTI in question did not name PDP. The vote math does not support the claim. The history being invoked is selectively remembered. These are not political opinions — they are verifiable points that any informed citizen can examine.

Read widely. Verify before you accept. The facts rarely arrive pre-packaged in the form that any single party offers them.

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*Law student and human rights activist based in Kashmir