Among the many claims made by the Centre and its appointed actors in Jammu and Kashmir about the gains from spiking Article 370 and sundering the former state into two Union territories, the boast of the Union home minister, Amit Shah, about the end of separatism in the Valley may rank among the most uninformed and overblown. Mr Shah based his brag on the dissolution of two minor, and unknown, entities — he later deleted their names from his post on X — one of which was floated by Shah Faesal, who returned tamely to the Indian Administrative Service a fair while after a brief stint on the secessionist stage. As if Mr Shah’s incredulous contention required another rub of reality, security forces raided the homes of two veterans of the separatist league — Abdul Ghani Bhat and Shabir Shah. If separatism in Kashmir is indeed a thing of the past, the raids beg a loud question: why? And why are dozens of Kashmiris, who espoused secession and most likely still do, still in jail or under other forms of detention or surveillance?

The plain truth about the separatist sentiment is that it does not require an outfit or a banner; it is a sentiment and it will not go away either by proscription of this or that outfit or by political pronouncements. The omnipresence of khaki and jackboots across the Valley, the frequent use of draconian provisions, the axe on media outfits and the gagging of journalists are all attestation that the situation in the Valley is not as it is often claimed by the Establishment. The people of Jammu and Kashmir, come to think of it, are not even ruled by their own. There is an elected government led by the chief minister, Omar Abdullah, but it enjoys just a little more than municipal powers and often gets overruled by the office of the lieutenant-governor, Manoj Sinha, an entity from faraway Uttar Pradesh, who reports to New Delhi. But there is another aspect of separatism in the Kashmiri context that requires mention. It is the separateness, or Otherness, that Kashmiris are very often subjected to, especially when they travel out of the Valley. They are made to feel not a part of what constitutes the Indian identity. The Valley is a much sought-after destination but its populace remains mostly avoidable. Kashmir is vociferously proclaimed as India’s, but not so Kashmiris. Kashmiri alienation is not going to be easy to dissolve.