Hamlet Haunts Kashmir's Mainstream Parties Post 370 Abrogation

To be or not to be? Shakespeare’s Hamlet has been haunting all Kashmiri mainstream political parties ever since article 370 was abrogated and the state bifurcated into two union territories.

After endorsing and relentlessly paving the way for Jammu and Kashmir’s accession with India in 1947, National Conference(NC) founder Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah chose to withstand the communal fires those had engulfed the sub-continent.

He stood tall, both literally and figuratively, to uphold Gandhi’s dream of a secular, equalitarian India that would have space for all religions, regions, ethnicities and cultures.

Sheikh’s romance with the ideals of India collapsed barely within five years of becoming the first Prime Minister of erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir.

He started harboring the idea of an independent state that would have him as its head virtually replacing the autocratic rule of the erstwhile Dogra Maharaja Hari Singh with a ‘Sheikhdom’ of sorts within which his writ would have become unchallengeable.

Secret documents declassified in 1970s by the US administration showed that the Sheikh had been hobnobbing with foreign powers to seek support for another division of the sub-continent.

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