Why statehood remains an empty promise without the restoration of policing and executive control to an elected government.
I. Ahmad Wani:
On 15 August this year, something happened on the banks of the Kishanganga river. This river marks the line between Indian territory and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, in the Keran sector of Kupwara district.
People gathered near the water. They shouted slogans. “Azad Hindustan Zindabad.” “Hindustan Hamara Hai.” “POK Banega Hindustan.” Fireworks lit up the valley. The sound crossed the river. Reports say people on the other side, in Neelum district, heard it too.
This was not a government event. It was not staged by the army. These were ordinary villagers, standing in the open, on Independence Day, declaring loyalty to India.
What August 15 Used to Look Like
Compare that scene to the Independence Days between 1989 and 2019. For thirty years, 15 August in Kashmir meant one thing: lockdown.
Shops stayed shut. Streets stayed empty. The government cut mobile networks and internet access. People stayed indoors, not because they wanted to, but because security forces and separatist groups made it too dangerous to step outside.
In the worst years, 2008, 2010 and 2016, the day brought stone-pelting and shutdown calls. There were bomb threats near places like Lal Chowk. On 14 August, some areas even saw Pakistani flags go up. Indian flags mostly stayed inside government buildings, guarded by armed men.
## The Predictions That Did Not Come True
In 2019, when the government scrapped Article 370, Kashmir’s political leaders made bold predictions.
Farooq Abdullah said that if the special status of the state ended, nobody would raise the Indian flag. He spoke of resistance, and even of a fight for freedom from India.
Mehbooba Mufti went further. She said scrapping Article 370 would push Jammu and Kashmir away from India, not closer to it. She called India an occupying force. She said the region was sitting on a pile of explosives. She warned that all of South Asia could burn if the BJP went ahead.
These were not throwaway comments. They were warnings, meant to stop the government and to speak for the people of the Valley.
Seven Years Later
None of those warnings came true.
Kashmir did not burn. Instead, more and more people are taking part in Independence Day events every year. Schools stay open. Students practise the national anthem. Villages near the Line of Control fly the Indian flag, not the other one.
Tourists are coming back in large numbers, in the millions now. Stone-pelting, once a daily sight, has almost vanished. Attacks by militants still happen sometimes, but they no longer stop daily life. Shops open. Buses run.
The Bakshi Stadium in Srinagar now fills with ordinary people on national days. There is no special pass needed anymore, unlike before. Phones and internet keep working, even on 15 August.
## Why the Change Happened
This change did not happen because political families changed their views. It happened because the law passed on 5 August 2019 shut down a system. That system had let separatist networks and local power brokers control the ground for decades.
Once that system closed, ordinary people found space to choose something else: a normal life, instead of constant conflict.
Take children in Mitrigam, a village in Pulwama. They used to be forced to join Pakistani-flag parades. Now they hold the Indian Tricolour instead. Shopkeepers who once got warning notes to shut their stores on national days now keep them open without fear.
Anyone who lived through the old years can see the difference for themselves. It does not need official statements to prove it.
The Same Old Demand
Yet the same political leaders keep asking for one thing: bring back Article 370, and give the state full control again, including the police and the Home Department.
Mehbooba Mufti still calls the anniversary of the 2019 decision a dark day. She organises protests demanding the old rules return.
Omar Abdullah and his party, the National Conference, want statehood back. They also want the police and law-and-order powers handed back to local control. They frame this as a matter of dignity and democracy.
But here is the problem. Handing back control of the police and Home Department would rebuild the very system that caused thirty years of trouble. That system once allowed selective policing. It allowed separatist activity to go unchecked in many cases. It gave radical networks room to operate.
Statehood, Yes. Police Powers, Not Yet.
Statehood itself is not the problem. Local control over schools, hospitals, farming and roads can make the government more accountable to its people.
The Home Department is different. It controls the tools that keep the current peace in place. Handing those tools back to the same parties that once predicted disaster risks bringing back the shutdowns, the curfews and the daily unrest.
The central government keeping charge of internal security is not an insult to Kashmiris. It is a simple, practical choice. The progress made over the last seven years can still be undone if the old levers of power return to the same hands.
Lessons from Elsewhere
There is wisdom in old words here. Albert Einstein once said peace cannot be kept by force. It comes only through understanding. In Kashmir’s case, understanding means seeing that public feeling has shifted, and that the shift came after a constitutional exception was removed. That exception had kept local power structures apart from the rest of the country.
Oscar Arias, the former president of Costa Rica and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, said peace is not one single victory. It is a process, built from many decisions, one after another. The 2019 decision was one step. Keeping security under central control, while letting ordinary people take part more freely in public life, is part of the same process.
Rabindranath Tagore wrote of a world where the mind is without fear, and where narrow walls do not divide people. For decades, Kashmir lived behind exactly such walls. Those walls were built partly by outside forces backing violence, and partly by local political interests. The slogans heard across the Kishanganga this August show something important: many ordinary residents no longer accept those walls as permanent.
The Evidence Speaks
The politicians who once claimed to speak for every Kashmiri now have to face what actually happened.
The flag stays up. The celebrations happen in the open. The internet stays on. Children and elders stand together at the town squares.
None of this means every problem is solved. Security challenges remain. Grievances remain. But the facts do show one thing clearly: going back to the pre-2019 system means going back to indoor lockdowns and constant instability.
Bringing back Article 370 just for the sake of it, or handing police powers back to the same hands that ran the old system, would trade away real peace for old political arguments.
Let statehood come back, but on terms that protect what has already been gained. Let the Home Department stay with the central government, so the peace now visible from Keran to Lal Chowk is not put at risk.
The people who shouted “Azad Hindustan Zindabad” across the river have already given their answer. It is time the political class listened to it.
