I. Ahmad Wani
There is a quote often credited to George Orwell. “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” Kashmir tests this line every few years. This week, it tested it again.
Mehbooba Mufti went to Delhi. She stood with protesting students at Jantar Mantar. She saw the lathi charge on them and she was hurt. She condemned it. Then she said something honest. She said we have seen this force in Kashmir too. But there, she noted, the state faced a different animal. There, separatism stood on the other side. The security forces had a hard logic behind their response. In Delhi, the students carry no gun and no flag of another country. They ask for fair exams and a fair future. Using that same stick on them is shameful.
Read her words calmly. She was not insulting Kashmiris. She was drawing a line between two kinds of protest. One that wants a better India. One that wanted to break India. Any honest person who lived through 2016 knows this line exists.
But honesty has a price in our politics. Within hours, the trolls arrived. Memes flew. The ruling JKNC and other parties jumped in. Leaders demanded an apology. One spokesman even twisted her words to mean that every Kashmiri protester is a militant. She never said that. But truth does not trend. Outrage does.
We have seen this film before. The year was 2016.
The Toffee and Milk Moment
On 8 July 2016, Burhan Wani was killed in an encounter in the Kokernag belt of south Kashmir. He was the poster boy of new age militancy. His death set the Valley on fire. Protests spread from north to south. Police stations were attacked. Camps were stoned. Pellet guns replied. Hundreds were injured. Many died. The internet was shut. Newspapers were our only window. Jamaat cadre worked the streets. Money flowed from across the border to keep the pot boiling. Every funeral became fuel for the next clash.
Mehbooba Mufti was the Chief Minister then. Rajnath Singh, the Union Home Minister, flew in to assess the situation. At the joint press conference, Rajnath ji spoke softly. He wanted calm. But when a journalist pushed her, Mehbooba answered with raw honesty. She said:
“Damhal Hanjipora mein jo ladke police station pe hamla karne gaye the, kya woh wahan pe doodh aur toffee kharidne gaye the?”
Translation: “The boys who went to attack the police station in Damhal Hanjipora, had they gone there to buy milk and toffee?”
Was she wrong? No. Those boys had not gone to buy sweets. They had gone to burn a police station. The mobs at encounter sites were not carrying candles. They were carrying stones and bricks. Their demand was not lower school fees or more jobs. It was separation from India, or merger with Pakistan. That is not a students’ protest. That is a project.
Compare it with mainland India. Students there protest for exam dates, fee waivers, and paper leaks. Workers protest for wages and hours. Farmers protest for prices. Hard protests, yes. But all of them are family quarrels inside one home. Nobody wants to burn the house down. In 2016, the crowd wanted the house itself divided.
Her statement was emotional. It was also true. It was the statement of a stateswoman, not a vote seeker.
And that is exactly why it destroyed her.
The Price of One True Sentence
The opposition, led by JKNC, picked up that one line and ran a campaign for years. She became the villain of the Valley. The “toffee wali” jibes never stopped. When BJP pulled support and elections came, she started appearing before the public in an apologetic mood. Meme after meme of that press conference was recycled. The result showed on the ballot. In the 2024 assembly elections, her party won just three seats. That is the emotional barometer of the Valley voter. Even today, whenever she speaks of human rights, someone throws the toffee remark or the Malik era at her face.
Now watch the cruel joke of history. In 2016 she was punished for defending the use of force against violent, separatist mobs. In 2026 she is being punished for saying that force against peaceful students in Delhi is wrong, while explaining why Kashmir’s case was different. Same woman. Same logic. Trolled both times. I am almost sure she will apologise again. Because in our politics, survival demands it.
What Politics Does to a Sensible Person
So here are my two simple questions to our intellectuals and opinion makers.
One. Is telling the truth a sin in the Valley?
Two. Is apologising for the truth a sin?
She cannot be right both times. If her 2016 statement was true, then her apology is a lie told to voters. If her apology is honest, then her truth was a mistake. Both cannot stand together. Unless we accept that politics is a disease. Call it “politicearia,” a fever like malaria. It makes yesterday’s truth today’s blunder. It makes today’s lie tomorrow’s manifesto.
The American writer H. L. Mencken defined the demagogue as one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be fools. Read that twice. It is not only an insult to leaders. It is an insult to us, the audience. Because a demagogue can only exist where the crowd rewards him.
A saying attributed to Mark Twain fits us perfectly. A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes. In the age of memes, the lie does not even need to travel. It is delivered home, free of cost, in ten seconds.
And Abraham Lincoln is remembered for warning that you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time. Our politics has built its entire career on that second group.
The Mirror Is Ours
Let us be honest about ourselves too. We, the general masses, are not innocent. We know the truth of 2016. We lived it. We buried its dead. Yet we punish the leader who says it aloud, and we reward the leader who feeds us sweet denial. We do not want truth. We want comfort. We clap for the performer, not the surgeon. The surgeon’s knife hurts. The performer’s song soothes.
That is why, in our system, the one who can fool more people is the more powerful leader. Power here is not measured by honesty. It is measured by the size of the illusion you can sell and the length of time the buyer stays happy.
Yes, her critics have a point worth hearing. Pellet guns blinded young eyes. Mothers of 2016 still grieve. Their pain is real and it deserves respect too. Human rights cannot change meaning at the Banihal tunnel. But that debate should be held with facts, not with memes. Trolling is not an argument. It is a confession that you have none.
Mehbooba Mufti spoke a hard truth in 2016. She spoke a careful truth in 2026. If she apologises now, do not blame her alone. Blame the market. She is only selling what we insist on buying.
The day we start rewarding truth at the ballot box, our leaders will start speaking it. Until then, politicearia will keep its grip. And every honest sentence in the Valley will keep dying young, like everything else we failed to protect.
