‘Back to 2014?' Omar's vision is a return to bloodshed, shutdowns, and silence

Time of India

13-05-2025

Mudasir Dar is a social and peace activist based in South Kashmir. He is a Rashtrapati Award recipient in world scouting and has contributed to many local and national publications on a diverse range of topics, including national security, politics, governance, peace, and conflict. LESS ... MORE
In a startling statement during an English TV interview on May 11, 2025, J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah, declared: 'I want to take Jammu and Kashmir back to where I left it in 2014.' At first blush, the statement might sound like the harmless recollection of a politician seeking relevance in a rapidly changing political landscape. But for those who carry the memory of the years he refers to—for those who lived under the specter of terror, shutdowns, and administrative withdrawal—his words are not just nostalgic. They are deeply troubling.
Because 2014 was not a moment of stability. It was a moment of suspended decay. A point in time where the wounds of Kashmir had festered for years under the weight of deliberate political ambiguity, institutional apathy, and a silent surrender to forces that wanted to pull the region away from the constitutional spine of India. It was a time when terror was not just an external threat—it was paraded through the streets, garlanded as resistance, and accommodated as political noise.
To romanticize 2014 is to overlook what preceded it—and to ignore what it truly was. Under Omar Abdullah's leadership between 2009 and 2014, Jammu and Kashmir was not a functioning democracy. It was a limping apparatus, trapped in a cycle of violence and voice suppression. Omar came to power in 2009 with the full mandate of administration and the charge of internal security. But his tenure marked not the assertion of authority, but its quiet withdrawal.
The year 2009 started with what would become a tragic mark. There was yet again militant attacks, rising casualties, and a complete collapse of social order. Terrorist factions held marches in broad daylight without fear of being arrested. Grenade and IED attacks became a new normal as did armed groups uncontested abductions. Social shutdowns dictated the rhythm of everyday life. What was more concerning, over 385 terror-related incidents occurred alongside 23 IED explosions and 20 abductions that year. The state? All they imposed were isolated curfews, vague utterances, and washed their hands of the situation while handing control to the capital.
But the collapse of 2010 marked an even more grotesque failure. As mass protests erupted and civilians clashed with state forces, over 160 lives were lost in a single summer. The administration failed to create any space for dialogue or healing. Instead, it chose to disappear into its own inertia. Omar's public appearances were rare; his interventions—when they occurred—were marked by defensiveness, not direction. It was as if the Valley had been left to burn, while its chief administrator remained politically and emotionally exiled from his own people.
By 2012, the landscape had worsened to a practically surreal stage of existence. Even though there was supposedly a decrease in a militant's presence, the places spoke differently. That year witnessed 28 grenade assaults alongside 33 targeted executions, and 245 processions by supporters of terrorist organizations to disorder public peace. What is astonishing is not solely the values, but the acceptance of it all. Rather, they came into full view and brazenly defied the state, who stood frozen, far too impotent to act and, more often than not, guilty of indifference. Terror faction no longer required to hide in the shadows.
And then came 2014—the year Omar invokes as a benchmark of peace. It was, in fact, a year of death and despair. Eighty-four security personnel were killed in the line of duty. Forty-two civilians lost their lives to targeted violence. But perhaps the most telling indictment of his government was its response to youth unrest. Over 2,000 young Kashmiris were jailed—many on flimsy charges, some for the first time—and only four were ever granted bail during his six-year tenure. These were not just legal failures; they were acts of institutional abandonment.
What Abdullah Omar is seeking to frame as 'normalcy' was, in fact, a return to helplessness, albeit one negotiated in advance. The model of governance which he practiced was not based on resilience, but on appeasement—of the separatist sentiment, of the Jamaat ecosystem, and of a political language which could never bring itself to utter the word 'terrorism' without a qualifying 'but.' There was no narrative to counter radicalization. There was no ideological contestation. There was only survival—political survival—in a system that profited from instability.
So, when Abdullah Omar expresses a desire to 'go back,' he is not offering a plan for restoration, but threatening us with regression. He does not talk about going forward defending Kashmir with integration, wealth, and constitutional compassion. He talks about a time when political parties transformed civilians suffering into an election tool, fear was manufactured and controlled, and where Delhi's apathy felt no competition to the moral vacuum emanating from Srinagar.
Today, Jammu and Kashmir are on the verge of a different trajectory. For the first time, the region is not defined by the intensity of grievances but rather by the depth of aspirations. Stone pelting is not heroically celebrated anymore. The calendar of shutdowns has been replaced with that of schools.
Panchayats are active. There is growth in tourism. Young girls from Tral and Baramulla now pass the UPSC and NEET examinations. This is not a utopia, but has been an irreversible departure from the managed chaos of 2009-2014.
What Omar Abdullah is asking for is not a return to order—but a restoration of an older disorder where a political elite ruled unchallenged over an emotionally ghettoized people.
But Kashmiris have evolved. The nation has evolved. And history will not forgive those who seek to glorify the ghosts of a failed past.
2014 was not a moment to return to. It was the very precipice from which Kashmir was pulled back—with great cost, immense courage, and irreversible resolve.
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Views expressed above are the author's own.