The most revealing aspect of the recently resurfaced interview of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah is not the explanation it contains. The revelation lies in the fact that Kashmiris are hearing it only now.

Few political decisions in modern Kashmir have generated as much controversy as Abdullah’s 1939 decision to transform the Muslim Conference into the National Conference. 

Critics spent decades portraying that move as a retreat from Muslim political identity. 

The accusation fuelled election campaigns, public meetings, newspaper columns and drawing-room discourses. 

It became one of the most enduring criticisms of the man who dominated twentieth-century Kashmiri politics.

Many Kashmiris grew up hearing the charge, but far fewer heard Abdullah’s own explanation.

That imbalance helps explain why the video clip recently shared by his grandson and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah matters.

In the interview, Sheikh Abdullah recalls that the move toward a broader political platform emerged through discussions with Allama Muhammad Iqbal, a figure often described as the intellectual architect of Muslim-majority Pakistan.

According to Abdullah, Iqbal believed that a wider political movement could unite Muslims, Kashmiri Pandits and other communities of the princely state in a common struggle against autocratic rule. 

Abdullah also states in the interview, now circulating decades after his death, that he remained in correspondence with Iqbal until the poet-philosopher’s demise in 1938.

But........

© Kashmir Observer