Opinion | From Lal Chowk To A New J&K: The Kashmir Connection In Modi’s 25-Year Journey

From Lal Chowk to Article 370, and from Article 370 to development, Modi’s Kashmir journey is the story of a political idea that travelled with him for more than three decades

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Twenty-five years is a long time in politics. For Narendra Modi, it is a quarter century that has taken him from the chief minister’s office in Gujarat to the highest office in the country, while transforming him from a relatively little-known political organiser into one of India’s most consequential political leaders.

But there is another story hidden inside those 25 years. It is the story of Jammu and Kashmir.

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And interestingly, Modi’s Kashmir connection did not begin after he became prime minister. It did not even begin after he became Gujarat chief minister in 2001. It goes back to a time when he was simply a BJP organisational worker, travelling across the country and spending considerable time in Jammu and Kashmir.

That makes J&K not merely a chapter in his prime ministerial record but a thread running through his political journey.

Before Delhi, Before Gujarat

In the winter of 1991-92, the BJP’s Ekta Yatra travelled from Kanyakumari towards Srinagar, culminating in the hoisting of the Tricolour at Lal Chowk on Republic Day.

Modi was associated with the organisation of that historic journey. He was not the public face of the exercise. He was the organiser working behind the scenes. Yet, history has a way of bringing the people behind the scenes to the centre of the frame.

The Tricolour at Lal Chowk, amid the security challenges and militancy of those years, became one of the most enduring images associated with the BJP’s Kashmir politics. Modi was among those present during the episode.

Three decades later, it is impossible not to look at that photograph through a different lens. The young organisational worker who travelled to Kashmir would eventually become the prime minister under whose government the constitutional........

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