When your principles change with seasons, it is foolish to school others on wisdom and morality.

Former separatist leader Bilal Lone’s assertion that the Hurriyat Conference was “irrelevant” and that Kashmiris should “move on” is an attempt at self-reflection which comes decades too late.

True leadership is defined by consistency, principles and the courage to stand by one’s convictions when it isn’t easy or popular. That is why people rally behind real leaders with spirit, not leaders who change their message with every new political opportunity or personal crisis.

Lone’s "awakening" would have been commendable had it not been a tragic punch line to a 30-year farce in Jammu and Kashmir. The reality is that the Hurriyat was never a movement of the people – it was a manufactured, self-serving platform run by "leaders" who, except maybe one, drifted whichever way the winds of opportunity blew.

Let me stick out my neck and assert that the Hurriyat was never about Kashmir’s dignity either.

It was always about massaging the egos and fulfilling the ambitions of a few “leaders" who fraudulently draped self-interest in the garb of revolution. As soon as the winds changed, so did their “conviction”.

Against this backdrop, Lone’s words ring hollow for the people of Kashmir.

Blaming the Hurriyat

The former separatist leader calls the Hurriyat “non-functional” but it was its leadership that reduced the Hurriyat to empty chairs and emptier rhetoric, and Lone has been part of that leadership.

Alas, when history needed conviction from Lone, it was offered weather vane politics – always aligned with the strongest gust.

The tenure of the "secessionist movement" in Kashmir was marked not by leadership or sacrifice but by manipulation and self-service, a significant beneficiary of which was Lone himself. He claims to regret his past but where was this "truth-telling" when it could have saved lives, families and futures?

In reality, Kashmiris across the two sides of the Line of Control were kept in the dark by people like Lone to serve their own ends.
Quite often both the sides – those who trusted you and those who opposed you, were disappointed by your act of playing on both sides of the political aisle for your own benefit. Now, with nowhere left to go, you are attempting to rewrite a story of wisdom and atonement. That’s not leadership. It’s the last gasp of irrelevance.

Sensing that the platform of the Hurriyat gives no more oxygen now, changing tunes is understandable. It is no longer because of conviction but because of suffocation. That’s not transformation; it’s self-preservation wrapped in hollow slogans.

Lone should not presume that today’s Kashmiri youth who are intelligent, visionary, educated and globally aware can be manipulated by dishing out the same worn-out narratives. They know exactly how to navigate the system – something that people from the old school may never understand.

Recycled narratives

Most of the Hurriyat leaders have swapped resistance for self-preservation whenever the winds in Delhi have shifted. They have traded blood spilt by ordinary Kashmiris for political relevance in backchannel games. They have begged Pakistan for scripts while Kashmir burned.

But let it be known that Kashmir has moved forward while people like Lone remain frozen in duplicity. He should spare us the lectures about "India's bigness" after spending decades selling delusions about seceding from India.

We reject the tutelage of leaders whose only consistency is reinvention at survival's behest. This generation is writing a new chapter on Kashmir that people like Lone may never understand, much less lead. Our people or history itself will not give people like Lone another chance at playing ‘messiah’.

Mr Lone, spare us the deathbed conversion. The ultimate tragedy is not that leaders like you failed. It’s that you dragged a generation down with your fall. Your redemption tour now cannot whitewash mass graves.

A leader stands by his or her cause when helicopters hover over his home. He does not give up when tax inspectors come calling. The new Kashmir builds startups on the graves which have been dug by the rhetoric of people like Lone. We need no tomb raiders as guides.

Tajamul Farooqi is the son of Kamal-ud-Din Farooqui, the former head priest of the Hazratbal shrine in Srinagar who was removed by the Jammu and Kashmir Waqf Board in April this year.

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